Why THIS Engine is DOMINATING in MotoGP 

👋 I did miss talking about the pulses in the firing order allowing the tyre to recover for a crossplane I4. I also made a few minor mistakes on balancing between flatplane crank vs crossplane crank with regards to their primary and secondary balances. The feedback is appreciated and I will take it onboard and make better videos! Sorry about that all :)

Meanwhile honda: -Sells flagship inline4 -Race a V4 GP bike -Not competitive in GP -Fireblade sales still up

Little old suzuki did great before they got pushed out the door with an inline and yamaha dominated until they stopped spending money in motogp and rolled over and played dead!

From someone who spent nine years at one of the big four, that was a very informative and accurate video, excellent.

I owned a 1983 Honda VF750F. It was Honda's original V4 design for racing.

That crossplane noise is just unbeatable, its heavenly at WOT.

1 note, a flat plane i4 ALSO has perfect primary balance. It's the secondary balance where it struggles a bit. The cross plane i4 has HORRIBLE primary balance and the same bad secondary balance of the flat plane. This requires it to have balance shafts and extra counter weights and THAT is why YAMAHA's i4 is heavier than a v4 engine. Flat plane i4 engines do not have that problems and are significantly more powerful than Yamaha's i4 motors. the reason yamaha went for the crossplane is the odd firing interval that is similar to a shared pin v4. By spacing the power strokes at irregular intervals with bigger silence gaps allows a more easily manageable power delivery both by the riders and the rear tire. As the tire has very limited capacity for grip, the gaps in power delivery allow it to recover better. That's an issue that comes from the delayed elasticity of tire rubber called hysteresis, it causes the rubber to have a delay in going back to its normal shape after leaving contact with the road. Put too much load on the tire too fast and it's over, you lost grip. An i4 engine, aka a screamer, has NO POWER GAPS and it will easily break grip, shared pin v4 engines and yamaha's cross plane have big gaps that allow the tire to recover. In terms of power, a v4 with separate crank pins for each piston CAN work with the same power delivery of a screamer engine as they can be set in a way that it fires every 180° like an i4. THAT v4 would completely blow the other v4 engines out of the water with its power. My question is, would that v4 lose its balance?

holy crap, you're probably the most underrated analysis moto guy ive ever seen. your production level is much better than most of other channels, keep it up!

In my opinion, the motogp's decision to standardise the ecu in 2016 helped ducati immensely. On the other hand, it hurt Honda the most and then Yamaha.

Did I miss it? What about aerodynamics? Isn’t the V4 narrower? That should help tremendously

Great Video!! Keep it up with more such info.

I have an R1, I can say that my engine is the same volume and configuration as GP bike 😊

2 little complements: The reason for the 90° degree crank is that it creates a irregular firing order, which gives a bigger recovery window to the rear tire (the tire has more time to care about cornering when it is not „stressed“ by the ignition strokes), which improves traction during corner exit. In a race bike, the center of gravity should not be as low as possible. A high center of gravity gives advantages in cornering. With the same leaning angle, you can compensate more centrifugal force when the center of gravity is higher. A higher center of gravity is bad for acceleration, because the tendency of doing a wheelie is higher, but this is compensated by the different lowering devices.

Glad to have found a young channel with lot of potential! I always enjoy seeing the evolution of interesting channels! And to add to the topic, I. A Yamaha fan and no matter if they win or loose I always gonna love that inline4 crossplane engine!

This is a quality video. Here's to your growth

Good stuff Dan ! Keep at it and channel growth will be inevitable!

Great vid and analysis! An excellent point on how all this racing is just a marketing exercise. Suzuki left MotoGP cause it wasnt profitable, they make more in ATV and Boat engine sales than they do on motorcycles (at least in North America). Yamaha is just holding on, there isnt really a reason for them to spend all that addition mkney on developing a new engine when they probably outsell Ducati and KTM with their piano sales ahah. Subbed

Great content mate - thank you. Maybe invest in a mic to avoid the "echo" effect in your audio track. Just a minor thing. Keep doing what you're doing and this channel will grow.

