Cycle News

CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE I t was the rematch. Honda vs. Kawasaki, Spencer vs. Lawson. 1981 was the year Honda was finally going to earn the AMA Superbike Championship, a title they'd hoped to secure when Big H famously entered the champion- ship with great fanfare the year before. But the Honda's CB750F-based superbike was in its first year, and proved to be highly stressed to match the power of the 1000cc-based super- bike machines of Suzuki and Kawasaki. Honda left a bit embarrassed when its wunderkind Freddie Spencer only managed to finish third in the 1980 championship, behind Suzuki's Wes Cooley and Kawasaki's Eddie Lawson. So in 1981 Honda was back with a scowl, ready to do the business. The season battle was epic. Cooley was still in the picture, but by midseason it was obvious the '81 Superbike championship was coming down to Spencer and Lawson. While the '81 series had many ups and downs and various storylines, it could be argued there was no bigger race than the penultimate round of that year's series: The AMA Pro-Am at Seattle International Raceway in Kent, Washington. Spencer was on a roll coming into the race and was gaining on Lawson. If Spencer were to win in Seattle the championship would almost be a tossup at the year-end finale in the fall race at Daytona International Speedway. Ultimately the Seattle showdown proved to be the microcosm of the '81 season and the classic Kawa- saki vs. Honda, David vs. Goliath battle. First a bit of background. In 1980 Big H entered the burgeoning world of the AMA Superbike Cham- pionship with its highly touted CB750F, punched out to the legal limit of 1023cc. Honda's secret weapon was teenage racing sensation Freddie Spencer, who'd won the AMA 250 Grand Prix title in 1979 and was already the youngest AMA Superbike winner ever when he won at Sears Point in '79 when he was just 17-years-old. After his performance at the U.S. versus Britain Transatlantic Trophy Match Races in 1980, Europe was already calling. So it's easy to see why the combination of Spencer and Honda seemed to be unbeatable in Superbike before the combo ever took to the track. But something un- expected happened. The Honda CB750F in stock form was underpowered compared to Suzuki's GS1000 and Kawasaki's KZ1000, and Honda was finding it difficult to bridge the horsepower gap. American Honda was having to improvise and make the CB spin to astronomical rpm figures to make power. And in spite of being based on a 750, the Honda was not as nimble handling as starting with a smaller stock bike would imply. "Those big inline bikes revved to 10,500 rpm," Spencer remembers. "They were a real handful to ride." Honda fought reliability issues all season in 1980, and in the end, in spite of three wins for Spencer and Honda, it was Cooley and Lawson SHOWDOWN IN SEATTLE P102 Eddie Lawson celebrates the 1981 AMA Superbike Championship.

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