Where’s your HEAD AT?

As anyone who has grown-up kids will tell you, 22-years is a long time. Especially, if after all this time your sofa is still being taken up and the fridge regularly emptied by your now fully fledged offspring. But in 2007 Yamaha turned their back on 22 years of technology and for the fifth generation of YZF-R1 created a radically new sportsbike. Well, radically new for Yamaha in terms of its motor…

Ever since the launch of the FZ750 in 1985, Yamaha had championed the five-valve head where most of their rivals had instead relied on a more traditional four-valve design. According to Yamaha they were all wrong as the five-valve head was clearly the best way to get power out of a motor because the smaller intake valves (three intake and two exhaust