I learned something today! Thx! 🙏

Good job on the vid!

Wow, what an awesome vid! There's so much absolute junk out there on the internet and what an excellent explanation especially for the Motogp newb. I instantly subscribed! Best of luck on your channel, you're a great presenter.

Very well explained mate!

Fascinating stuff, thank you.

please do more videos about bike's engines and for smaller cc's engines too like 150cc. im saving money to open bike repair shop and still learning about their engines from small to big cc

I can attest that the Wisconsin V-4 absolutely dominated back in the ‘50’s when we used it on a John Deere hay baler and a wooden tanked orchard sprayer.

From my understanding, the crossplane inline 4 in the Yamaha has worst primary and secondary balance and less power than a flatplane inline 4. The advantage of the crossplane inline 4 are the interrupted power pulses that are presented to the rear tire. The interrupted power pulses allow the tire to rest more in between power pulses vs a flatplane inline 4's even power pulses which don't allow the tire to rest. A 90 degree V4's firing order doesn't have even power pulses and the interrupted power pulses are one of the advantages of a 90 degree V4. Also, an inline 4 has a weight distribution advantage because a lot of the weight is over the front wheels which helps with front end traction where a V4 is compromised because only half of it's weight is over the front wheels which compromises front end traction. Honda is using a V4 in their MotoGP bike but as you can see, they're not doing that well. Ducati's advantage is the aero work, which keeps the front end planted under acceleration, they've been working on for the past decade that has finally paid off.

Nice video but you forgot to mention the 2nd harmonic of the inline 4 and the fact that the Yamaha R1 uses a counterbalance shaft to stop that problem. That increases the overall crankshaft mass & friction, robbing power.

Excellent analysis

Very good video

One of the most informational and interesting videos I have ever seen. Great work Dan, keep it up!

I like using telemetry to advance my performance and you said it right,if they switch,then they would have to start with a blank file of telemetry for engine parameters. No previous data to load,overlap,analyze and go from. Yes,i'm really interested what will they do. Anyway,good video,nicely explained,recommendable. Cheers!

Brilliant explanation!

Nicely explained!

In a 90 degree V engine the primary forces produced by the pistons moving back and forth act as a pure rotating mas, therefore it is easy to balance this force with an excentric mass in the crankshaft.

Awesome video.

Forgot to mention the rotation of the v4 engine oposite to the rear wheel to cancel centrifugal forces to help with handling

The moment of inertia argument doesn't wash. The v4s typically have an external flywheel which allows them to tweak engine inertia for each track, so it would be easy for them to increase it and match the inline 4s. All motogp bikes also run their engines backwards to cancel out the wheel inertia, Ie to reduce overall inertia.

Alex Rins says aerodynamics makes more difference on a MotoGP bike than engine configuration does, lets see how he goes on the Yamaha! 🤞

I've always favored the I3 - mostly because the sound is amazing. I miss the 20v of the older Yamaha R1. They just seemed to react better to throttle inputs. Can we expect v5s becoming common in the future. I think this is possible. 🤔

I think the V4 has an unexpected bonus as it is balanced front and rear and acts like a stabilizer - gyroscope 4 cylinders in a bank with crank rotation, can't match that effect Because the riders are pushing everything to a radical extreme, that effect, becomes very substantial

One additional aspect, as far as I know, is the possibility in V engines to change the external flywheel on demand, in order to tune the power delivery to the rear wheel. The inline 4 instead has an internal flywheel due to size constraints.

What a clear concise well spoken topic. You are a credit to the English language. I cant abide these sites with some robotic babble.

