It’s been 25 years since the YZF-R6 made its debut as Yamaha’s middleweight sportbike. A quarter of a century since Graves Yamaha riders Jamie Hacking and Tommy Hayden first raced the R6 in the original AMA Supersport Championship. And, when the Daytona 200 switched to Daytona SportBike motorcycles 15 years ago, Graves Yamaha’s Ben Bostrom won the “Great American Motorcycle Race” aboard an R6 in the first year and first race of the DSB class’s existence. Since then, Yamaha R6 riders have won the Daytona 200 eight more times.
When Yamaha announced the 2025 Yamaha YZF-R9 in the U.S. earlier this month, no mention was made about the bike as a Supersport Next Generation contender. Nonetheless, with the venerable R6 only available this past year as a closed-course competition machine and trackday motorcycle, it’s natural to assume that the R9 will be raced in national championships around the world, including MotoAmerica, not to mention in the FIM Supersport World Championship.
Wait, let’s go ahead and mention the R9 in WorldSSP. After all, just this past weekend, the bike made its public debut at the final round of the 2024 FIM Superbike World Championship at Jerez where both the street-legal R9 and the new R9 WorldSSP racebike were unveiled in a special presentation, with James Whitham (not just coincidentally, the very first WorldSSP race winner on the Yamaha R6) and Stefano Manzi (also not just coincidentally, the very last WorldSSP race winner on the Yamaha R6) taking both bikes on a lap around Jerez Circuit just prior to the start of this past Saturday’s WorldSBK Race 1.
During the presentation, it was revealed that engineers at Yamaha Motor Europe Motorsport Research & Development have been secretly working on developing the new YZF-R9 into a WorldSSP contender for some time. In fact, for well over a year, the team led by Yamaha Motor Europe Motorsport Road Racing Technical Manager Riccardo Tisci, has conducted a number of secret tests as well as development processes in house at Yamaha Motor Racing Europe (YMRE), based in Lesmo, Italy.
“When we received the pre-production unit, the first thing we did was put Stefano Manzi, our leading WorldSSP rider, on the bike at a local circuit in secret,” Tisci said. “During this test, we did a direct comparison between the standard pre-production R9 and the WorldSSP-spec R6 Manzi was racing at the time. This gave us an understanding of the strengths of the new bike and the areas we needed to work on.
“Following this test, we went back to YMRE and started to develop the race kit from what we had learned, in line with the WorldSSP regulations. The rules allow you to work on triple clamps, linkage, suspension, radiators and engine, among some other areas including bodywork. When we were about 80% there, we took the bike back to the racetrack, this time with WorldSBK rider and 2020 WorldSSP champion Andrea Locatelli to see how we were getting on. The feedback was very positive, especially in terms of engine character. We were actually quite surprised to see the progress in just our second test.”
Since the early tests, official Yamaha test rider Niccolò Canepa has also ridden the R9 during the development process. The next stage will be for Yamaha’s 2025 Supersport teams and riders to test the bikes, which will take place at Cremona during the first week of November.
So, while it’s now known that the R9 will make its debut in the FIM Supersport World Championship in 2025, when will the bike make its debut in the MotoAmerica? Remember that the aforementioned Canepa competed in last year’s Daytona 200, and he’s been an integral rider in getting the R9 race ready.
Might we see Canepa as part of a phalanx of Yamaha R9 riders entered in the 83rd running of the Daytona 200? And beyond Daytona, will we see the R9 racing in the 2025 MotoAmerica Supersport Championship?
Let’s gooooooooo!
