The Greatest Racebike of all time... by far

if you've spent any time watching old Grand Prix motorcycle races from say the 80s or the 90s or maybe you watched them live when they were actually happening and then you go and tune in for a current Moto GP race you might fall asleep various changes over the past 10 years or so well probably longer than that even changes in pursuit of really faster lap times and also more safety have made Moto GP kind of boring at this point there's so little passing the motorcycles eles are electronically managed to such an incredible extent and at this point the last vestage of exciting racing is in my opinion Moto 3 you know you watch a moto 3 race and it feels like feels like a different era there's many reasons why this is the case and I would love to make an entire video on this topic but for now it's fun to look back at the good old days there are lots of reasons people refer to the two-stroke Grand Pre motorcycle racing era as the wild wild west of course in part it's getting at just the BR brutal nature of riding these crazy machines at their limit with none of the rider AIDs that we have today in part It's The Reckless sort of cowboy spirit that it took to harness these beasts but calling this time the Wild Wild West also refers to the incredible Innovation happening within these race programs now you'd think that during this time of innovation winning races and championships with any sort of consistency would just be impossible And yet when we look back at motorcycle racing from the 880s and the '90s arguably the peak of Grand Prix motorcycle racing one machine stands out far above the rest and that machine is the Honda NSR 500 Honda made a name for themselves in Grand Prix racing in the 1960s by advancing fourstroke technology to a level never seen before but two-stroke technology was developing as well in some ways overnight the journey to the top for two-stroke performance began with mz's Walter C and his discoveries of how to make two strokes more powerful discoveries that would ultimately be taken to their full extent by the likes of Suzuki and Yamaha but Honda was really stubborn Mr Honda hated two-strokes and the company's overall stubbornness would lead to some of the most ridiculous high revving Grand Prix race bikes of all time from a 6-cylinder 250cc capable of 20,000 RPM and my personal favorite a 50cc fourstroke twin revving to 22,000 r PM now this program of high revving four strokes really came to a head in 1967 despite winning the 250 and 350 and almost 500cc class Honda decided to leave Grand Prix racing altogether to focus on their production Vehicles ultimately this would be a fantastic decision during this period Honda would really change the landscape both for production cars and motorcycles and this is really the groundwork for Honda becoming Honda but as the' 70s carried on the company realized realized that their motorcycle technology was moving forward relatively unchanged and this would culminate somewhat visually in 1978 with the introduction of the ridiculous massive hulking Honda cbx making 100 horsepower this was a 6cylinder fourstroke a somewhat impressive feat looking back but on many levels it was really just a continuation of that same bigger higher revving fourstroke program Honda realized that they needed to do something or they were going to be left in the dust though leaving Grand Prix racing had given them a chance to focus on making the best possible motorcycles just for people who wanted to ride but see all of that success came out of their race programs so they needed to do the same thing again so in 1977 Honda announced that they would be returning to Grand Prix racing for the 79 season specifically in the Premier 500cc class and Honda laid out three goals to those tasked with building the new race program lab AED NR or new racing and they were as follows create Innovative technology through racing activity Foster young talents who can become key leaders in Honda's future and become world champion within 3 years instead of making a two-stroke like everybody else was doing at this time they went with the now iconic But ultimately unsuccessful oval piston fourstroke nr500 I've covered this motorcycle in a video already if you want to check it out needless to say though interesting in concept and certainly helpful for or their bikes moving forward this motorcycle really just didn't work again that doesn't mean it wasn't important as we'll see so in the middle of the 1981 season Honda relented they had to make a two-stroke if they were going to be competitive in Grand Prix racing again as they had with off-road racing in the70s they started with the ns500 those in charge recognized that at this time the 350cc class wasn't really that much slower than the 500s so they set out to make a multi-cylinder two-stroke platform and taking what they learned in making the nr500 very small and lightweight they set out to make this new two-stroke both powerful but also have the size and weight closer to that of a 350 they decided to utilize a radical V3 layout to achieve these goals and though the ns500 wouldn't take the title these early years it would lay the foundation for the bike to come in 1981 yoichi oguma took over as the first head of Honda's new racing program HRC and during the 82 season he began taking a different overall approach to building a competitive machine than what Honda had done previously instead of just focusing on the machine itself you know things like its weight the power the aerodynamics oguma started to study the entire competitive Grand Prix scene as a whole so in 1982 he spent over 200 days overseas just studying everything the tracks the tires how their bike performed at specific tracks how other bikes performed where other motorcycles struggled or excelled he even looked at how races were won essentially he was taking in all the data and analyzing it to optimize what their next machine would be and this is a huge reason why Honda was able to take the 1983 title but in ' 84 it was time to make a new motorcycle for the premier class based on everything that aguma had learned coupled with the incredible talent in Freddy Spencer Honda knew that they could move towards complete dominance in Grand Prix racing once again despite the fact that they hadn't taken the title yet in 3 years the way that they were hoping at this point all of the Japanese manufacturers were moving towards a V4 configuration for their grand prix motorcycles Yamaha had set the standard in many eyes with their new V4 version of the yr 500 but Honda did something quite different something that would carry them into the future and enable them to have a successful race bike in the same basic form until 2001 see the other manufacturers v4s weren't exactly v4s as we think of them today they were more like sped fours featuring two separate crankshafts Honda went a different route utilizing a single crankshaft even later on down the road when the crankshafts would be split into two separate units the main bearings would still be in a line also it was a true 90° V4 quite different from the competitors this simple but incredibly powerful power plant would provide a foundation for Honda to make slight tweaks Through The Years while maintaining the