H
onda gave it its best shot.
The company gave itself two
years to dethrone the mighty MV
Augusta and Giacomo Agostini
in the coveted 500cc Grand Prix
World Championship and came
agonizingly close to doing it.
1967, with Mike Hailwood
coming within a whisker of
dethroning Agostini on the MV
for the 500cc title. They tied in
points and had the same number
of wins, but Hailwood and Hon-
da lost the title in a second tie
breaker—second-place finishes.
When the FIM announced new
regulations that limited GP ma-
chines to four cylinders, Honda,
which had famously produced
exotic, high-revving six-cylinder
four-stroke GP machines earlier
in the decade, decided to exit
stage left.
MV kept the four-stoke alive
in Grand Prix racing for the next
few seasons, but by the early
part of the 1970s, the Japanese
two-strokes were coming on
strong. Jack Findlay rode the
first two-stroke (a surprisingly
close-to-street-trim Suzuki) to
a 500cc Grand Prix victory in
Ireland in 1971, and Agostini de-
fected to Yamaha and, in 1975,
became the first two-stroke rider
to win the World Championship.
MV put up a good fight, but the
tide had turned. The wailing
smokers had taken over.
When Honda left Grand Prix
racing after 1967, it turned its
attention to production-based
racing with endurance machines
CN
III ARCHIVES
P124
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
One of the few highlights in the
short life of the Honda NR500 was
winning a heat race at Laguna Seca
in 1981 in the talented hands of a
young Freddie Spencer.
FREDDIE AND THE NR
