Yamaha’s tech director reveals radical plans to win again in MotoGP

The dynamics of a V4 should help Yamaha get more from the current tyres. But that’s not enough on its own. Bartolini is currently building up Yamaha’s engineering capabilities at its European headquarters in Milan, Italy. One of his priorities is a major increase in Yamaha’s tyre-analysis capabilities, because Ducati’s expertise in this area is vital to its success.

He is also creating a new aerodynamics department, because although downforce aerodynamics will be trimmed from 2027 this area of MotoGP performance is here to stay, because it increases grip.

Downforce aero essentially converts horsepower and drag into grip – drag wants to push you backwards, so you harness it, via winged surfaces, to load the tyres in certain ways and push them into the asphalt, increasing grip.

Mat Oxley: You joined Yamaha at the end of 2023, coming in at a high level and at an important time. I remember Gigi Dall’Igna telling me that when he joined Ducati he spent the first six months getting to know everyone and the next six months reorganising everything before he really started on engineering, so how’s that process been for you?

Max Bartolini: What you say is more or less what we are trying to do. We need a little more time for the reorganisation. Yamaha already understood before they called me that they need to change their approach a bit. Right now we are trying to build up a structure inside the garage and also at home to understand how we can have the instruments to build our performance.

You already have some engineering capability at your Milan headquarters, so will that grow?

“Yes. One idea is to grow as much as possible on both sides – in Japan and Italy and also to have a better connection between the two. Now we are travelling a lot! The Japanese come to Milan more often than before and we go to Japan more often than before, because we need to be more committed together. It’s a bit difficult having the race department split on two sides of the world! When Gigi arrived at Ducati at least he had everything within two square kilometres, whereas we are 10,000 kilometres [6000 miles] apart! We need a bit more time but we are getting there.”

What will you have in Milan: 3D printing, CNC machining and so on? What about chassis fabrication?

“At the moment chassis fabrication remains in Japan, because to build that capability takes a long time and a lot of investment and, considering that we already have that in Japan, it doesn’t make sense to double the facility.

“First, we try to improve what’s not really strong. OK, Yamaha isn’t fast now, but we know Yamaha has the ability to build engines and chassis, so we are trying to get stronger in the aerodynamics department.”

You’re already working on aero with Italian race-car constructor Dallara…

Yes, we are working a bit with Dallara, but mostly at our base in Milan. We are building up our own aerodynamics department and, because we are starting from zero, the core of this will start in Italy.

Then we are working a bit more on tyres, so we need to build a new… I don’t want to say a new department, but a new site, because we don’t really have this yet. I think that one of Ducati’s strongest points is understanding the tyres. Tyres are part of the vehicle dynamics department, which studies tyre behaviour, characteristics and everything, so we are growing up our vehicle dynamics department and also our indoor and outdoor testing facilities.

Ducati was the first manufacturer to really analyse the tyres and they are very, very strong in this, compared to the others. Here at Yamaha, we still use the old way to set up, so we need a bit more of an engineering approach to the tyres and we are working on this.

But computer-modelling tyres is so difficult because you don’t know their physical properties…

“We don’t know the physical properties because Michelin will never tell us, so we don’t really have the thermal-mechanical model but we can build a computer model using measurements and data from running on the track. For sure you need to have very complex instruments and everything for this!”

Yamaha returning to four bikes in 2025 will be huge for this, because you can’t build useful computer models with only two bikes because you don’t have enough data…

“You can but it’s very slow. It’s easy to imagine – if you have four bikes it will take you one year, if you have two bikes it will take you two years.”

What were the positives and negatives of the 2024 M1?

“The positive is that the bike has some strong points, like very good front-end feeling, which is a very, very strong point. Turning is another positive point that the bike still has. On the other side, we have a lack of grip, a lack of power and we need to find a way to manage better what we have – this is our weakest point. The overall package isn’t bad, it’s quite good, we just need to improve the level.”

MotoGP has become more and more focused on the rear tyre during the Michelin era – and especially last season with a new rear that only Ducati can use…

“I’m not sure why they did it, but Michelin built a very high-performance tyre, which is much more difficult to manage. I think the most-balanced bike gets the best advantage from this tyre and right now that’s clearly Ducati. Also, as we said before, Ducati has the most understanding of how to manage tyres.”

It seems like there’s a very narrow window in which the tyre works – and if you find all its grip you can get chatter, so then you have to dial out some grip to get rid of the chatter…

“My idea about this tyre is that the tyre performs very well but it’s also very easy to lose that performance, so you need to stay at the limit, but the window in which you can stay at the limit has become smaller with this tyre. Let’s make an example – Pirelli tyres have a very big window, so everyone can get 98% from the tyres. It looks to me that to reach 99% with this new rear you need to know exactly how to manage the tyre, but it’s also very easy to go the other way to 80%. This is what I think.

“The performance of the tyre is higher and sometimes it’s very difficult for us to stay at that level and even when we do manage it, the riders don’t have easy predictability from the bike to ride at 100%, so they just lower their limit. This is human. The riders try to stay at the limit, then they lose [control] and when they lose [control] a second time they have to lower their limit a bit, because there’s no other way to ride.”

Quartararo tells us he has to do everything with the front tyre, at a time when MotoGP is all about the rear tyre. Is this a bike-balance issue or what?

“If when you speak about balance you mean the mass properties of the bike, I don’t think it’s difficult for any manufacturer to try different bike balances. The problem is that you don’t only need to find the balance, you need to find a way to keep the right balance when the bike is at the limit.

“Let’s make an example: if you have very, very good electronics, a very, very smooth engine and very, very easy-to-predict chassis behaviour, your life becomes much easier to stay in that area. But if you have a very, very high-performing bike which is very, very stiff – this, I think, is the biggest difference between Ducati and the other manufacturers.”

Bartolini knows exactly what he’s talking about here, because Ducati’s pre-Dall’Igna Desmosedici was exactly like that: a very high-performing motorcycle that was very stiff and twitchy, so it didn’t work its tyres properly. Now Bartolini is mimicking Dall’Igna’s work by softening the YZR-M1’s chassis to make the YZR-M1 friendlier.

Next week Bartolini talks about Yamaha’s new V4 engine and the other reasons the configuration now makes more sense, especially with the upcoming 2024 technical regulations.