Wind tunnel tests give Yamaha Kurz 10km/h.

The Yamaha Kurz team has announced that Frenchman Erwan Nigon join Naoki Matsudo for the 2004 250cc GP season - and that extensive wind tunnel and engine work on the previously underpowered machine has produced, amongst other things, an extra 10 km/h of top speed.

"After eight years of Grand Prix Racing - and after having our best season in 2003, with Naoki Matsudo ninth in the championship - we have much planned for the following season," declared team principal Hermann Kurz.

"Completely new aerodynamics should give the race bikes up to ten km/h more top speed and make them easier to handle," he revealed, "and we will have more powerful engines from Japan which should speed them up, too.

"Our race engineers Manfred Wanner and Tomohiro Saeki tested with the team for many hours in the wind tunnel at the technical university of Stuttgart (pictured) - and improved the wind resistance coefficient from 0.568 down to 0.502. This should give a 'power up' of 12 PS (11.8 hp) according to highly-complicated computations!" concluded Kurz.

Meanwhile, after long negotiations and some sleepless night, 20-year-old Nigon has been selected to join the team. The 20-year-old rode for the Equipe de France outfit last season, claiming a best finish of seventh - at both Assen and Phillip Island. The team hope that Nigon will push veteran Matsudo this season.

The first rollout of the new race bikes will take place at the beginning of March, with the official test sessions at Barcelona and Jerez on March 20.