Yamaha completely knocked the socks off the snowmobile racing fraternity with two ji-normous announcements this summer. Yamaha will field a full-on factory backed, privately managed WPSA Pro Snocross team this season. The team will campaign factory-built Open Class 4-strokes.
Yamaha has contracted the services of Winnipeg based Boss Racing to front the entire effort in the US. Boss just announced the team’s Pro driver is none other than current WPSA National Champion, Robbie Malinoski. Hey, why not start off with the best?
A few questions come to mind here. Why would Arctic Cat let Malinoski go? No answer as of this writing. Why didn’t Ski-Doo or Polaris sign this stable, personable and incredibly talented young man from Saskatchewan?
Right now there’s no answer to these and other intriguing questions either. Suffice it to say, the Yamaha 4-stroke perception juggernaut just mowed down another 2-stroke distinctive. We wonder, do the other guys get the significance of what’s actually going on?
What we do know for sure about this incredible move by Yamaha is that Trevor John, Jessie Strege and Yuji Nakazawa have all had their hands on the Open Mod program at Yamaha.
These guys possess formidable combined racing experience. More importantly, all are intuitive development oriented riders respected by just about everyone we know in the snocross racing world.
Will the new Open Modified Nytro be competitive? From what we hear, Yamaha has no intention of giving Malinoski anything but the very best Yamaha’s collective resources can deliver.
