Yamaha vows to avoid Lorenzo ‘mistakes’ ahead of Crutchlow arrival

Yamaha MotoGP boss Lin Jarvis says the team has learned from the mistakes of its 2020 campaign after failing to utilise the services of its triple world championship winning test rider Jorge Lorenzo.

The Japanese firm fell short on testing miles in 2020 compared with its rivals after skipping a mid-season outing at Misano, despite free track time already at a premium due to the abbreviated season.

This was despite the buzz generated by Yamaha and Lorenzo rekindling a relationship that yielded three MotoGP World Championships, the Spaniard only getting two outings on the M1 - Sepang and Portimao - nine months apart after his plan to do a wild-card outing fell through.

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For 2021, Yamaha has opted to put its faith in Cal Crutchlow, who is taking a step back from riding duties to join Yamaha in a development role. With the team’s race riders criticising the team for not focusing enough on testing this year, Jarvis insists it is a mistake it will not be making with Crutchlow.

"We had a full testing programme planned for Jorge Lorenzo but we were using a Japanese testing team with some European staff and in reality we only ran him for two days in Sepang and then the pre-Portimao test [on 2019 spec bikes],” Jarvis is quoted by Crash.net.

“We're not going to make the same mistake twice. We will definitely be running a more intensive test programme next year. We have a lot of information from this year, so our engineers will change the chassis and work on improving [consistency of the bike].

"We'll have Cal's testing feedback, plus the official pre-season testing, so we are quite confident we can fix this issue next year."

It isn’t known yet whether Crutchlow will get a wildcard start with Yamaha for the 2021 MotoGP season.