Jarvis talks Yamaha win drought, upgrades, Sepang Team

After a press conference to discuss Monster Energy's 2019 title sponsorship of the factory Yamaha MotoGP team at Brno on Thursday evening, Yamaha Racing managing director Lin Jarvis stayed to answer questions from a small group of journalists on the team's issues this season.

Yamaha's losing streak…

Yamaha has not won since Assen last year, with its 19-race defeat forming the factory's longest losing streak since 2002.

On the other hand, Valentino Rossi and Maverick Vinales are second and third in the riders' world championship (albeit a distant 46 and 56 points from Marc Marquez) with Tech3's Johann Zarco making it three M1s in the top five.

"We need to win and that's what we're here for," said Jarvis. "Our partners want to win, our fans want to win, Yamaha Motor wants to win. We won Suzuka last weekend and you could see how important getting a victory is. We have been close on several occasions.

"I'm disappointed we haven't won for a year, because we are accustomed to winning more in the past, and we are a winning team. And OK, our last championship victory was a couple of years ago, but we've won several world championships consistently over the years, so we know we have the capacity to win again and I'm disappointed that we lost the way a little bit."

The pressure created when a multi-title winning team suddenly stops winning is felt by all its members.

Vinales is rumoured to be splitting from crew chief Ramon Forcada at the end of this year (Forcada is tipped to move to the new SIC Yamaha team and work with Franco Morbidelli) while some reports have even suggested the relationship between Rossi and Jarvis has become strained.

Jarvis, who was at Rossi's ranch earlier this week for the fifth edition of the Yamaha VR46 Master Camp, shrugged off the speculation but recognised the corrosive effect such a losing streak can have.

"It's always easier to work in a winning environment, there's no doubt about it," Jarvis said. "If you're winning, everything is fine. Even the things that are bad are fine, if you're winning.

"So of course it puts pressure on the team, on the relationships, the riders are pushing the engineers to develop the bike.

"I don't design the bike, I don't develop the bike. So you can fire me and it won't change anything in terms of bike design. I think [such speculation] is just an expression of people, everybody feels the same thing, that we want to win, we want to be successful, and as I said, we're very, very close.

"We're not in a disastrous situation, we're second and third in the championship and at the last race we were second and third."

And while Jarvis is disappointed by Yamaha's winless run, he also feels they are being beaten by Marquez rather than Honda.

"Am I surprised about Honda? I'm not really surprised about Márquez, because I think if you talk about Honda, you talk primarily about Márquez, and Márquez is an athlete that right at this moment, especially this year, seems to have married himself very, very well to the Honda package.

"He's in top form, he is a sensational rider, and when he is able to contain himself, then he's very, very, very strong. So he's an extremely tough competitor to beat. But our riders have the potential to beat him, we've done it in the past and we will do it again in the future."

'It's electronics integrated with chassis design'

Valentino Rossi says he has been asking for electronic upgrades to help improve the M1's acceleration, relative to Honda and Ducati, for a year.

But still the wait goes on and it now seems only 'a small step' will be ready for Monday's post-race test at Brno.

"We still need to sort out a few more things," Jarvis said. "I don't want to go into the details, because I don't think it's the time or place to do that, but anyway we're working hard, we need to win again. Not once, but consistently win again. So that's what we’re pushing for.

"But to win, to beat Márquez, to beat the Honda, you've got to be right there, you've got to be right on it. And we're not, we're missing a few percent, and that's why we owe to our riders to develop the bike and to get up to speed there. And that's what we have to do.

"But that takes some time. And if you try to speed it up - everybody has talked about this electronics problem, it's not that simple. It's not only electronics, it's electronics integrated with chassis design, but in order to make progress, you have to first make the progress, and then you have to test it.

"We have to test it and prove that whatever you've done works and is safe. And that means you have to go through processes, and if you take a short cut, this is not the way."

One way to speed-up development would be for Yamaha to hire a European test rider to complement the existing Japanese test team.

"Obviously we have our testing team, but that's been based in Japan primarily, with Nakasuga. Probably we need to put even more energy behind testing and to keep making progress. So it's something we are definitely looking at for the future," Jarvis confirmed.

And with experienced MotoGP race riders such as Bradley Smith and Alvaro Bautista (plus Jonas Folger) without a seat for 2019, there would be no shortage of high-quality contenders for the role.

"I think that what we need is a good plan, and I don't think we will have a big problem to find candidate riders."

The Sepang Yamaha team

Yamaha's 20-year association with Tech3 will end when the French team switches to KTM machinery for 2019.

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