Yamaha unveiled its spearhead for the 2010 season just minutes before the pre-season testing commenced at Sepang in Malaysia. The Japanese marquee has retained its Rossi-Lorenzo pair for the next season too. Ben Spies along with Colin Edwards will be riding for Tech 3 Yamaha. The man in charge of Yamaha’s MotoGP team, Davide Brivio revealed that the main changes on the 2010 M1 is in the engine as team’s have to adapt to long-life engine regulations for this season.
At the press conference Brivio told the gathering of journalists that the work has been concentrated in two main parts, first of all in the chassis to further improve the characteristics of the machine specially the engine due to the new technical regulations. Speaking about the new rules, he said that next year they will have only six engines for the whole season which means that the engine must have a longer mileage and this is where therie engineers have concentrated most of their energies.
When questioned about the effect of the financial slowdown on Yamaha’s racing plans, the Managing Director of its MotoGP team, Lin Jarvis commented that the company has not been able to escape the to escape the difficulties caused by the global economic situation but MotoGP forms an important part of the company’s recovery plan. He further said that the the MotoGP programme is a very important brand image promotion activity and the racing requires them to demonstrate all of their company’s power in engineering, organisation and passion.