1998
Bang! That was the sound of the world motorcycle media's collective jaws hitting the deck when they first saw the new Yamaha YZF1000-R1. For the first time, the Japanese had come up with an open-class liter sportbike that wasn't just the size of a 600, it was the size of one of the tiny 400cc sportbikes sold in Japan. There was nothing tiny about the performance though: R1 designer, Kunihiko Miwa, used the catchphrase "No Compromise" during the design process, so the new bike had a full-bore 150 HP power output with excellent torque. That teensy chassis had some tricks up its sleeve: long-travel front forks to keep the front wheel on the ground for a fraction of a second longer under acceleration, in a bid to aid stability. We were used to Yamaha's excellent brakes by then, and seeing the familiar blue-anodized calipers assured us that the R1 would stop as well as it went. Finally, the new bike had super-sharp bodywork with fox-eye headlamps, a tidy tail unit and classy but aggressive red or blue paint schemes.
2000
Two years into its life, and the R1 was still miles ahead of the pack. Yamaha had made, apparently, more than 100 changes to the 2000 R1, but there was little obvious difference at first glance aside from the new titanium end can and sleeker bodywork. New engine mounts on the frame claimed to improve handling, and all the detail changes lost a bit of weight (about 5 pounds). Power remained the same though, and in 2001-its second model year-the R1 lost out to Suzuki's frankly awesome GSX-R1000.
2002
All the bike firms knew that upcoming emissions regulations would make carbs obsolete by 2005, so the switch to fuel injection was unavoidable. Yamaha plumped for a suction-piston type system, and while it worked well, it had the feel of a stopgap setup about it. The amount of effort needed to get EFI working well meant there were no other massive changes: detail mods cut a bit of weight, and peak power moved up the rev range a little.
2004
For the first time, the R1 began to look quite different. The side-mount silencer morphed into a pair of underseaters, the front brake calipers went to radial-mount items, and the fairing widened out a little at the front to accommodate a pair of gaping ram-air intakes. Inside the engine there was a big makeover too: the bore got bigger and stroke shorter, which allowed even more revs and even more peak power. Ram-air, fuel injection, short-stroke engine and lowered gearing all made for a faster, livelier performer.
2006
A mid-life tweak for the 2004 model gave us a few more HP, some minor handling updates and a fancy-pants Yamaha 50th Anniversary edition in yellow with Öhlins suspension, slipper clutch and Marchesini wheels.
2007
Surprisingly, just a year after a minor update, Yamaha brought out another massively updated model. It dropped its twenty-year-old 20-valve philosophy, and a new 16-valve head (supposedly using tech borrowed from the Rossi's Yamaha M1 MotoGP bike) appeared. The new head breathed through another innovation: the YCC-T, ride-by-wire fuel injection that made the transition from the 2006 R6. On the chassis front, the brakes were six-piston radial calipers and the rear shock got separate high and low-speed compression damping adjustments.
2009
Yet again, Yamaha went back to the drawing board for the 2009 redesign. The engine got a new cross-plane crank, the engine management got smarter with different power maps and the suspension got another tweak. Many riders loved the new "big-bang" engine's Ducati-like droning exhaust note and the ride-by-wire throttle's better power delivery. But for all that, the new bike was less powerful than before, heavier, and had a tendency to run uncomfortably hot. It did well in many magazine tests and managed to win the WSB championship in the hands of Ben Spies, but its long-term legacy remains to be seen.