Legends Line Up to Help Yamaha Racing Heritage Club Celebrate 2024
The Yamaha Racing Heritage Club is delighted to announce its schedule for 2024, which includes the Sunday Ride Classic, Dijon Motorcycle Legends Cup, Veterans Motocross des Nations, and the Yamaha Racing Experience at Jerez. Stars from the past and present, including Valentino Rossi, Giacomo Agostini, Jonathan Rea, Alessio Chiodi, Johnny Cecotto and Christian Sarron, alongside their iconic race bikes are all set to celebrate a historic year for the manufacturer with several important racing milestones to commemorate.
Launched at EICMA in 2021, the Yamaha Racing Heritage Club (YRHC) was designed to protect, celebrate, and share Yamaha’s rich racing history across all disciplines with younger generations.
The YRHC gives owners the opportunity to register their bikes on the YRHC database and become official members, bringing together owners of iconic Yamaha racing machinery from around the globe, allowing them to share their knowledge and experience with their fellow collectors and offering them the chance to participate in a number of events throughout the year.
The YRHC is not only about machinery; it also aims to reunite the riders who helped write large Yamaha’s name in the history books with the machines on which they achieved their greatest successes. Plus, by bringing together these legendary riders and their iconic bikes alongside Yamaha’s current roster of racing talent, it allows a whole new generation of fans to experience first-hand the passion, determination, and technology that defined bygone eras.
During its inaugural year in 2022, the YRHC focused on celebrating Yamaha’s road racing success by attending events such as the ASI Motoshow in Italy, the Sachsenring Classic in Germany, and the CRMC Classic Motorcycle Festival in England as well as documenting the emotional reunion of three-time 500cc World Champion Wayne Rainey and his title-winning 1992 YZR500 at the Goodwood Festival of Speed.
In 2023, in addition to continuing to be present at some of the biggest classic events in Europe and making its debut at the Yamaha Racing Experience in Mugello, the YRHC expanded its program by attending events dedicated to celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the YZ range of Motocross bikes.
In 2024, the YRHC aims to honour several historic anniversaries, including the 60th anniversary of Yamaha’s first-ever World Championship when Phil Read lifted the 250cc title in 1964 on the legendary RD56, the 50th anniversary of 15x World Champion Agostini joining the manufacturer and achieving his first title with the marque, the 40th anniversary of Sarron’s 1984 250cc World Championship, the 25th anniversary of the debut of the YZF-R7, plus the 25th anniversary of the first victory for the YZF-R6 in WorldSSP, and much more.
To commemorate these milestones, Agostini and Sarron will take to the track with the YRHC at the Sunday Ride Classic at Circuit Paul Ricard on the 18th and 19th of May before the duo will be joined by two-time World Champion Johnny Cecotto for the Coupes Moto Legende at the Circuit de Dijon-Prenois on the 24th-26th of May.
After the success of 2023, the YRHC will once again play an integral part in the Yamaha Racing Experience (YRE), which this year will be hosted at the Circuito de Jerez – Ángel Nieto on the 3rd- 4th of July.
Heading up this exclusive event is none other than nine-time World Champion Rossi, who will be joined by six-time Superbike World Champion Rea alongside the rest of the current crop of WorldSBK riders, including Andrea Locatelli, Remy Gardner, and Dominique Aegerter, with a number of special guests yet to be announced. Invited YRHC members will not only have the chance to ride the Jerez circuit alongside these modern heroes on classic two-stroke machinery but also enjoy the full Yamaha Racing Experience.
Then to bring the curtain down on an exciting year, the YRHC will return to the Veterans Motocross des Nations (VMXoN) at Foxhills in the UK from the 22nd to 25th of August with three-time World Champion Alessio Chiodi set to be the star of the show once again, alongside a display of historic Yamaha off-road bikes.
Do you own a classic Yamaha race bike? If so, the YHRC is open to owners of bikes from every discipline. From Grand Prix racing, eligible machines are those raced between 1955 and the end of the 500cc two-stroke era in 2003, as well as TZ125 and TZ250 machinery up until 2009.
Registration of bikes from World Superbike and the Endurance World Championship is open to machines raced in any of the production classes from 1985 until 2009, while from the off-road world, the YRHC is open to motocross bikes raced before 1998 and Paris Dakar machines raced in Africa before 2007.
If you are interested in joining, thanks to an all-new registration portal, it is now even easier to register your machine on the database and become a member of the YRHC; simply click here to begin the registration process.
Paolo Pavesio
Marketing & Motorsport Director, Yamaha Motor Europe“The YRHC has grown from strength to strength since its launch in 2021, and this year is no exception. We are delighted to be able to share the history of Yamaha with our passionate and loyal fans, plus we have now made it even easier to become a member with a new online registration portal. We have an exciting schedule of events for 2024, both on and off-road, to help us celebrate a historic year for Yamaha, with several major anniversaries. The YRHC not only helps us honour the past, but by bringing together our legendary riders and bikes from years gone by with our current roster of riding talent, it allows us to introduce a whole new audience to Yamaha’s rich and illustrious racing legacy.”
