History · 1985 to 2005

The manufacturers, 1985 to 2005

In plain words. Model histories for Yamaha, Kawasaki and Sea-Doo, only Yamaha's a maker's own history, set side by side with the machines the rule books admitted and the racing news in Yamaha's dealer magazine. It cannot say which make won anything, what factory teams did, or when sales peaked, and the WaveRunner's launch year, 1986 or 1987, is left disputed.

No manufacturer has published a history of its racing. This chapter sets the three makers' own model histories side by side, reads the machines the rule books were written around, restates what Yamaha's dealer magazine said about racing in the issues already indexed, and marks where the documents stop.

The BaddJet shop sells Factory Pipe parts. Those companies are written about here on the same evidence as every other one in this chapter, and no product or shop page is linked from it.

Words on this page (1)

Eligible Watercraft

The IJSBA rulebook’s phrase, in section 4.1 Homologation, for the models homologated and listed as eligible for competition. The 2002 and 2010 books both print it, and the 2010 book also calls the list the Model Homologation listing.

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What each maker's own history says it launched

Confirmed

Yamaha's timeline is the manufacturer's own page. As the make timeline record restates it, Yamaha dates the WaveRunner 500, Marine Jet 500T in Japan, to 1986 and the solo-rider WaveJammer 500, Marine Jet 500S, to 1987; the SuperJet 650 to 1990 as its entry into the stand-up category; the WaveBlaster 700, Marine Jet 700TZ, to 1993; the WaveRaider 700 and the FX1 stand-up to 1994; the SuperJet 700 and WaveBlaster II to 1996; the GP1200 to 1997; the GP1200R to 2000; the FX140, which Yamaha calls the world's first four-stroke PWC, to 2002; and the GP1300R to 2003. The page prints no row for 1988, 1989 or 1991, and the record says those are gaps in Yamaha's selection, not in its lineup. Kawasaki's timeline rests on one magazine's fiftieth anniversary gallery, dated 12 April 2023: the WSAA and WSAB in 1973, the JS400 in 1976 with full production at Lincoln, Nebraska, the X2 in 1986 for a run to 1995, the Jet Mate from 1989 to 1992, the Sport Cruiser in 1991, the 750 ST in 1994, the 900 ZXi in 1995 on a new three-cylinder engine, the 1100 STX in 1997, and nothing else between 1977 and 2006. The manufacturer's own corporate history page, read on 2026-09-28 for names and years only, lists the 1973 WSAA, the 1986 X-2, the 1992 750SX, the 1995 900 ZXi, the 1999 Ultra 150, the 2000 1100 STX D.I., the 2003 STX-12F and the 2004 STX-15F within this chapter's window, which is the only place the 750SX of 1992 is dated by Kawasaki itself. Sea-Doo's timeline rests on one shop's reference page, checked against no BRP document: the 1968 and 1969 machines, then nothing from 1970 to 1988, the SP in 1989 where the modern line starts, the XP in 1991 as the fast one, the 657 engine in 1993, the 657X in 1994, the XP 800 on the X4 hull with RAVE valves at 110 horsepower and the single-seat HX in 1995, the 951 in 1997, fuel injection on the GTX RFI in 1998, the RX in 2000, the RXX in 2001, the four-stroke GTX 4-TEC in 2002, the supercharged RXP at 215 horsepower in 2004 and the RXT in 2005, the year the same page says the XP was discontinued, fourteen model years after its 1991 introduction on the page's own dates. Only Yamaha's is the maker's own, and the three were written for different purposes.

