The R One and Only…

One Original

This is where it all started, where the world changed for supersports riders. Unleashed in 1998, the original R1 was such a leap forward in sports bike technology that journalists from all over the globe acclaimed the machine Motorcycle of the Millennium. And it’s been getting better ever since.

One Mission

The mission is super performance and the R1 fulfils that mission with dazzling effectiveness – Yamaha’s super engineering delivers super handling, which delivers the best-balanced supersport ride in the world. This is Mission Incredible and it’s mission accomplished.

One Aim

Yamaha’s team of engineers had a straightforward attitude to the task of creating the world’s most acutely balanced supersports motorcycle – there would be no compromise in producing a machine totally at one with the rider. That theme runs throughout the R1 and explains the latest model’s unique tautness and unrivalled ability to give perfect feedback.

One Vision

The R1 wasn’t the world’s first supersports motorcycle but it rewrote the rules on sports bike design. Its unmistakeable razor-edge profile perfectly mirrors the machine’s character, captivating hearts and minds all over the world. And like all true style icons, the R1 has influenced design way beyond its own.

One Emotion

This feeling is unique; this is why you own an R1. It’s a feeling that fills your senses every time you look at the bike, every time you ride it and all the time you own it. It’s a feeling of exhilaration, a feeling of freedom, a feeling of knowledge that you own the king of supersports bikes.

The Men Who Made It Happen

“A supersport bike should be a machine that takes you along for the ride but one that responds to your will, so you can enjoy the fun of being in full control, down shifting and taking it through the curves aggressively. It should be a bike that takes you from where you feel good going through the turns to a stage where you say, ‘How can I really attack this curve like a pro?’ The real fun and excitement is not in sheer speed, but in the dialogue between you and your machine,” says Kunihiko Miwa on what he envisioned as the true supersport bike back in the days when he led the development of the first YZF-R1.

Miwa, the Project Leader of the original YZF-R1, has now handed the leading torch over to Yoshikazu Koike. Formerly leader of the R1 running tests, Koike has now taken charge of overall development for the new YZF-R1, inheriting Miwa’s initial vision and achievements and adding to it his own experience and expertise on the test track.

Miwa tells us that with the original YZF-R1 the engine displacement was not set at first. “It could have been a 750 or over 1,000 cc. For us, what mattered was a balance of the right amount of torque and power to enable the rider to really make best use of the machine’s massive potential, while still being within the range where they could really enjoy handling the bike aggressively. We also wanted the machine’s character to deliver an enjoyable ride and accurate response at about 70 to 80% of full speed, rather than simply focusing on achieving a high top speed,” he says. A few years after the original R1 debut, Miwa and Koike were getting feedback from owners who were saying, “It would be nice to have a little more handling performance in the high-speed range,” and “It would be good to have linear throttle response.” Miwa and Koike decided it was time to answer the call and return to the test track.

Dynamic Cornering Performer

The theme for the new development project was “Dynamic Cornering Performer”. Koike recalls: “What we had to decide first was the direction to take the next evolution, while still retaining the best aspects of the R1. A basic element of the existing R1 was ‘a rigidity balance within the realm of smooth flexibility.’ It was the kind of machine character that, say, if you decided to let up a little during cornering, the machine would still take you through the curve in an enjoyable way. But, when you are really trying to attack curves aggressively, it could, in rare cases, leave the rider with an unsatisfying impression. That was the kind of character we built into the original R1, and the bike’s handling performance set the benchmark for supersport bikes in the late 1990s. With the new R1, we wanted a machine that would respond with more controllability when the rider tries to use it aggressively.”

The key would be to achieve linear throttle response together with direct handling response. “From the engine response through to the precise character of the feedback of the brakes, we worked on every element of the overall riding experience to create a new generation of supersport machine,” says Koike.

Looking back, Koike says, “The concept of ‘Rider-Machine Communication’ is part of every Yamaha bike, but I don’t think there has been any motorcycle yet that epitomizes that ideal like the new R1.” Asked what makes it so, he replies, “Everyone on the development staff just spent a lot of time riding the prototypes we built. And the shared experience of riding puts all the staff on the same vector. We see the importance of each design element and we are able to set clearer priorities. I don’t think I have ever seen a team that came together so completely as we did on this project.”

Koike: “The place where the staff would end up talking and debating most often was the meeting room behind the pit at the test track. That shows how much time all of us spent riding the prototypes. A bike has got to be something that is fun to ride.”