Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·R C RTE Michael Doohan's Honda NSR500 A E sr 44 ee p the fai th: soo ner o r later, it'll pay off. The 1994 Gra nd Prix racing season was the year it all came right, at last, for Ho nda's 500cc GP team, after their five-year struggle to regain the World ti tle they last won wi th Ed die Lawson back in 1989. For newly crowned World Cham pion Mich ael Dooh an , it was a triumph for the grit and determination that had ena bled him to recover from the terrible injuries th at dep rived h im of a near-ce rt ain d ebut cha m pions hip bac k in 1992. For Honda it was just reward - two ye ars ov erdue - for turning a new page in 500cc GP development with the introduct ion of Big Bang engine technol ogy that same year - technology that their rivals had been quick to copy, and becau se of Dooh an 's inju ries ended up benefiting from before Honda did . Only form er sponsors Rothmans lost ou t: they ju mped ship to F-l car racing with Williams this yea r, and wound up second best on four wheels after Damon Hill played bu mper cars in Austra lia with Michael Schumacher, and lost! If only they'd kep t the faith, too... Doohan's we ll-deserved dominance of the '94 World Championship wa s cnishing: in 14 races, he never finished off the rostrum, winning nine GPs in total - including six in a row, midseason - and had the title wrapped u p three races early. This kind of superiority hasn't been seen in any class of GP racing since the days of Giacomo Agostini and the MV Ag us ta more than two decades ago - but unlike Ago and h is Italian "fire engines," Honda and their Aus sie ace had to cope with stem competition from Suzuki, Yamaha and Cagiva: one rider from each marque finished in the top four places in the final World Championship standings, with Honda's three other riders filli ng slots five thro ugh seven. Considering tha t each o f the 10 NSR500s built for the 1994 seaso n (two for each rider, plus tw o test {development bikes, this being the first time there was no Japanese SOOcc series) were identical. this not only underlin es Mick-san's abilities, but also em phasizes the tough task H o nda ha d on th eir han d s in regaining th eir coveted wo rld cro wn. Riding Doohan's title-winnin g NSR at a dry, resurfaced Suz uka at season's end onl y confirmed th e ex te n t of th ei r achievement. It wo u ld be easy to say tha t thi s yea r's Honda NS R500 is just like last year's, only more so - but tha t would disregard the two quite separate strands of developmen t that HRC engineers continue to work away a t, in a constant striving after success. Even that success can be measured in two quite distinct ways, says Shigeru Hattori, the development engi neer in charge of the SRSOO. "H ond a and Cagiva ha ve a similar app roach to techni cal development, " he said . "Of course, it is ou r ai m to win races and eventua lly the World Championshi p, and it's nice when we can succeed in doing this. But successful developmen t of new technical concep ts and design solutions as part of our SOOcc GP ra ce pr ogram is very nice. If yo u ca n combine th e tw o, as we a t Honda did this yea r, then that gives the greatest satisfaction of all. Cagiva especially among ou r ri val s have a sim il a r approach, which we very much admire: if it is true that they will withd raw from GP racing afte r 1994, th is wo uld be a ve ry gr eat disappointment for Honda." • This du al approach to the bu siness of GP racing means that Honda combine evolu tion w ith revoluti on , the ration al WO-STROKES By Alan Cathcart. Photos by Koichl Ohtanl with the rad ical. Their main objective is to do wh at Doohan did this past seaso n w in rac es regul arly . That m eans a process o f con st ant refin em ent to th e ba si c NSR500 packa ge. For 1994 thi s translated to an essentially un changed chassis with an engin e ada pted to run on the new lower-octane fuel, and revised . p ortin g for th e fi ve trans fer { two and th e wa ter injection sys tem which. like the trick shock, debuted in the final GP of the season in Barcelona once the title had been wo n (though Do ohan' s bike had only the water injection fitted, not the PGM intelligent shock rear end, which he preferred not to usejust ye t). With the restrictions now imposed on F1 car raci ng technology in pursuit of In fact, they d id both: The new fuel meant an initia l drop in engine performan ce which Honda were able to regain by midseason - and then some. Last year the NSR 50 0, in ca rb u re te d fo rm, pumped out an impressive 184 bhp at the ge a rb ox ; this yea r, e ve n o n th e lower-octane fuel. it delivers "over 185 bhp," according to Hatt ori -san (u noffi- exha us t- po rt cyli nders, new ex ha ust p ipes, alte red ignition timing (though this can be read ily changed via the progra mmable CDI). and an improved inlet tract - as well as a lot of wo rk on the airbox to imp rove airflow to th e 36mm twin-choke Keihin carbs used for every type of track (Ho nda doesn't swap choke sizes between fast and slow circuits like some others do). All that comes und er the head ing of evolution, with m an y small changes aimed at improving the overall package. Revolu tion, though, came this seaso n in the form of three big items: the updated version of the PGM-Fl fuel-injection system raced b y Shinichi Itoh in GPs in 1993, but o n ly tested thi s seaso n in revised form; the computerized "intelligen t" sus pension developed in conjuncti on w ith Showa, wh ich enab les the op eration of the rear shock to be opt imized electronic ally at any chosen point o n the circuit v ia p re-prog r amm in g using d ata ob tai ned fro m th e on-b ike telemetry - "not even a semi-active system," says Hattori, "but the firs t ste p towards an intelligent passive sys tem": sa fety and close racing. it's safe ~o say tha t a works 500cc GP race bi ke, of which the Honda has just pr oved itself this past seaso n to be the top of the heap , is the most sophistica ted and techni cally avant-garde raci ng m ach ine on any nu mber of wh eels . They a re free to exploit to the maxim um any mechanical or elect ro n ic ave n ue th at offe rs th e promise of improved per forman ce. If anything makes the Williams-Renault or Benetton-Ford look low-tech, this is it. Which makes it all the more remarkable to have to repo rt th at rid in g the Doohan NSRSOO fast enough to beat the cutoff time for this year's Japanese GP is incre d ibly close to rid in g a hyp er -fast roa d bike on the stree t - certainly a lot closer to real-w orld motorcyclin g than d riving an F-l car to the grocery sto re instead of your Volkswa gen. The cred it for this goes not onl y to HRC for their techn ical wizardry in making this possible, but also to Doohan for insis ting that Honda con centrate on maximizin g the ridability of the bike, rather than following th eir traditional pursuit of all-o u t power. cially believed to be 187 bhp) at 12,500 rp m. More, with less. That in tum meant that top speed was restored to 1993 levels: A t Hockenhei m. the ne w, m ore streamlined Doohan (after his off-season operation to stra ighten his damaged leg. which he'd been unab le to tuck insi de the fairi ng. th us .promoting extra drag and a 4-mph-lower top speed than teammate Daryl Beattie on an identical bike) trap ped 196.29 mph, against Bea tti e's 197.16 mph the seaso n before - not a lot slowe r than Itch's magic 2oa-mph mark set on the fuel-injected NSR in 1993. But Hond a' s e ngine d e velopment also concentrated on smoo thing out the power delivery and fattenin g the middl e- and low-rpm p owe r curve, to improve acceleration - an area the Suzuki helda definite edge in - and ridability. The result is aw esomely ad mirable: no other bike I hav e ever ridden, not even last year' s NSR500, has s uc h a de ep reserve of power d eliver ed in such a usable fashion. The H onda pulls cleanl y from 6000 rpm out of pit lane, has an almost totally linear power delivery up to rpm. iasoo

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