THE MEN WHO MADE IT HAPPEN

 “A super sport bike shouldn’t 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 the sheer speed, but in the dialogue between you and your machine,” says Kunihiko Miwa on what he envisioned as the true super sport 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. Formally 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 it to 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 750 or over 1000cc. 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 the 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 the 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 Kioke decided it was time to answer the call and return to the test track.