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/127754
AACER.TESr Michael Doohan's Honda NSR500 seen you've done in some of your previous tests of our bike, I never change up any higher than 12,300 rpm or so, . because even if it does rev over 13,000, firstly the power falls off, and secondly when you do change up that high, it means you hit the next gear with the motor in the fat part of the powerband, all ready to unhook the back wheel. Just ride the power curve and use the torque. You'll find it's much more-controllable." Okay, so 1'd been given poor grades from the teacher for the previous year's work. But I also had a chance to redress the balance coming up right there and then at the Catal1lIl)'a track the day after the final GP of the season, at a test day organized by HRC to replace our annual November date at Suzuka with its works racers. Only this was a press extravaganza par excellence, with so many hacks from so many countries that we were each restricted to five laps on Doohan's bike - an insufficient amount of time for a serious appreciation of what it's like to come to grips with a World Champion 500, or to ride it at even 90 percent of its normal potential, And in my case, even though Honda's sponsor Luciano Benetton did a nice job of 501lbbing in the new tires for me at a pretty respectable pace (well, he is Italian, so it's in his blood), the fact that I was the first journalist out on the bike meant I had to contend with the 10-ton truck collecting the Airfence from the previous day's race moving in the opposite direction to me on the circuit. Not your usual on-track hazard, but with no chance for a second session, I did end up learning one thing: this 19O-bhpplus World Championship-winning GP racer is as easy to ride as a street-legal superbike in these sort of conditions thanks to Honda's mastery of the electronics package which, allied with the Big Bang engine format they introduced three years ago, transforms the megapower delivery of this demonbike. Maybe Honda should consider launching a street version. Especially now that they have the By Alan 'Cathcart Photos by Emilio Jimenez Lt') 0\ 0\ ....-f OO~ I-< OJ S ~ o z 16 t is a racing cliche that defending a championship title is more difficult than winning it in the first place. That might explain Michael Doohan's slightly problematic 1995 Grand Prix season. As the man widely considered a shoo-in to retain the 500cc World Championship he finally won in 1994 for the first time, Doohan suffered a crucial blip in his GP fortunes, After comfortably winning the first two races of the season aboard his Repsol-sponsored Honda NSR500, uncharacteristic race crashes in Spain and Germany, plus a near miss on the last lap in Japan, left the resolute Aussie locked in a battle for the world title with Suzuki-mounted compatriot Darryl Beattie. But then Doohan's true grit came to the fore, as he reeled off a quartet of successive GP victories to put an OptiOI'l on the championship, a title he went on to clinch with two runner-up finishes to the suddenly competitive Yamaha ridden by Luca Cadalora, followed by a brilliant ride through the field after a lousy sta,rt to win in Argentina, The fact that he finished off the rostrum - for the first time since Jerez in 1993 - in the final GP of the year at Catalunya (the Spanish sunshine obviously doesn't agree with the Queenslander) by placing fourth, in a race won by his teammate Alex Criville in a photo finish with the third RepsoJ Honda team rider, Shinichi Itoh, didn't dent the (Right) Our man in Europe Alan Cathcart takes 8n all-too-briet spin on the surprisingly docile NSRSOO. Doohan dominance in a doubleup season of 500cc world crowns. And for Honda, after suffering a famine of SOOcc World Championships for half a decade, the satisfaction of seeing its NSRSOO becoming the bike to beat in the mid-1990s must be ample reward for their patient development of a design that in its present form is now four years old, yet still top of the class, winning nine out of the 13 500cc GPs run in 1995, Nobody has demanded a process of evolution rather than revolution more insistently than the two-time World Champion himself. "Honda used to be blinded by horsepower figures," Doohan said. "But I'm not interested in top-speed performance which you only use for the last 100 meters of the main straight at a couple of tracks. It's much more important to have the bike set up 50 that it's ridable into turns and resP'(nsive out of them. That's where you win races, and that's where Honda's development has been going for the past couple of years refining the bike's behavior rather than trying for outrageous horsepower. It's worked, We've run into a couple of hiccups now and then, mainly to do with suspension, but now the balance is pretty good and it's nice to ride, You'll see for yourseU when you get the chance in a minute - only don't overrev it like I've means to clean up the exhaust emissions, thanks to the PGM F1 fuel-injection system they developed on the bike in '93, but which hasn't been seen on the NSRSOO since the start of last season, Resisting the urge to tum left instead of right at the last turn before the Catalunya pits and head off into the mountains bordering the circuit - damn, no license plate - I headed back to pit lane for a talk with Shigeru Hattori, the HRC engineer in charge of the NSRSOO