Kork Ballingtons 1981 Kawasaki KR500 Grand Prix Racer
By ALAN CATHCART
PHOTOS BY HENNY STERN,
KYOICHI NAKAMURA AND MARK WERNHAM
o other two-stroke works 500cc
Grand Prix racer from a Japanese factory is more exotic, more individual, and ultimately more mysterious than the square-four rotary-valve
KR500 Kawasaki raced by Kork
Ballington as a lead support act to
the Yamaha/Suzuki battle for world
honors for three short seasons from
1980 to '82.
Though it never won a GP race,
and only twice finished on the rostrum, the bright green monocoqueframed Kawasaki was a constant
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presence for these three years on
race grids in Europe and, in 1982, in
the USA as well, where it gave future
World Champion Eddie Lawson his
first taste of riding a 500cc GP bike,
and that year allowed him to lead the
Daytona 200 for the first time before
retiring with transmission problems.
The KR500 was a bike that seemed
perpetually on the brink of becoming
a major force in 500cc GP racing, just
as its KR250/350 tandem-twin kid
sisters blitzed GP racing's middleweight
classes in successive years for more
than half a decade. But it never quite
happened, and when Kawasaki called
an end to the project and withdrew
from GPs to concentrate on four-
n
_ _ ,.
stroke racing, the KR500 moved from
being a what-if threat to the established order, to a motorcycle that
could have been a contender - if
only...
Fortunately, a handful of the mere
dozen or so KR500s that Kawasaki
built over the bike's four years of
competition (see attached history)
have survived in private hands, and
one of these - arguably the most successful of all, which the official factory team records list as the one that
Ballington took to third-place GP finishes at Assen and Imatra in 1981,
followed by fourth at Anderstorp in
the final GP of the year - was
acquired early in 1998 by British
British collector Chris Wilson
currently owns Koril Balllngton's 1981
monocoque-chassls KA500 Grand PrIx
raceblke.
enthusiast Chris Wilson, from a private collection where it had sat
unused for more than a decade. Two
weeks later, Kork himself paraded the
bike in public for the first time in 15
years at the Assen Centennial TT
event - but, sadly, it seized after just
half a lap, thanks to faulty ignition
timing. Fortunately, also included in
the sale was a large quantity of parts
and most of a spare engine - so, as
with all Team Wilson's prized collection of factory GP racers, the KR500
