When Dorna and the MSMA agreed on the 2027 MotoGP regulations – 850cc engines, no ride-height or holeshot devices, narrower bikes with less room for aero – Yamaha realized one thing. “As soon as we started reading the future rules, we understood that there was no way to use the inline engine,” Yamaha team director Maio Meregalli told me at the Valencia test last November. A V4 became inevitable.
In 2023, I wrote that I did not believe that Yamaha would ever build a V4, because of the amount of time they would lose in turning a V4 prototype into a competitive race bike. Ever since MotoGP went four stroke, Yamaha have built an inline four. And since Masao Furusawa figured out that the long bang firing interval had the advantages of both a V4 and inline four in 2004, it has been a very competitive machine indeed. Yamaha have a mountain of data on making inline fours competitive, and a half-filled jotter of notes on how to build a V4.
