Yamaha Motor Corp., U.S.A. has crowned Jeremy Talley of I-90 Motorsports, located in Issaquah, Washington, as the 2018 Yamaha U.S. Technician Grand Prix (USTGP) Champion. Talley finished first in the two-day skills competition in June hosted in Kennesaw, Georgia.
As the USTGP Champion, Talley will represent the United States at Yamaha’s World Technician Grand Prix (WTGP), a head-to-head competition of international Yamaha-trained technicians to be held in October at Yamaha Motor Co., Ltd. world headquarters in Iwata, Japan.
“The competition was challenging and fun,” said Talley. “The experience is one I will never forget, and I am looking forward to the opportunity to represent my dealer and country at the WTGP.”
Talley and five other Yamaha Technical Academy (YTA) training graduates earned invitations to this year’s USTGP competition by achieving the highest scores in YTA Gold level classes conducted between fall 2016 and spring 2018. Finishing second and third, respectively, were Radu Paul Mioc of West Orlando Motorsports located in Oakland, Florida, and Chester Prihoda of Snake River Yamaha located in Meridian, Idaho.
Held every two years, the Yamaha USTGP is a competition to find the top technicians in the company’s national dealer network. Finalists are challenged to accurately and efficiently diagnose critical issues on Yamaha’s most popular Motorsports products. Under the watchful eye of a panel of qualified judges, the technicians are evaluated for their expertise in electrical diagnosis, engine analysis and Yamaha Diagnostic Tool (YDT) usage along with customer service aptitude. More than a contest of technical skills, the USTGP showcases how training for dealership service departments plays a key role in Yamaha’s customer satisfaction success.
“All six of the USTGP contestants performed extremely well under intense scrutiny by our expert judges,”said Yamaha Motor University training manager Joe Dagley. “Yamaha’s Technical Academy training programs prepared the contestants to assess the situation, troubleshoot the issue and diagnose the problem. This competition tests the skills each participant learned during their YTA Gold level training and presents real-world challenges they face to deliver optimum customer satisfaction.”
Yamaha Motor University training programs have produced more than 30,000 YTA trained technicians worldwide.
Watch Yamaha’s video recap of the event, here: https://yamaha.us/ytTGP.
