According to Yamaha Motor Racing's CEO, the Japanese manufacturer aims to show that it can return to the top by bringing Japan and Europe together.
Yamaha Is he finally getting his head above water after several difficult years? Fabio Quartararo's recent results suggest that the Japanese manufacturer is in any case on the right track to achieving this, even if caution officially remains the order of the day.
After largely dominating MotoGP with Honda, they both saw the performance of their machines plummet in the face of European competition. The difficulty of accepting that they would no longer rely entirely on Japanese expertise and managing to integrate Europeans into the processes was one of the major obstacles to the restructuring necessary to return to the path to success. Yamaha seemed to take longer than Honda to begin its restructuring, but Paolo Pavesio, the general manager of Yamaha Motor Racing affirms: the work is underway, and things have completely changed internally.
“I joined Yamaha Europe in 2014. At the time, the board had seven members, two of whom were not Japanese. Today, it has eight members: the chairman is not Japanese, and seven of the eight members are European. This desire for openness, this desire to evolve the company from a Japanese company to a global company born in Japan, with its headquarters in Japan, is now very present.”, he told Total Energy.
“A lot of things are still done in Japan. We have working groups in both Japan and Italy, but we are careful to avoid duplication. Some groups work together on different topics, and most of the topics are still handled in Japan. However, there are still people who bring their European expertise, and there are areas where Europe is clearly ahead, such as aerodynamics.”
Paolo Pavesio took over from Lin Jarvis this year as head of Yamaha Motor Racing. While the Briton was an iconic figure in MotoGP, Pavesio believes that this change alone cannot impact the momentum of the company, which had already begun restructuring before his arrival. The objective is clear: to unify European and Japanese expertise to return to the top.
“There’s a lot of motivation within the company, throughout the organization, to make this turnaround a success. And I’ve also learned over the years that one person’s success can never completely change the situation. Success is the result of teamwork. There’s the motivation, there are the resources, there’s a new way of working, which I really appreciate. […] And that’s what I like: bringing people and cultures together around a common goal. I think that’s the goal of this project: to show that we can come back, working in a new way, Japan and Europe together, not in parallel, not separately, but truly together.”, he added.