Sources: Yamaha on the WaveRunner; Kawasaki Motors corporate history; Watercraft Journal at 50 years; JetSkiPlus Sea-Doo reference

The stand-up and the sit-down, as the books wrote them

Confirmed

Part 5 of the 2002 book names three divisions, Ski, Sport and Runabout, and rule 4.1.8 of the same book prints the machines that had met United States homologation under each. The Ski Division list of 2002 is Kawasaki from the JS300 to the JS750SXi Pro and Yamaha's SuperJet at 633cc, at 701cc, at 701cc from 1996, and the FX1. The Sport Division is five machines from four makers, the Kawasaki X2, the Polaris Hurricane, the Sea-Doo HX, and Yamaha's WaveBlaster and WaveJammer. The Runabout Division runs to five makers, Kawasaki, Polaris, Sea-Doo, Yamaha and Tigershark. The 2002 book's own example of its displacement rule reads "A 580cc Sea-Doo may race in 800cc classes whereas a 701cc SuperJet may not race in 650cc classes." The 2010 book adds the 800 SX-R, the Polaris Octane and the Hydrospace S4 and S8 to the Ski list, Honda's Aquatrax and Sea-Doo's RXP, RXP-X, RXT and RXT-X to Runabout, and names the Sport Spec class's whole field in one sentence, the Kawasaki X2 before 2005 and of 2005 to 2007, the Polaris Hurricane, the Sea-Doo HX and the Yamaha WaveBlaster 701. The 2014 book adds the Sea-Doo Spark. The 2016 text behind the 2018 change list names one machine three times in its Ski Modified rules: the 2017 Kawasaki SX-R may not use an aftermarket top deck or hull and must use the engine block furnished by the manufacturer. The 2018 change list then writes a class around it, Ski Superstock, "intended to be a class that services, primarily, the existing 2018-2019 Kawasaki SX-R", and names the Mod Lites engine choices as the Yamaha SuperJet and Kawasaki 750 and SXR two-strokes or the Sea-Doo 900 ACE and Yamaha TR1 1050 four-strokes. The current class records read the same way: Ski Stock is exclusively the 1500cc Kawasaki SX-R, Four Stroke Ski Lites' only homologated machine at posting was the Yamaha SuperJet of 2021 and after, Rec Lites is the Sea-Doo Spark and the Yamaha EX, and the four vintage classes are built on the Kawasaki 550, the X2 and the SC. The UIM's 2026 book, as our notes on that body read it, names four craft in its technical rules and no others: the Kawasaki SXR1500, the HSR-Benelli S4, the Belassi B3S dynamic 135 HP and the Belassi Burrasca. No Yamaha and no Sea-Doo is named in it.

Sources: 2002 rule book; 2010 rule book; 2014 rule book; 2018 pending changes and 2016 book; IJSBA rule book page; UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book

What Yamaha's dealer magazine says about racing

Confirmed

Yamaha News is the company's own dealer magazine, and our index of its personal watercraft coverage carries at least thirteen issues whose headline touches racing, nine of them cited here; the 1989, 1996 No.1, 1997 and 2001 victory headlines are unread and uncited. Six of the nine are held as headlines only. The 1988 No.8 issue is headed with a race that gathered 140 people on the Marine Jet 500T and 500S, the index confirming the entry against the issue's own contents. The 1990 No.4 issue pairs instruction and racing in its headline. The 1993 No.5 headline claims British PWC racing for Yamaha, in Yamaha's own verb. The 1995 No.4 headline announces a first Water Vehicle race, the 1996 No.2 headline sends Yamaha U.K. racing with the SuperJet, the WaveBlaster II and a WaveRaider 785 tagged to it, and the 1996 No.6 headline reports sponsorship of a first race somewhere the index does not say. None of those six articles has been opened, so the country, the organiser and the result behind each headline are not held. Three 2005 issues were read in full for the Model History article and it restates them: the No.2 issue reports that the Spanish subsidiary ran a first Yamaha-Jet World SuperJet Cup and a first two-seater cup in 2004; the No.3 issue reports a GP1300R entered by Yamaha Motor del Peru with its local dealer at Lake Titicaca, 3,827 metres above sea level, on 25 March 2005, ridden by a competitor the magazine describes as a six-time IJSBA world champion and this chapter does not name; the No.5 issue reports that the Turkish Jet-Ski Federation ran a first S1 championship at Bodrum with the Yamaha distributor as sponsor, using four XL700s in its first leg, captioned as a first slalom race competition. What the nine issues show, over seventeen years of headlines, is racing reported as distributor and market news from Britain, Spain, Peru and Turkey, never as a factory programme and never as a results table; the four unread victory headlines are not read into that. The manufacturer's global history page adds four sentences of its own: that the 1993 WaveBlaster dominated the sport class competition, that 1994 opened a new era of speed racing, that the 2008 SuperJet hull was built to give the potential to win, and that the 2017 GP1800 was designed for closed-course racing; all four are Yamaha's claims about Yamaha's machines and are recorded as such.