An interesting view, and goes partway to explaining the fundamental differences between the V4 MotoGP bikes, and the in-line fours. But you don't tell the whole story, and I feel these other aspects are worth mentioning. Firstly, whereas the in-line four has a longer crankshaft, and more main bearings (as you say) it also requires a balance shaft (or two) when fired like a 90 degree V engine (as mentiond by Vasilis below). (This is because the cross-plane in-line four may well FIRE like a V-twin, but its forces aren't in the different directions of the 'real' V4). This is where the extra rotational weight comes in for the 'crossplane' four, and often one balance shaft (of two) is required to rotate at greater than engine speed, bringing in other inertial and physical limitations. The second point is that, although the Yamaha engine is "larger" in terms of width, it is also shorter/smaller front-to-rear, allowing for a longer swing arm, and attendant suspension and power-delivery advantages. It also has its mass 'centralised' more than the V4, when viewed from side on, making it easier to position the COM closer to ideally, in terms of height, and front/rear. The third aspect you didn't include is the 70 degree(?) offset between the two side-by-side 'V2s' of the V4 Ducati configuration, introduced about seven years ago, and shared with Aprilia in recent years, and no doubt associated with Aprilia's improved performance in the last two years. The Ducati road V4s share this design, with its claimed benefits in tyre 'loading', heat and wear. But of course this design does not share crankpins between the two paired cylinders, as they are slightly offset. A dynamic cutaway diagram of the Ducati engine in your video briefly shows this characteristic. So there is 'far more to this than meets the eye', and a second video covering these subtler aspects may be worth attempting. But thanks for this video - it has helped people understand this perplexing topic, and warrants a follow-up to 'flesh out the detail'. This initial video could serve as an introduction to a subject more complex than first described. As to the R1 road model - apparently this model is being dropped by Yamaha next year, so the race bike's connecton to their road model may be changing, and rumour has it that Yamaha DO have a V4 engine for their GP campaign. Johnny Rea's not enjoying the crossplane Yamaha superbike as much as his (conventional in-line four) Kawasaki at this point, and poor old Quartararo has risked his neck for many years trying to win on it in MotoGP. Honda followed Ducati from a 75 degree 'V' to a similar 90 degree years ago, but without (as far as we know...) the 70 degree offset between the two 'sides'. That may be next year's Honda, if they want Marc back! Hang onto your patents, Ducati...

Man! I love your channel on super bike 🏍️ keep up the good work champ 🫶🏾👍

The reason V4s are successful right now, is because they are in the bikes with the best aero and electronic packages It's nothing to do with the engine config, as the huge number of Inline 4 race wins and WC's over the last 20 years prove.

Make a video on the Ducati V4R engine, it's stunning! The V4R is my dream bike, sexy, exotic and awesome! I know I'll buy one soon!❤🚀

i always thought honda has an Inline 4 in their gp bike... can you explain why they then have these power struggles compared to rest of the v4's? Is it just missing in experience in R&D?

At high lever race technology the advantage goes back and forth. 😊

Best video have seen today

i think the ducati v4 engine also uses reverse rotating engine compared to conventionally used, so when you open fully the trottle then it help ceeping the front wheel down,, and this allow giving more trottle before wheeleing. aka lift of of frontwheel. You notis this sitting on a bmw boxer engine opening the trottle, then the mass of the crank pull the bike to the left. by accellerating mass from the crank.

Just what I needed as the Ape sit in a -10f garage.......:( You dun man! Subbed

Something not mentioned is the crossplane R1 production engine requires a balance shaft, inevitably this is a drag on power and of course adds weight and heat load. Not sure anyone outside of Yamaha knows if the M1 has a balance shaft but I suspect it must for the same reasons as the R1. OTOH if it turned in the opposite direction to the crank it might mitigate the inertia of the longer I4 crank somewhat. Where the crossplane excels is in the transfer of kinetic energy from one cylinder to its neighboring cylinder (as one reaches TDC or BDC the next one is at maximum piston speed). But the V4 has a similar trait, compared to a standard 180 degree V4.