same basic layout the first iteration of the nsr500 wasn't without some problems one of them being the fact that the bike liked to cook the rider's chest thanks to the four massive expansion Chambers located above the engine where you would think that a gas tank would be no the gas tank was under the engine down the road Honda would do away with this setup for a more traditional one and they would also move from rotary valves to read valves but one of the things they ditched right away was the Revolutionary carbon fiber Comstar Wheels which actually caused Freddy Spencer to crash out of the nsrs debut race Spencer would opt to have his old ns500 back and would take the title on that bike one of the problems with this new nsr500 was the handling and part of that was because of that low-slung gas tank with fuel sloshing around low on the bike's center of gravity making turning very difficult and often causing under steer but this new V4 race bike was really powerful the problem was it was just difficult for everyone including the mechanics so for 1985 they completely redesigned the bike to have a more traditional setup at least in terms of the exhaust and the gas tank they did go with a completely new radical for that time twin Spar aluminum frame and Honda would dominate this year taking out the previously unbeatable Eddie Lawson on his Yamaha yzr 500 Spencer would win over half the races and take second in almost all of the rest Freddy Spencer also took the 250cc title that year but sadly this year would pretty much Mark the end of his career as a whole at this time Honda pushed every manufacturer to keep making these motorcycles more powerful and this was really the beginning of the two-stroke Madness that we often call the Wild Wild West by the end of the two-strokes run in Grand Prix racing motorcycles like the nsr500 had really pushed the boundaries by the end of its run it was a completely raw fire breathing machine with no Rider AIDS incredibly lightweight and capable of almost 200 horsepower with you think about talented capable Riders nothing compares to these guys if we took every modern great Moto GP Rider and threw them on one of these bikes there's no way they could hang with these guys they are all completely dependent at this point on all of the electronics not to say that they wouldn't be fast but they would either crash or they would feel like they're riding in the rain because these bikes made so much power it was literally like harnessing a bucking bronco now it's not as though Honda never change the engine on the NSR in 1987 the 90° V4 did become a 112 Dee V4 but perhaps the most important and influential change came to the NSR in 1992 when Honda decided to experiment with the timing of the vforce firing order to create what we call a big bang engine basically all four cylinders were firing at almost the same time giving the bike incredible acceleration and this would bring about a complete kind of meta change for Grand Prix motorcycle racing where top speed wasn't really the primary thing but rather just having incredible power and acceleration on tap that would really be the name of the game and that's true even today Mike Duan would win five of the first seven races That season on the Honda NSR but he would break his leg badly ultimately taking him out of contention for the title but starting in '94 he would then go on an absolute tear utterly dominating the premier class winning the title five consecutive beers for many the NSR 500 is the quintessential race bike from this era of two-stroke racing fans of the sport through the ' 80s and '90s will have this motorcycle kind of etched in their minds kind of like the Harley xr750 for all 12 flat track fans 2001 would Mark the end of not only the NSR 500 but 500cc two-stroke race bikes as a whole thanks to changes in regulations for the premier class that year Valentino Rossi would take the title by almost 100 points and this was the 10th World title for the nsr500 and the bike took a total of 131 Grand Prix wins and what stands out is how essentially the same this final version of the bike was to the original sure it had evolved and was updated and obviously made lots more power but when you look at sort of the Mount Rushmore of great grand prix motorcycles few stand up even close to the nsrs incredible record over its 18-year run the amazing Norton M single enjoyed a successful long life at least as far as Grand Prix bikes go but still nothing even close to the NSR through the 50s and 60s MV agusta's 4-cylinder four strokes dominated under the control of riders like Mike hailwood and gako agustini but that motorcycle went through quite a few changes especially compared to the NSR in his detailed book on the NSR 500 a book that I've linked below Allen Cathcart points out that through their dominant run the MV austa race machines took some 79 Grand Prix race wins from their 20year plus run but that was with you know three and four-cylinder machines and even the four-cylinder machines changed quite a bit whereas the NSR 500 stayed virtually the same through its 18-year run and it won almost twice as many races as the MVA gustas did during their Heyday now one can't help but feel that Honda is in quite a similar place to that of the 1970s today sure they haven't left racing altogether and they're still the world leader in terms of overall motorcycle sales but they are absolutely no longer the leader in terms of advanced development for production motorcycles or for race bikes now see we all know where all that development is coming from and it's not Japan rather it's Italy today Ducati dominates Moto GP sometimes it feels like Ducatis are the only competitive bikes on the track and you even get that sense from the announcers over half of the top 10 riders in 2023 were on Ducatis and two of the bikes that were not Ducatis were also from Italian manufacturers Honda just is not competitive at this point despite having one of the fastest Riders Honda's greatest modern Rider Mark Marquez has now left Honda for ducatti and wisely so already he's posting better times aboard the big Italian machine are we too far along for there to be serious advancements from manufacturers in Grand Prix motorcycle racing the way that Honda has been able to do in the past honestly I think we might be I don't know if it's possible for Honda to do the same kind of thing that they did in the early 80s with how Moto GP functions today and that's kind of sad now I would love to hear from you guys I'm sure many of you have watched Grand Prix racing and Moto GP for far longer than I have and maybe you even experienced the good old days if so let us know Down Below in the comments and until next time ride safe

Channel: bart

Views: 206,893

Keywords: bart, motorcycle, motorcycles, vintage, retro, classic, top 10, top, best, moto, bike, motorbike, motorcycle history, motorcycle essay, video essay, best motorcycle video, motorcycle youtuber, honda, kawasaki, suzuki, yamaha, ducati, history, best motorcycle, best motorcycles, craziest, greatest, honda nsr, honda nsr500, nsr500, nsr, honda racebike, motogp, motogp history, greatest racebikes, racebikes, 500cc, 2 stroke

Id: oROOrFJMX_c

Length: 14min 18sec (858 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 08 2023