Sources: Yamaha News 1988 No.8; Yamaha News 1990 No.4; Yamaha News 1993 No.5; Yamaha News 1995 No.4; Yamaha News 1996 No.2; Yamaha News 1996 No.6; Yamaha News 2005 No.2; Yamaha News 2005 No.3; Yamaha News 2005 No.5; Yamaha on the WaveRunner

The makers that left, as far as a document says so

Confirmed

The held documents record departures only as absences, and an absence has to be read carefully. Tigershark is a heading in the 2002 book's Runabout list, thirteen lines from the Barracuda to the 1000R, and is not in the 2010 book's list at all; that is the whole documentary trace of the make in the held set, and it says nothing about when production stopped. Polaris is in the 2002, 2010 and 2014 lists, its Octane joining the Ski Division and its MSX 140, Genesis I and Virage Freedom the Runabout Division in 2010, the Genesis and Virage being there already in 2002, and its Hurricane is still a named Sport Spec machine in the current class document, which our class notes read as permitted continued participation courtesy of an aftermarket supplier's support. Honda is absent from the 2002 list and present in the 2010 list with three Aquatrax models and in the 2014 list with five. The held 2005 translation lists Honda's three Aquatrax and no Tigershark, so both changes fall between the 2002 and 2005 books. A model stays homologated after its maker stops building it, so the lists lag the market by years and cannot date an exit. The timelines' publications give end dates for machines, not for makers. The magazine gallery behind the Kawasaki timeline ends the X2 in 1995 and the Jet Mate in 1992, puts the end of Kawasaki two-stroke stand-up production at 2011 under tightening emissions rules, names the Special Edition 800 SX-R as the last two-stroke stand-up without dating it, and returns the stand-up in 2016 as the SX-R 1500. The shop's page behind the Sea-Doo timeline gives 1999 as the last year of the SPX and the X4 hull, eliminated in 2000, and ends the XP in 2005. Yamaha's own page calls the 2012 VX700S the industry's only remaining two-stroke runabout at the time and the 2021 SuperJet a new four-stroke model succeeding a two-stroke predecessor. Those are the departures the documents support: models, engines and a hull, each dated by the publication that names it. The corporate exit of Polaris from watercraft, the Tigershark years, and any reason either left are in our research notes and in no document held, so they are not here.

Sources: 2005 book in Hungarian translation; 2002 rule book; 2010 rule book; 2014 rule book; IJSBA rule book page; Watercraft Journal at 50 years; JetSkiPlus Sea-Doo reference; Yamaha on the WaveRunner

