Kenny Roberts rode a Yamaha OW48R
to the 1980 500cc World
Championship, 20 years earlier than
his son, Kenny Roberts Jr. Alan
Cathcart recently had the opportunity
to sample a restored version of the
bike at Assen in Holland.
Yamaha race shop. That should have
told me something - but I was so
thrilled at getting hold of what was a
works replica of the current 500cc
World Champion machine, and
undoubtedly the best IT bike I ever
rode, I didn't ask about what I'd seen.
Maybe I should have.'
Thanks to the attention of his quality team of race mechanics, headed
by Kel Carruthers and comprising
Nobby Clark and Trevor Tilbury, that
wasn't a problem that Roberts ever
encountered in a race in 1980 - and it
also didn't feature on the impeccably
restored reverse-cylinder bike at
Assen, on which a gearshift linkage
kept going over dead center before
Everett fixed it, and underdamped
fork settings wh ich had the front
wheel chattering a little on some of
Assen's banked, sweeping turns,
were all there was to worry about.
With l8-inch slicks now unobtainable, Wilson runs his bikes on treaded
Avon race tires, which probably have
at least as much grip as the
eye
I
•
n
I!!
_
so
• JANUARY 17, 2001 25
