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20,000 rpm, but no... it wasn't torquey enough to run well at the lower rpm. I geared it to where I was shifting it all the time. I figure the powerband that worked for me was 18 to 21,000, so I was over-revving it a bit. We had no rev-limiters back then." By the second session, Spen- cer was figuring out how to ride the NR. He was making it work by wringing the little NR's neck. In practice, Spencer's times on the NR were promising, but no one—not even those in the Honda camp—could have dreamed what would happen in the heat race. "It was only five laps," Spencer said. "I figured anything could hold together for five laps. I knew the only hope of beating Kenny [Roberts] was to push the bike past its limits. They told me not to rev it over 20 and a half, but I thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could win something on this bike?' So, I revved to 21 to 21-and-a-half, running down the hill that is now Rainey [Corner]. There was no way I could have been competitive against the two-strokes had I ran the thing down around 13 to 14,000 rpm." Spencer somehow made the bike last and rode the NR to a jaw-dropping victory over "King Kenny" Roberts. The win rever- berated across the Pacific, all the way to Honda headquarters in Japan. "You talk about excited," Fred- die recounted. "The Japanese engineers were jumping up and down and people were running off to call Japan. You would have thought I'd won the World Championship or something. They were so excited, they said, 'Let's pack it up and go to Silver- stone.'" It almost didn't matter that the NR didn't make the finish of either race in Laguna's double- header. Like a gambler who'd hit big once in Las Vegas, Honda clung to Spencer's heat-race vic- tory over Roberts like a kudzu to a Georgia oak. Just a few short weeks after Laguna, Spencer was flown to England to race the NR in the British GP at Silverstone. The NR wasn't going to the museum after all; Honda thought it had finally found the man who could win on the bike. The trip to England didn't go according to plan. On Spencer's first try at bump-starting the bike, he jumped too high and landed on the tank with a thud, bruising his chest in the process. They practiced dozens of times until Freddie could start the bike in just two big steps. On the track, Spencer found the NR's lack of torque almost humorous. "Silverstone—big racetrack, tall gearing," Spencer said. "I'd come off the left-hander onto to Hanger Straight and there'd be a slight breeze, and I'd shift the thing and it would drop rpm. I'd learn to tuck in everything. I think I qualified pretty well, maybe top 10. In the race, I ran maybe fifth or sixth and in the points but then the valve springs began to disintegrate." After Silverstone, the stark reality hit Honda like a ton of bricks. It was plain to see that Honda had the most talented young road racer in the world in Spencer, but even Fast Freddie couldn't work miracles with the NR. Even before Spencer tempo- rarily breathed new hope into the NR program, Honda had its contingency plan in the wings: the three-cylinder two-stroke NS500. Two years later, Spen- cer would be World Champion on the four-cylinder, two-stroke Honda NSR500. "As the years have gone on," Spencer said, "the main thing about riding the NR was that I was happy to see all the Honda people so happy with that Laguna heat-race win. They were so frustrated after pouring so much effort into the bike and getting no results that when I beat Kenny, they were on top of the world, even if it was for just a short time." CN This Archives edition is reprinted from the June 18, 2008, issue of Cycle News. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. -Editor CN III ARCHIVES P126 Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives