Image: Keith Muir.

Yamaha Racing Team (YRT) manager John Redding expects to gain a clearer direction for 2015 when meetings take place with Yamaha Motor Australia management this Friday at Moto Expo in Melbourne.

YRT’s budget is expected to be finalised this week, enabling the factory-backed team to move forward on its plans to debut Yamaha’s brand new 2015 YZF-R1 in the Australasian Superbike Championship (ASC).

It’s understood that Yamaha will remain focused on the ASC series, however whether it will retain a three-rider operation or scale back to two will be dependent on the budget allocated by Yamaha this week. It’s unclear whether the team will make select appearances in other events.

“I’m hoping that we’ll have something wrapped up by Friday afternoon,” Redding told CycleOnline.com.au. “We haven’t resolved our budget yet for next year, so everything else falls into place after that is decided.”

A number of top-tier riders remain available on the market, with Honda expected to decrease its racing program and the Next Gen Motorsports team revealing to CycleOnline.com.au last Friday that it plans to quit the sport altogether unless an injection of funding is found.

ASC champion Wayne Maxwell and Troy Herfoss are close to signing with Team Honda Racing for another year, leaving Glenn Allerton and Jamie Stauffer as two of Yamaha’s most experienced and credentialed options currently available. Fourth current Honda rider Josh Hook is all but certain to be racing in Asia.

It’s also not completely ruled out that YRT will re-sign its current combination of Cru Halliday, Robbie Bugden and Rick Olson for another season, but team officials are eager to gain a lead development rider for the all-new 2015 R1.

“Our options are always to stick with the riders that we know, but in accepting that every year we’ve always had someone that’s technically experienced, it’s something I think at the moment we miss,” Redding added.

“That was never going to be a problem while using our existing bike that we’d developed in 2009 and never really changed, so now that we do have a new bike, it’s not just about the ability of rider that comes into the equation. The additional technical capability is all of a sudden much more important in the rider selection process.”

Yamaha has previously indicated that it hopes to commence testing of the highly-anticipated R1 locally prior to the new year.