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/127974
RACER TEST 1998 Honda NSR500 By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyoi ch i Ohtanl R 8 a ~ n th e vea r that Hond a' s NSRSOO Vfour celebrated its own 15th birthday and Honda's corporate 50th anniversary by winning its 100th Grand Prix and eighth saocc World Ch ampionship (and Mick Doohan 's fifth in a row), the question that d omi nated - and perhaps even determined the ou tcome of - the 1998 season in Grand Prix racing's premier class was: Is it better to Bang or to Scream? For in typically astute fashion, maestro Mick had moved the 500cc GP goalposts by pr esenting that very conundrum to all his fellow Honda-mounted rivals at the start of the 1997 season. Then, reputedly as mu ch to shake up the opposition as for any d ynamic benefit in performance; he'd opted to forgo the seemingly more user-f riend ly Big Bang version of the NSRSOO introduced in 1992, wit h the firing intervals of all four cylinders of the si ng le -crank 112-degree V-four compress ed into a na rrow ran ge of around 66 degrees, and instead return to an updated version of the 180-degree engine forma t HRC had adopted for 1990-91 for its alI-Aussie race team of Doohan a nd Wayne Gardner. Back then , this was ch ristened the "Two-Up" by HRC's Australasian race crew (y o u' d need to be a studen t of Aussie gambling culture to know whyl) because of its crankshaft layout which sees the two right-side pistons rising and falling together followed by the two left. side ones, rather than all fou r sequentially, as was the case with the original 90degree NSR500 V-fo u r with its even . firing order, which debuted back in 1984. But because of its much mo re strident, sha r pe r exha us t not e (compared to the Big Ba ng engine), th e Two-Up was rechristened the "Screamer" on its Dooha nera d ebu t, in which form it took Magic Mick to his fou rth World crow n in 1997, leaving h is fe ll ow H ond a teamma tes wondering whether they too should follow suit for 1998. "I m ad e m any test la p s w ith -each mach ine la st w int er, beca u se Hond a gave each factory rider the cha nce to choose w hich typ e we pr eferred to race i n 1998," re call e d Do oh an ' s Re p s ol H o nd a teamm a te Ta dayu ki Okada as w e stood in th e Ja pan ese a u tu mn su nshi ne looking a t his bike a nd M ick' s , par ked in the pit lan e of Honda's spanking-new Twin-Ring Mot egi race trac k, just before ge tting the hands-on cha nce to compare and con tras t the two halves of the same title-winning NSR500 equa tio n. "To be hon est , I did not jud ge the Screamer bike to have th e best advantage at most circu its, so I chose Big Bang - especialIy after I raced with th e Screamer engine at Catalunya in 1997 and found I must make big cha nges in se tup an d suspension for it, as we ll as adopt a different riding sty le. But , after Honda did much work on overco ming the effec ts of the un leaded fue l we must u se for 1998, I think mavbe I made the wrong choic e! For sure, the effec tive ness of each type of engine va ries fro m one tr ack to another - so it's a question of judgement which is bes t for the w hol e season." ~ I was there the day that Mick Doohan test ed th e bo rn -aga in Screa me r for the first time at Eastern Cree k in 1996. In fact, it wa s the nex t thi ng he we nt and did aft er kin dl y giv ing me a master class in 30 One more #1: The N SRSOO V-four was th e World Championship-winning 500 for the eighth time, f ive in a ro w co ming in th e capable hands of Mick Doohan.