Homologation, the hinge between the makers and the books

Confirmed

Chapter 3 reads the homologation rule book by book and is not repeated here; what belongs to this chapter is the point where a maker's model year becomes a line in a rule book. Rule 4.1.6 of the 2002 book says that each listing under Eligible Watercraft is a separate model, and rule 4.1.8 lists them by maker under each division, so the SuperJet at 633cc, at 701cc and at 701cc from 1996 are three models to the book though one name to the catalogue. The 2010 book adds the note that updating and backdating may only be done within the same model, with the example, repeated in the current Homologation document as our notes on that body read it, that a Superstock Kawasaki JS750SXi Pro may not back date to a 1995 JS750SXi cylinder. The Limited Class parts of the 2002 and 2010 books print the two exceptions the makers' catalogues forced on them: pre-1996 Yamaha SuperJets may update to the 1996 and newer engine, from 2010 its components and waterbox, and the Kawasaki JS750SX and SXi may update to the SXi Pro engine, a note the 2016 text carries as 12.1.2 in Ski Limited. Rule 5.4 of the 2002 book sets the ceiling for the 800cc class at 785cc in stock configuration as furnished by the manufacturer, which is why the 2002 list prints Sea-Doo's XP800 at 782cc and at 786cc as separate entries. Every one of those lines is a maker's decision, a displacement, a carburettor, a hull year, written into a book as a boundary, and the count that admitted the model in the first place is chapter 3's subject.

Sources: 2002 rule book; 2010 rule book; 2018 pending changes and 2016 book; IJSBA rule book page

What no held document settles

Contested

Two questions the research asked have no answer in the held set, and one has two answers. The sales peak year, 1995 or 1996, appears in no held document with a figure attached (checked against the documents held here, 2026-10-06); the Yamaha News issues, as the Model History article restates them, print a German share for 2003, an Argentine share for 2006 and a two-year FX140 volume of some fifteen thousand units, none of them an industry total for any year. No held document records what a factory team did; Personal Watercraft Illustrated of December 1998 names a 1997 Yamaha Factory Racing team and a Team Kawasaki only in passing, in an exhaust test, and a 2008 forum post, citing a Kawasaki Canada museum page, credits Kawasaki with the first factory-supported race team in 1995, which no held document confirms (checked against the documents and the press archive held here, 2026-10-06). Kawasaki's corporate page, read on 2026-09-28, lists fourteen JET SKI releases and no watercraft competition entry; the Yamaha News headlines send distributors racing and name no factory team; the shop's page behind the Sea-Doo timeline names no team, title or sanctioning body. The WaveRunner debut year is the question with two answers, and both are held. Yamaha's global history page dates the WaveRunner 500, Marine Jet 500T, to 1986 and the WaveJammer 500, Marine Jet 500S, to 1987, and the Yamaha News 2005 No.2 issue says the company began manufacturing personal watercraft in 1986. Our research notes' section on Yamaha records that the WaveRunner 500 launched in 1986 or 1987 depending on source, then records a later reading of Yamaha Motor Japan's marine history that puts the MJ-500T on sale in Japan in November 1986 and the MJ-500S in January 1987. The two Yamaha documents held here agree on 1986 for the two-seater; the 1987 figure attaches, on Yamaha's own page, to the solo-rider WaveJammer and not to the WaveRunner. That is the likeliest reconciliation, and it is printed as contested because the Master list still carries the item although Yamaha's global history essay itself gives November 1986 for the MJ-500T's Japanese release and January 1987 for the MJ-500S.

Yamaha on the WaveRunner says

The WaveRunner 500 (Marine Jet 500T) launched in 1986 and the WaveJammer 500 (Marine Jet 500S) in 1987, as the make timeline record restates the page, and its essay gives November 1986 for the MJ-500T's Japanese release and January 1987 for the MJ-500S; Yamaha News 2005 No.2 dates the start of manufacturing to 1986.

racing history research notes says

The WaveRunner 500 launched in 1986 or 1987 depending on source, a Master list item; a later dated note in the same section reads Yamaha Motor Japan's marine history as November 1986 for the MJ-500T and January 1987 for the MJ-500S.

Sources: Yamaha on the WaveRunner; Yamaha News 2005 No.2; Kawasaki Motors corporate history; JetSkiPlus Sea-Doo reference; PWI December 1998 Factory Pipe test

Not covered, and why (9)

Any rider's name, in any year, for any make.

A person is named only where Key Figures has a page for them. The Yamaha News 2005 No.3 index row and our two sets of research notes carry rider names; none is copied.

Any count of world or national titles by make or by rider.

