Following up on our first look at MotoGP Riding Styles in which we compared five Honda riders, this time we look at four Yamaha riders, Valentino Rossi, Jorge Lorenzo, Bradley Smith and Pol Espargaro.

As in the previous post on the subject, I must point out that the images are useful only for a general comparison of riding styles, rather than a very detailed one. Rider have different lines thorough a given corner, and it is difficult if not impossible to capture exactly the same perspective of the subjects. However, we can look at these photographs for a general comparison of the body position of each rider relative to the others.

Since he is still leading the 2015 championship as of this post, Valentino Rossi is our reference rider.
Many premier class riders have changed their riding styles over the past few years in order to adapt to the increasing performance of the Bridgestone front tire. As that technology has improved, so have lean angles and corners speeds. But in my mind, Rossi is perhaps the rider to have changed his style in the most noticeable way over the course of his premier class career.

Sure, he has been in MotoGP since 2000 so has had the most time to adapt his style, and he has been on three different makes of motorcycle. But looking back over photos from previous years we see that for a long time he looked more or less like this in a quick right hand turn, such as Club at Silverstone:
Club isn’t the best comparison to CotA’s Turn 18, but it’s similar, even if the 2011 Ducati and the 2015 Yamaha are worlds apart. Just take a look at how different Rossi’s body position is in the two photos above. Even accepting the differences in the natures of each turn and that the lean angle in Austin is greater, we can see that Rossi used to be tucked close to the bike where now he leans way off to the side. I do not have any images of Rossi from his Ducati days or before wherein he shows anything like the CotA shot we’re using in this comparison of the 2015 Yamaha riders.

Rossi’s head position is much different from Lorenzo’s as we’ll see in a moment, and he he isn’t leaning over and down as much as he’s just leaning over.

Jorge Lorenzo has also changed his style quite a bit over the past few years, and in 2011 he was already adapting to the Yamaha’s superior handling by getting his body position lower to the ground.

This is also at Club in 2011, albeit a bit earlier in the curve than the above Rossi shot. In 2015 his head has dropped down and moved forward, thus increasing the angle in his right wrist. Lorenzo now regularly has his elbow on the ground while this seems to be to be less frequent for Rossi.

Continues on the next page: