1984 CHEVALLIER HONDA RS500
RACER TEST
P78
a still air box on his GP bikes. He was a pioneer in
developing fully adjustable suspension, too, making
his own forks and shocks, as well as in telemetry.
The Chevallier workshop was a hotbed of innovation.
Alain Chevallier's younger brother Olivier had be-
come a top bike racer, winning the 1976 350cc Yu-
goslavian GP with a bike prepared by Alain as chief
mechanic for the Pernod-funded team. By 1980
he'd started making his own Yamaha TZ250/350-
powered bikes for Olivier to race—but that April he
was tragically killed at Paul Ricard. The distraught
Alain was set to turn his back on racing before his
friend Eric Saul persuaded him otherwise. Just six
weeks after Olivier's passing, Saul put a Cheval-
lier Yamaha on the rostrum for the first time in the
350cc French GP at Ricard, repeating that third-
place finish at Silverstone later that year to finish
sixth in the final points table.
Japanese were following Antonio Cobas in build-
ing aluminum chassis, Chevallier maintained
his allegiance to tubular steel frames—but using
cold-drawn steel, which, being 20% stronger than
hot-rolled, offers an increased stiffness-to-weight
ratio, plus improved rider feedback. Ducati would
follow in his tire tracks later that decade en route
to successive World Superbike titles with its tube-
framed racers, and eventually, of course, to the
2007 MotoGP World title.
ALAIN CHEVALLIER-A LATER STARTER
But Alain Chevallier didn't stop there. As part of
his drive to save weight to compensate for the less
powerful customer engines in his bikes, he was the
first to fit carbon disc brakes to a 500GP motor-
cycle and the first to feature ram-air induction and
