Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/972780
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE H onda's introduction of its V- Four-powered VF750 Inter- ceptor in 1983 created a seismic change in AMA Superbike racing. Almost overnight all other motorcy- cles in the series became obso- lete. When Freddie Spencer, Mike Baldwin and David Aldana swept the '83 Daytona Superbike po- dium to introduce the Interceptor, the handwriting was on the wall. Only the combination of Wayne Rainey's amazing riding abilities, Rob Muzzy's building skills, and a few injuries in the Honda camp along the way, helped Kawasaki come away with the '83 title. The next five riders in the standings that year were on Hondas. Yoshimura Suzuki didn't even bother with pro racing in '83. There were several factors, Suzuki had developed its superbike program around the GS1000 and now the regulations called for 750cc engines, but perhaps the main reason was they knew Suzuki didn't have a motorcycle that could compete with the Interceptor. "I think it was because of the new regulations we didn't have components to build the 750cc superbike engine," Yoshimura's Don Sakakura recalls. "Suzuki was gearing up for the introduc- the win. It might have gone like that all season had it not been for a spur-of-the-moment idea Team Hammer's John Ulrich had when talking with Yoshimura manage- ment. Yoshimura was building en- gines for Team Hammer's na- tional endurance squad. During a meeting prior to the '84 season, Hammer's co-founder Ulrich suggested Yoshimura should try to build a GS750ES for the AMA Superbike Championship. P132 tion of the GSXR, so we weren't getting much help from the fac- tory. We were pretty much on our own at that point." Then came 1984. Kawasaki inexplicably pulled out after win- ning the '83 title and that only strengthened Honda's hand. In addition to its factory team, nearly all the leading privateers in AMA Superbike switched to Hondas in '84. As that racing season dawned it looked almost inevi- table that Big Red would sweep the entire series. At the '84 season opener at Daytona, it was, once again, Hon- da Interceptor domination. The top four finishers were all Honda mounted, with Spencer scoring COOLEY'S UNDERDOG WIN Wes Cooley, flanked by Rueben McMurter and Sam McDonald, took a major underdog AMA Superbike win at Sears Point in 1984. His victory on a Yoshimura Suzuki, kept Honda from a clean sweep of the 1984 season.