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2009 Yamaha R1

In 2008, when Yamaha released the teaser adverts for the upcoming replacement to the ever popular R1, all they did was publish a photograph of a crankshaft.

To all but the geekiest of fans, it was just a crankshaft – which of course it was – but closer inspection of the photo revealed the crank pins were offset by 90° to each other, which in simple terms offers greater torque at lower revs, primarily by drastically reducing the inertia torque usually generated by a normal crankshaft layout. On the 2009 R1, and every one since then, only one of the four pistons is ever stopping to change direction at any given time, where in a normal engine they move and change direction in pairs.

Why does this matter? Well, it’s because the 2009 R1 was a huge departure for Yamaha – never shy in ploughing its own furrow when it comes to engineering and technical solutions – and it has stuck with this one for over a decade now, which is very unlike Yamaha, and it’s still the only bike manufacturer to use a crossplane crankshaft in its four cylinder engine – although technically Ducati’s Panigale V4 has a crossplane crankshaft too, it’s in a V4 layout which is different anyway.

The first time I got to throw a leg over a 2009 R1 was in 2009 just after it came out. I was actually taking part in my first ever press launch for Michelin at Portimao. They had assembled a huge range of bikes so that we could pick and choose which bike we wanted to try the tyres on. When I say a huge range of bikes, I mean literally two or three of every bike you can think of. There were Ducatis, MVs, HRC race kitted Fireblades and so on... but the one that everyone wanted to ride was the all-new R1 with the wobbly crank which nobody had any knowledge or experience of, apart from Valentino Rossi and Jorge Lorenzo. It was genuine MotoGP thinking applied to a road bike, and I felt sorry in some ways for Michelin because the whole tyre launch became a ‘First Ride’ for most of the world’s media on the new R1.