Yamaha is Bringing MotoGP Tech for its Road Bikes!

For its flagship road-going bikes, Yamaha has patented a seamless transmission. Every MotoGP race bike currently employs a seamless gearbox, thus the seamless gearbox technology is taken from there. This also means that the technology is somewhat pricey, but it promises to make riding your litre-class Yamaha superbike a lot more enjoyable.

Almost all mainstream automobile manufacturers participate in racing for two reasons. To begin with, there are all of the marketing benefits and positive exposure that come with it. Second, racing contributes to the development of new goods and technology for road cars.

MotoGP, for example, has spawned a slew of technology that can now be seen on street-legal motorcycles. Quick shifters, for example, which is now standard on many road bikes, were previously a racing oddity. Ducati has applied MotoGP-style winglets aerodynamics technology to its Panigale road-going series.

Ducati was also the first to patent its seamless transmission technology for usage on the road, with the Italian manufacturer obtaining the patent in 2021. However, it was never converted into a road-legal motorbike. Yamaha, on the other hand, appears to be planning to launch a seamless transmission on their flagship motorbike.

Power is effortlessly sent to the back wheel via a seamless gearbox. There is a gap in the power delivery in traditional motorbike gears. Even while quickshifters reduce the wait, the effects of the pause in power transfer are not totally eliminated, and the pause itself does not go away altogether.

Over the years, MotoGP motorcycles have gotten tremendously powerful. The most powerful motorcycles in MotoGP produce over 250bhp, and Prima Pramac Racing Ducati has reached the highest peak speed in MotoGP history – 363.6km/h! With this much power and speed, even the tiniest loss in stability may be fatal, or at the very least have an impact on lap times.

Traditional gears allow bikes to lose stability, as seen by Aprilia and Suzuki’s lap timings during the 2015 MotoGP season. Honda, Yamaha, and Ducati were all adopting seamless gears at this point, and their motorcycles were also seamless and faster.