Yes, ur right bro, it's been a long time that yamaha that shines their cross plane technology, and it is very hard to jump up in v4 and waste money for nothing like a scrap, the better way for Yamaha is to maintain and improve their gp bike for future racing and it can sold affordable

I think you missed a key advantage of the V4 (unless I missed you say it). You mentioned it is smaller and allows it to be moved to the right location for vehicle dynamics but the key advantage is that it's significantly narrower, which has a huge advantage on the bike's aerodynamic drag force and also allows the fairings to be made in different shapes for aero efficiency and potentially downforce.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but crossplanes need a counterbalancing shaft. Adding weight and complexity.

Now I understand why Marc Marquez said he has to change his riding style after switching to Gresini Ducati.

the thing is, most of the v4 now, with the help of aero devices have similar racing line to inline 4, with the more power, it will launch itself faster than inline 4. electronic have major part in it too. I dont think inline 4 will have any chance rn, unless the motogp really goes back to 800cc ish that have been rumour

Awesome 🍻

(Perhaps) less crank bearings in a V4, but more cam bearings, along with more potential weight from the two extra cams and one extra cylinder head. I also can’t see why a V4 would produce more power than an inline four or flat four. V4s main benefit is that it’s narrower.

I’d prefer the Honda’s V5 engine. One of a kind and dominating engine.

3:14 This is not necessarily true. Crossplane I4 has worse primary balance than a flatplane. The only benefit to a crossplane is the power gaps which allow the rear tyre "recovery intervals".

Torque, torque, and torque!

V4 for smoothness for me Dan.

You could do with more soft furnishings in that room to deaden the echo!

I don't think you know as much as you think you do! V4's are not "smaller" than I4's, they are just narrower, allowing the bike to be narrower and giving better packaging options. The engines occupy the same volume in space (in fact, the V4 will occupy MORE space because it has two valve trains, double the cam chains etc). It's just the space it occupies is in a better place. I also think it's very arguable that V4's produce more power! Not necessarily, this is not an intrinsic attribute of a V4 design! I4's dominate the horsepower battle in cars, what hot hatch did you ever hear of that had a V4? There is no reason that with enough money and R&D an i4 bike could not dominate Motogp again, and/or produce the most hp. Yamaha have announced the R1 is being discontinued and they will probably withdraw from MotoGP also. So that's another reason they won't spend the money to go V4.

I’m surprised you didn’t discuss how Ducati ‘s v4 is different from the others and how Ducati lobbied motogp for a rules change to give them a power advantage. This Ducati’s dominance

I love this one all physics and theoretical advantage. The real world is the crazy bastard with unbelievable skills that rides it

i believe yamaha is developing a V4 engine right now its clear that the way forward for 2 wheel road racing in the 1000cc class is the v4 platform

Because development from 6-8 work’s Ducati’s gives unlimited feedback.

V4 for smoothness for me Dan

Never heard anyone suggest that a V4 has perfect primary balance. Famously they don't, they almost always have balance shafts because of that.

I think the point is not only winning the race, they need to win the market as well. IMO on top of the reasons given in this video, a bike with i4 engine has certain 'bigger/wider' looks to it compared to slim bike with V2/V4 which some people said it looks very menacing and they like it. For me personally it's about the heat management as my country can be very hot some time and having a furious engine right below my seat would make for very unpleasant ride. So yeah, despite V4 dominating the race, I'm glad that Yamaha sticking to their i4.

not to mentions that the r1 shreds in wsbk

Can the crankshaft be split in the middle 2 pieces inside an inline 4?

What engine do you prefer? A V4 or an Inline 4? Let me know in the comments below👇

The vast majority of the commenters here, like me, are not professional racers and most of the advantages/disadvantages of either engine make no difference in our lives except as it concerns bench racing. This is why the R1 cross-plane and the V4 engines are so popular. We ain't racing so let's get the best sounding bike we can get for our own auditory pleasure.

1:14 When you flip the car in GTA.

How about a boxer flat 4 engine like a subaru? could that fit in a MotoGP bike?

I4 also puts more weight on front tire

A V configuration as well as horizontally opposed from an engineering stand point are far better balanced mechanically than any inline 4. The weight is also lower if you compare a L twin to a parallel twin the L twin is Dynamically balanced better for less vibration & with 1 cylinder forward on the L twin the weight is lower & so appears much lighter. Inline 4's are notoriously top heavy. Because the engine is better balanced it will also last longer.