The IJSBA world champions roll was not read, no result sheet was read, and our Sea-Doo research notes record that Pro Open, Pro GP and Pro Runabout 1200 are used interchangeably across sources, so no count from one source is commensurate with another's.

The sport's sales peak was 1995 at about 200,000 units, or 1996.

A Master list item, contested between our research notes' reading of one figure and a manufacturer's own framing. No held document prints an industry sales total for any year, checked on 2026-10-02 against the held rule-book texts and this archive's copies of the books, which print homologation unit minimums and no market figure; our research notes' dated note reads Polaris's FY1998 10-K as a 1996 peak of about 225,000 units, but that filing is not held here and was not read.

Kawasaki's Team Green ran a formal watercraft racing programme.

A Master list item marked unconfirmed from any Kawasaki primary source. The Kawasaki corporate history page read on 2026-09-28 carries no watercraft racing entry, and the magazine gallery behind the Kawasaki timeline names no team.

The JS550 dominated racing from the late 1970s into the early 1990s, the WaveBlaster dominated sport-class racing, and Yamaha dominated British racing in 1993.

The first is our research notes' sentence with no document behind it. The second is Yamaha's own launch-page sentence about its own machine, and the third is Yamaha's own headline, article unread; each is a maker's claim about itself and is recorded here with the maker's name on it, never as this chapter's finding.

RIVA Racing was named Yamaha's first official factory race team in 1992, and Sea-Doo fielded twelve factory support riders in 1994.

The first is a company's description of itself, not read here from any Yamaha document; the second rests on one BRP blog post the fetch tool could not read, held as a record for chapter 7. Neither is in a held Yamaha News issue or a Yamaha corporate page.

Sea-Doo eclipsed Yamaha and Kawasaki in market share within four years of 1988.

Our research notes' sentence. No market share figure for any country appears in a held document for these years; the only shares the Yamaha News issues print are German and Argentine figures for 2003 and 2006.

The 1986 X2 was the first mass-produced sit-down, and the 1986 WaveRunner 500 was the world's first sit-down production PWC.

Each is one maker's or one magazine's launch claim about one make, and the Kawasaki timeline record already prints the first as contested against a 1968 Bombardier sit-down. Neither claim has been checked against a competitor's release date, so neither is adopted.

The 500-unit threshold turned the 750SXi Pro's factory carburettor setup and the round-nose SuperJet into homologation events.

Chapter 3 holds this in its blocked list with the reason: the held books list those models and print the mid-year change rule, and no held text ties a specific model change to the count.

What could not be read (5)

• The Kawasaki corporate page was read through the fetch tool, which returned a summary rather than the page text, so it is cited for names and years alone; the Yamaha page is held as a full text capture of 2026-09-09 in this archive's reference notes, and its year rows are cited as the make timeline record restates them.
• The Kawasaki timeline rests on one magazine gallery and the Sea-Doo timeline on one shop's page; neither is checked against a Kawasaki or BRP document, and no Kawasaki press release, Sea-Doo press release, Polaris, Tigershark or Honda document is held at all.
• Six of the nine Yamaha News issues cited were read as headlines only, as the index records; the article bodies of 1988 to 1996 are unread, so what each race was, where it ran and who organised it is not held. The three 2005 issues were read in full for the Model History article and are cited as it restates them.
• No English IJSBA book between 2002 and 2010 is held; the 2005 and 2006 books are held as the Hungarian affiliate's translations, and none before 2002 is held anywhere, so the eligible watercraft lists of the 1985 to 2001 seasons, the years this chapter is named for, are not read. The 2002 list is the oldest, and it is a snapshot of what was still homologated that year, not a record of when each machine entered.
• No result sheet was read, so nothing here says which make won anything.

This chapter reads model histories and rule books, not results. A machine listed as eligible watercraft in a book is evidence that the sanctioning body accepted it for a season, not that it started a race, and a maker's own history page is that maker's selection of what to remember. Two of the three timelines rest on one publication each, and the Kawasaki and Sea-Doo publications are not the manufacturers' own.

