VOL. 51 ISSUE 2 JANUARY 13, 2015 P65
came to getting hold of any new
model in time to do meaningful
development on it before the
start of the season. Easter came
early in 1985, with the MCN
Superstock series kicking off
on April 5 at the Brands Hatch
Good Friday meeting as a
support class to the Transatlantic
Trophy USA/UK series, which
Cox also promoted. But the first
GSX-R750 shipment from Japan
had barely docked, meaning
that even if they were lucky
enough to get hold of a bike,
customer teams had no time to
do much more than stick race
numbers on a stocker, whereas
the Heron Suzuki team had taken
the precaution of flying the first
of the new bikes straight from
Japan to the UK early in the
New Year, giving plenty of time
for mechanics Paul Boulton and
Nigel Everett to prep it up, and
Mick Grant to go testing on the
first production GSX-R750 in
Europe at Donington Park, before
the start of the season.
Time was vital in making the
new Suzuki Superstocker at all
competitive, let alone a winner,
recalls Paul Boulton. "We'd read
all the factory literature quoting
100 bhp, so when we got just 73
bhp at the gearbox after running it
in, you can imagine the reaction!"
he says. "So we double-checked
it on another dyno—same reading.
However, blueprinting the engine
and progressively modifying it
within the rules brought it up
to scratch—we fitted a factory
titanium race exhaust off the
TT1 bikes, removed the airbox,
increased main jet sizes from
97.5 to 130 on the stock carbs,
cleaned up the cylinder head,
raised compression from the
stock 9.8:1 to 10.7:1, removed
the generator and ran a total loss
battery—and got a genuine 96
bhp at 10,500 rpm, which was a
bit better!"
Mick Grant takes up the
story. "I'd been riding full time
for Suzuki since 1982, and
I really enjoyed racing the
RG500 two-stroke GP bike,
with the TT Formula 1 as my
four-stroke ride. But for 1985,
Denys Rohan [then the boss
of Heron Suzuki - AC] wanted
to promote the new GSX-R750
by getting me to ride it in this
new Superstock class, which
I absolutely did not want to
do. I could see that with stock
motors there'd be lots of young
nutters out there trying to make
a name for themselves by
beating Mick Grant with a bike
they could put on the grid for
8,000 dollars. Well, in the end
we did a deal, and I agreed to
do the series against my better
judgment. But then we got
the bike early, set it up, and
I won the first four races on
the trot with it, after which it all
seemed a bloody good idea! It
was a lovely thing to ride, and
extremely reliable, built like a
Swiss watch – I also won the
Isle of Man Production TT on
a box-stock version ahead of
three other Suzukis, and it was
rock solid everywhere and rode
bumps well. The only time I fell
off the Superstocker was after
just four laps in the pre-season
Donington practice, and I
remember thinking as it flicked
me in the air, 'what am I doing
riding this piece of crap?!' It
turned out Suzuki had used too
coarse a thread on the oil filter,
Not long after its introduction,
Mick Grant went out and won
the MCN Superstock British
Championship on the GSX-R.
