I've read some time ago that it was a drivability thing.JordanMugen wrote: ↑06 Sep 2021, 19:13It's very interesting. Why does Yamaha prefer a crossplane crankshaft for their Yamaha R1?BassVirolla wrote: ↑06 Sep 2021, 10:45Nevertheless, in a cross plane with four (or eight!) final exhaust pipes, you can do a decent impulse tuning job, even though tuned for a half or quarter the rpms. Obviously, not ideal for a racing NA engine.
We are going quite off topic in fact... Mods, feel free to delete if necessary.
(...and I on think their Yamaha MotoGP bike too? Are Yamaha the only MotoGP team not using a V4 engine? How about Suzuki? Edit -- it seems Suzuki also uses an inline-four on their MotoGP but with a crossplane crankshaft and not the flatplane one like their road-going GSXR1000.)
https://www.yamahapart.com/crossplanecrankshaft