Documents cited in this chapter

• Yamaha on the WaveRunner (global.yamaha-motor.com): History of WaveRunners (PWC), Yamaha Motor's global history page, Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd.; manufacturer primary, high. The publication behind the Yamaha make timeline (the Yamaha timeline on this site), graded high there as the manufacturer writing about its own product, and the same grade here. Re-read on the accessed date only as a summary, which names the 1986 WaveRunner 500 (Marine Jet 500T) and 1987 WaveJammer 500 (Marine Jet 500S), a sport class competition sentence for the 1993 WaveBlaster and a closed-course racing sentence for the 2017 GP1800, not the page's full text; the year rows are cited as the timeline record restates them. Every first on the page is Yamaha's own launch claim.
• Kawasaki Motors corporate history (global-kawasaki-motors.com): Kawasaki Motors, Ltd. corporate history page (the JET SKI release entries), Kawasaki Motors, Ltd.; manufacturer primary, high. Read on the accessed date as a summary giving the fourteen JET SKI entries by year and name, from the 1973 WSAA to the 2023 ULTRA 160, with no specification and no watercraft racing entry; the racing entries on the page are motorcycle results and none is copied. A first-party page with names and years only, so it dates a release and settles nothing about a machine.
• Watercraft Journal at 50 years (watercraftjournal.com): Gallery: Looking Back Over 50 Years of JetSki Watercraft (The Watercraft Journal, 12 April 2023), The Watercraft Journal, 2023-04-12; enthusiast media, medium. The publication behind the Kawasaki make timeline (the Kawasaki timeline on this site), a single anniversary gallery read end to end on 2026-09-28 for that record, with a named author and a date, checked against no Kawasaki document, and graded medium there and here. The archive path is our fact extraction from it, not the article. Cited as the timeline record restates it; the author's name is not copied.
• JetSkiPlus Sea-Doo reference (jetskiplus.com): Sea-Doo Model Reference, 1968 to 2027 (a single shop's year-by-year page), JetSkiPlus; enthusiast media, medium. The publication behind the Sea-Doo make timeline (the Sea-Doo timeline on this site), one shop's editorial page read once on 2026-09-08 for that record and checked against no BRP document, graded medium there and here. Read again on the accessed date only as a summary, not as the page: it names no factory team, title, sanctioning body or rider, and places the race-inspired X4 hull under 1994 where the timeline record reads it under 1995. Cited as the timeline record restates it, and that one-year difference is recorded as a gap.
• 2002 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2002 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2002; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2002 book in 25 sections, the oldest full IJSBA rule book held here, served from a Norwegian club's document server and captured by the Wayback Machine. Four numbered technical parts (Stock, Limited, Superstock, Modified), three divisions, the 500 and 200 unit homologation figures, and the United States class list.
• 2010 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2010 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2010; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2010 book, kept by the Czech affiliate after IJSBA removed it. Part 8 is headed Open Class with Superstock as an addendum; the Stock part carries the Lites and class naming addenda; part 4 prints the 500 unit figure without a Ski exception and the 100 unit route below it; the appendix adds Special Production homologation below 100 units.
• 2014 rule book (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2014 Official Competition Rule Book, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2014; sanctioning body, high. The complete 2014 book. Runabout Lites is renamed Runabout Rec Lites in the addendum, and the class list adds Vintage Ski (JS type hulls only, 550cc maximum), Sport GP and Runabout 1000 Superstock.
• 2018 pending changes and 2016 book (jetski.cz): Pending rule changes to the 2018 IJSBA Competition Program, with the 2016 Official Competition Rulebook text, International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2018; sanctioning body, high. The first 74 lines of the extract are IJSBA's posted list of pending changes to the 2018 competition program, written before the Board of Directors ratified them; the rest of the file is the text of the 2016 book (copyright 2016) with its 2016 Displacement Guide. Held live from the Czech jetski.cz server at pull time, not from the Wayback Machine. No signatory is copied from it.
• IJSBA rule book page (ijsba.com): IJSBA Competition Rule Book (the current per-class documents), International Jet Sports Boating Association; sanctioning body, high. The live page, read on the accessed date. It links no single book but per-class PDFs dated 2021 to 2025, twenty of them class documents, plus general, competition and appendix documents. The class and body records on this site were read from these PDFs on 2026-09-07; the chapter's figures for the current set come from those records and from the page itself, not from a re-reading of the PDFs.
• UIM 2026 Aquabike rule book (uim.sport): UIM Aquabike Rulebook 2026 (published 22 December 2025), Union Internationale Motonautique, 2025-12-22; sanctioning body, high. The single 189-page UIM book that covers every class in one season. Rule 500.02 is its homologation article (50 specimens for the production classes, a logbook for GP1 prototypes) and rule 312 its freestyle discipline (five judges, ten criteria, 300 points). Cited here as the body and class records on this site read it, taken from the PDF on 2026-09-08, not from a re-reading of the PDF; the 2005 and 2006 Hungarian translations of earlier UIM books held here were not read.
