Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126268
E • ~ t After our tester took second in 125 GP at Ontario on May 1. pro David Emde rode the MT125R for five laps. Lowering his lap times by one second every lap. Emde turned one lap in the same time as Philippe deLespinay's lap time average. Unchallenged. deLespinay had won 125 GP by a wide margin. cruising far behind the first-place 250 Production bike. 125 GP machines usually beat the 250 Production machines in a combined_race. Honda MT.2SR race test: Honda's road racer can win - but ours was a toad T he new Honda MT125R is the fastest, besthandling 125cc road racer readily available 42 in the United States. Test bikes loaned to several motorcycle -p u b lica ti ons have proved their worth in road faces at Sears Point International Raceway. Ontario Motor Speedwa y. and Riverside International Raceway in California. beating the toughest riders and fastest machines regularly competing in the California hotbed of road racing. With the exception of tires , the MTI25R needs nothing changed to win right off the showroom floor. As strong as those words are . and as sure as we are of what we saw at the tracks mentioned above , the test MTI25R supplied to Cycle News was not one of the great I 25cc, road racing threats of 1977 . We cannot truthfully say that the motorcycle we tested was competitive. • The bike we rode was a toad. It didn't seem that way the first time we raced the machine, at Ontario on April 23, the Saturday before the annual Arner ican Federation of Motorcyclists -(AFM) six -hour endurance race for large production and superstreet (cafe) motorcycles. Mike Hishiki, the American Honda Motor Co . MTI25R project engineer and former Japanese Champion. was on hand to help tune the bike. Jumping on the Honda for the first time after practicing on the 845cc GS750 we had entered in the six-hour was strange. Still. while it seemed slow when compared to the Suzuki. the little Honda was fast enough to pass everything it encountered in the smallbore practice sessions . After gearing down for the rising front-straight headwind. the bike was ready to race. Unfamiliar with GP bikes and their clutch-slipping starts. our test rider got off the line last , but passed all but one of the other I25s before turn six . The Honda slipped underneath the last competitor with _ ease at tight turn 16 on the first lap, and was never headed. , . It was an easy win , and the Japanese gentlemen present from Honda were quite pleased. "You will write nice test now , yes ?" one kept asking. "Yes," replied our tester. "It is a very nice motorcycle." There was one catch. The bike had won easily. Nobody was close. But, in terms of serious I ~5cc GP competitors, nobody was there, either. It wasn't a points-paying race for the AFM "cha m pionship , just a diversion 'before the cash-paying endurance race to be held the next day. The question was not whether or not the bike could win - anything can win under the right circumstances. · The question was, could the bike win when the "fast guys" showed up. There were, at the time . of the introduction of the MT125R , three active California machine/rider combinations capable of winning on a given day at a given track, no matter who showed up. Two of those combinations included air-cooled Yamaha twins, and the