More torque. Torque wins. Same thing happened in Motocross when teams moved from 2stroke to 4stroke.

Given the two different riding styles need for the two engines, it would seem like another big factor would be tires and the maximum grip level the tire can provide under any given conditions. With the inline four utilizing higher cornering speeds it would seem to be at a disadvantage with tires that provide less gripe overall, whereas the V4 is get in fast get out fast where the bike is more upright when on the brakes/throttle and slower when leaned over, which would appear to be better given the same low grip tires. Hearing tons of complaints from the Japanese riders about lack of grip. So is the V4 and the associated riding style just able to utilize the Michelin tires better?

Its probably been pointed out but Honda's motoGP has a V4 but their road bikes have inline 4's Yamaha can go to a V4 in motogp as well, but its more likely that they wont because of the other reasons listed rather then marketing

Nice video, but there is nothing inherently different in the ability to create power in a V vs Inline engine. In fact, if you consider the potential cooling disadvantage of the rear two cylinders it actually has a slight hill to climb

Yamaha needs to bring back Lorenzo as as test riders

I have never read a peer reviewed ASME Engineering paper that proves a V4 can be more powerful than an inline-4. Or the other myth, that the V4 has better torque, and a better power band. Arguably the V4 can have more optimal flywheel affect - but again, an inline- 4 crankshaft can be designed with the same flywheel inertia. As for the size of the respective lumps - both architectures have problems squeezing into a motorcycle frame. The width of the inline-4 is not a deal killer. The M1 and GSX-RR are only a few mm wider. It's the rider drag that is more important. Why are the V4's proving the better answer at the moment ~ because that's where the big $$$ are being spent by better Engineers and their computers.

Imagine if Suzuki still in there? Suzuki was the perfect race bike which can itself preserve tyres... That last corner move by Rins on Suzuki at 2019 BritishGP can't be done by a bike rather than Suzuki...

I'd love if yamaha brought out a V4 sportbike. You know they would kill it. They can keep the R1 but give us a RV4

Hoping that the concession can smooth out the i4

I wonder how many people would no longer buy the R1 if they change the engine in the motogp bikes to be competitive. I would argue that it the GP bikes don't need to have much in common with the street bikes, besides the name.

At this point that Yamaha is discontinuing the R1 in the euro market do you have a different opinion now ?

the weight advantage is small and kinda irrelevant cause as you know the rules have a min weight. also a main plus for v4s is that because they have less width engineers often install exterior adjustable engine parts that can change from race to race according to track needs. its a lets say window to the rules. but above all as we saw inline 4 can be competitve but that idiotic rule with standard ecus that are made from an Italian company suited for v4s its totally anti racing...

Excellent overview. Personally I prefer the IL4, the sound of Yamaha's cross-plane crank engine is fabulous.

Note: KTM officially states that its motoGP V engine is almost 90° without saying the exact angle. The search for maximum compactness is probable without losing the advantages of this configuration.

hold up, hold up. are you telling me a I4 Crossplane vibrates less than a I4 Flatplane? Isn't the flat plane perfectly primarily balanced, unlike the cross plane that has neither perfect primary nor secondary balance, but is better at handling for the larger recovery gaps between engine pulses transfered to the tyre?

Once i read an article saying that right now a 3 cylinder may be even better. What do you think?

Good video, but strongly dispute the notion that a V4 will always have lower weight. There are reasons it should actually be heavier.

What is being sold by M0t0GP drama is Duc4ti's struggle, but when they are competitive they come together, even new teams, even teams that previously didn't dare to take part in competitions before 2016, suddenly become very professional.

why no vr4 engines in motogp?

Interesting but a bit weird since the marketing value of Ferrari for instance but also other car race brands was decided by winning races. I can't see the reason why Yamaha couldn't bring a V4 on the market and switch to a V4 in racing too. May take some time but now they spend it in vain losing races.