• Yamaha News 1988 No.8 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Popularity-winning Water Vehicles gather 140 people for race (Yamaha News, English edition, No.8, 1988), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1988; manufacturer primary, medium. A dealer magazine issue indexed in the Yamaha News index on this site with the status verified, meaning the issue index was read and the headline confirmed, tagged to the MJ500T and MJ500S, and the article body was not read. Medium for that reason: the headline is the only sentence held. The address is Yamaha's own PDF, which permits personal use only and is not rehosted.
• Yamaha News 1990 No.4 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Instruction and Racing: A Great Water Vehicle Formula (Yamaha News, English edition, No.4, 1990), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1990; manufacturer primary, medium. Indexed in the Yamaha News index on this site with the status indexed: the index names the headline and nobody has opened the article. Medium because only the headline is held. Yamaha's own PDF address, not rehosted.
• Yamaha News 1993 No.5 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Yamaha dominates British PWC Racing (Yamaha News, English edition, No.5, 1993), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1993; manufacturer primary, medium. Indexed in the Yamaha News index on this site with the status indexed, headline only, article unread. Medium for that reason. The headline's verb is Yamaha's own claim about a British season and the chapter does not adopt it; the row is held so the claim can be pointed at.
• Yamaha News 1995 No.4 (global.yamaha-motor.com): First Water Vehicle race launched (Yamaha News, English edition, No.4, 1995), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1995; manufacturer primary, medium. Indexed in the Yamaha News index on this site with the status indexed, headline only, article unread, so the country and the organiser of the race the headline announces are not held. Medium for that reason.
• Yamaha News 1996 No.2 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Yamaha U.K. go racing (Yamaha News, English edition, No.2, 1996), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1996; manufacturer primary, medium. Indexed in the Yamaha News index on this site with the status indexed, headline only, and tagged by the index to the SuperJet, the WaveBlaster II and a WaveRaider 785. The article was not read, so what the distributor entered, where, and with what result is not held. Medium for that reason.
• Yamaha News 1996 No.6 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Sponsoring first Water Vehicle race (Yamaha News, English edition, No.6, 1996), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 1996; manufacturer primary, medium. Medium for that reason. (as Yamaha News 1993 No.5 above)
• Yamaha News 2005 No.2 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Yamaha Motor began manufacturing personal watercraft (Marine Jets) in 1986 (Yamaha News, English edition, No.2, 2005), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 2005; manufacturer primary, high. Read in full for the Model History article the Yamaha 2003 to 2009 history on this site, which cites it for the 1986 manufacturing date, the lineup count of early 2005, the Tokyo show stands and the Spanish distributor's first SuperJet cup and two-seater cup of 2004. High as the manufacturer writing about itself in full text; cited here as that article restates it.
• Yamaha News 2005 No.3 (global.yamaha-motor.com): GP1300R at Lake Titicaca (Yamaha News, English edition, No.3, 2005), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 2005; manufacturer primary, high. Read in full for the Model History article, which cites it for a GP1300R entered by the Peruvian distributor at Lake Titicaca, 3,827 metres above sea level, ridden by a competitor Yamaha describes as a six-time IJSBA world champion. The index row's headline carries that rider's name; this title does not, and the chapter does not print it. High as full text.
• Yamaha News 2005 No.5 (global.yamaha-motor.com): Yamaha began R&D in 1983 that led to our first Water Vehicle (Yamaha News, English edition, No.5, 2005), Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd., Communication Plaza library, 2005; manufacturer primary, high. Read in full for the Model History article, which cites it for the 1983 research date, the 2001 four-stroke development claim and, with the two issues above, the distributor racing of 2004 and 2005 including a first slalom competition in Turkey on XL700s. High as full text; cited here as that article restates it.
• 2005 book in Hungarian translation (web.archive.org): IJSBA 2005 rule book, Hungarian translation (MJSZ 2005 rule book part II), Magyar Jet-Ski Szovetseg, translating the International Jet Sports Boating Association, 2005; sanctioning body, medium. The affiliate's complete translation of the 2005 book, graded medium as the 2006 translation is, and used here only for its affiliate directory, where the names are printed as in the original, a Europe row (EJSBA, EU) and two United States bodies, the APBA at Eastpointe, Michigan, and the USWRA at Noblesville, Indiana. The English 2005 parts are in the Wayback capture index and were not read.
• PWI December 1998 Factory Pipe test (web.archive.org): Factory Pipe's Yamaha WaveRunner GP800 Exhaust Systems, by Jeff Hain (Personal Watercraft Illustrated, December 1998, Wayback capture), Personal Watercraft Illustrated, 1998-12; enthusiast media, medium. The magazine's test of a Factory Pipe twin exhaust for the Yamaha GP800, twice naming Factory Pipe owner Ross Liberty. Phone numbers in its supplier list are removed from the held copy; the product verdicts are not used.
• racing history research notes (held here, not public): History of PWC racing (this archive's research notes), BaddJet research; project research, low, held on file and not evidence. The web-research notes whose section 4 frames the class ladder and whose Master list names claims not to publish. It has no public address, so the URL is the file's own path here, written as a file URL only to satisfy the schema. Where it disagrees with a held rule book the book wins; it is held here so a contested or blocked entry can point at it, never so a section can rest on it.

