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AmSnow recently talked to Eric Josephsen (race-manager) and Wade West (PR manager) at Yamaha to get the latest behind-the-scenes info on their snowmobile racing program for this season. The focus this year again will be on cross country (USXC) and hillclimb (RMSHA) racing. Yamaha believes that these two types of racing are most applicable to the Real World snowmobiler. Many familiar faces will again be returning to Yamaha’s race team including Ben Lindbom who won the semi-pro USXC championship last year. He was dominant last year as a semi-pro and will be back and stepping up to the pro class. He proved he could run in this class in a few races last year and this kid can flat out drive!
To address rumors regarding Yamaha racing doing some snocross races, the boys at Yamaha did not say that it would NOT happen… which always leads us media types to believe that it probably WILL happen. We will have to keep our eyes and ears open this winter, but like we alluded to earlier this year, we are guessing several regional races will be run and possibly a couple national races just to test the waters.
As far as racers go, Yamaha will be fielding three pros in the USXC circuit, one pro in Cor Powersport’s five-race season as well as one semi-pro in Cor, and one pro in USXC East. Making up the hillclimb racing team will be four pros in RMSHA, and these guys will be mostly focused on the Pro Stock class. Josephsen added that there will most likely be a mod sled entry for RMSHA as well. This is a place where their 4-stroke could absolutely shine! There also may possibly be some privateers on the RMSHA side doing their best to race out of their own trailers.
The sleds the Yamaha racers will be riding are the Viper RTX for cross country (Pro stock and Open classes) and the Viper XTX for RMSHA. To be honest, the hillclimb sled will start life as an XTX, but it will not end up having the stock track and will most likely have OEM approved suspension and tunnel extensions. With so much yet to be determined on both the cross country and hillclimb side it’s difficult to tell exactly what the sled will be, but the base for all Yamaha racing will be the new Viper.
Yamaha Racing will be competing in more than 25 races across the country this year. The blue team hopes to back up a successful season last year in which they received numerous cross country accolades. In the hillclimb crew 75% of Yamaha’s entries in the Pro class made it over the top of the hill at Jackson Hole’s annual race last year!
Finally, Nathan Titus has now signed to be on the official hillclimb team. Titus has raced about every type of snowmobile and race format available and will be a great addition to the team. Furthermore, Yamaha hired renowned wrencher Matt Piche to ‘run in the ditches’ with them to help get the race sleds ready for the abuse of cross country racing. Piche worked for Christian Brothers, and has roots with many in the racing community and years of crew chief experience, most notably on Arctic Cat sleds. This should help Yamaha’s racers immensely.
For more info you can follow Yamaha’s race team on Facebook at facebook.com/yamahasnowmobilesusa, or check out the Yamaha Racing show every week after any USXC or RMSHA race (check out last year’s racing show on YouTube at youtube.com/users/yamahasnowmobilesusa.)