Yamaha Hunt for Glory with Official 2015 Racing Line Up
Yamaha Motor Europe has launched a comprehensive challenge for 2015 racing victory across multiple classes both on- and off-road. The special launch event at the headquarters of the Movistar Yamaha MotoGP Team at Gerno di Lesmo in Italy on 11th February saw an impressive nine teams line up to show their 2015 racing colours.
Tarmac Attack
The arrival of the all-new YZF-R1 and YZF-R1M have made it the perfect opportunity for selected road racing teams to collaborate further with Yamaha and aim to dominate their classes. The European Superstock 1000 class finds The Morillas Racing School Team (MRS) ready to do battle with riders Florian Marino and Kev Coghlan eager to get on track with the YZF-R1M.
Defending Endurance World champions GMT94 Yamaha and fellow Yamaha endurance racers Monster Energy Yamaha (YART) will take the YZF-R1 for its toughest challenge of the year through the gruelling EWC season that includes the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours, The Suzuka 8 Hours and of course, the Bol d’Or 24 Hour race!
The YZF-R1 will be making a bid for glory on a national level as well, competing for British Superbike Championship honours with Milwaukee Yamaha and riders Joshua Brookes and Broc Parkes. Back on the European mainland the IDM German Superbike title will be contested by Team Yamaha MGM (Michael Galinski Motorsport) with Damian Cudlin and local hero Max Neukirchner on the YZF-R1M.
Dirt Challenge
Excitement is also building for the off-road attack in the MXGP World Championship as 2014 Championship runner up Jeremy Van Horebeek is joined by newcomer Romain Febvre to bring the noise in 2015 on the Yamaha Factory Racing Yamalube Team YZ450FM. Ready to represent Yamaha in the MX2 support class are not one, but two strong teams determined to leave a mark. Standing Construct Yamaha with riders Valentin Guillod and Julien Lieber and Kemea Yamaha Racing with riders Benoit Paturel and Damon Graulus are all set to kick off the season in style on the Yamaha YZ250F.
Last but not by any means least comes Yamaha’s officially supported efforts to conquer the FIM Enduro World Championship in the shape of Team Yamaha Miglio with riders Cristobal Guerrero and Gianluca Martini. Guerrero is twice runner up in the Enduro 2 category and teammate Martini took second in the junior class in 2013 representing Italy in the International Six Days Enduro in Sardinia. This will be Yamaha’s first official appearance in the highest level of endure competition for six years, heralded by the arrival of the revolutionary 2015 WR250F.
New Racing Organization
The 2015 season sees also a revised racing infrastructure to offer the best support to Yamaha Motor Europe’s Official Racing Teams.
A new Racing Department has been established inside the Yamaha Europe Marketing Division, with Andrea Dosoli returning to Yamaha as Road Racing Project Manager and Erik Eggens promoted to the role of Motocross Racing Manager. Based in Yamaha France, Marketing and Communications Division Manager Alexandre Kowalski will add responsibility for Enduro and Rally operations to his remit.
On top of the road racing operations, Andrea Dosoli also takes responsibility for the new Racing R&D, established in Germany to support R1 development for the 2015 season and the ultimate goal to be ready for a 2016 come back in the WSBK championship.
The new structure is also in place to support both Yamaha Motor Europe national branches in empowering racing operations at national level and also customer programmes such as the R125 and R3 Cups.
“We head into the 2015 race season with an incredible sense of anticipation and excitement,” comments Yamaha Motor Europe Operations Director Eric De Seynes. “We have full trust in our new internal structure and in the job it will do together with our racing partners, who represent a comprehensive family of highly professional teams and motivated riders to complement the class leading motorcycles launched in 2015. We have very high expectations for the revolutionary YZF-R1 and YZF-R1M and we are confident we have the right ingredients to be key protagonists on every racetrack we compete on. Our expectations off-road are no less; we believe that in the prototype YZ450FM and production based YZ250F and WR250F we have the machines and the riders capable of taking Yamaha on to the top step of the podium in all classes. We are impatient for the season to begin!”