Changes to this chapter

• 2026-10-07: The manufacturer chapter now says under its banner that the BaddJet shop sells Factory Pipe parts, because Personal Watercraft Illustrated's December 1998 Factory Pipe test, cited in the section on what no held document settles, carries the maker's name.
• 2026-10-06: The sentence that factory team roles are absent was narrowed after a search of the held texts. Personal Watercraft Illustrated of December 1998 names a 1997 Yamaha factory racing team and a Team Kawasaki in passing, and a 2008 forum post credits Kawasaki with the first factory-supported race team in 1995; the sentence now says both, that no held document confirms the forum's claim, and that none records what a factory team did.
• 2026-09-30: Source check against the held pages and books: the Yamaha News index carries thirteen racing headlines, not nine; Turkey's first slalom sits in the No.5 issue, not No.2, and the Peruvian entrant is a Yamaha company; Yamaha's page has four racing sentences, not two, and says the WaveBlaster dominated; the Genesis and Virage are on the 2002 list already and Honda has five Aquatrax in 2014; the 2005 translation dates Honda's entry and Tigershark's exit; the two update exceptions are in the Limited parts of 2002 and 2010, not the 2010 Stock part; the FX140 volume that one issue prints; Yamaha's own essay dates the two 1986 and 1987 releases.

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“The manufacturers, 1985 to 2005”, BaddJet archive, https://baddjetarchive.com/racing/history/manufacturer-wars-1985-2005/

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