Honda's NR500 Never Scored A Single Point In Three Seasons - Then They Gave Up And Won The Title

In 1977 Honda announced it was returning to Grand Prix racing after ten years away, and promised to be world champion within three years. Then it decided to do it with a four-stroke, in a class that two-strokes had already taken over completely. To make a four-stroke competitive it had to rev twice as hard - around twenty thousand rpm. To rev that hard it had to breathe. And the rulebook said four cylinders without ever saying what a cylinder was. So Honda made the pistons oval. Eight valves each, two connecting rods each, thirty-two valves in five hundred cubic centimetres. It is still one of the most extraordinary engines ever built for a racing motorcycle. It raced for three seasons and never scored a single world championship point. Its best finish was thirteenth. At Assen in 1981 it was running tenth, one place inside the points, when the ignition failed on the last lap. Then Honda gave up, built a simple three-cylinder two-stroke with less power than its rivals, won a Grand Prix with it in its first season and the world championship in its second. This is the racing story of the NR500 - not the engine explainer, but what actually happened at the races, and what the man who ended the project noticed at a circuit in June that nobody on the dyno had. CHAPTERS 0:00 An engine that should not exist 1:02 Ten years away 1:55 1977: coming back, on a four-stroke 2:46 What the rules actually said 3:41 So they stopped making them round 4:24 The target, and what it really made 5:22 Silverstone, 12 August 1979 6:38 1980: the first one to finish 7:25 Assen: the point that never came 8:21 The races it did win 9:01 Somebody proposed a two-stroke 10:14 The NS500 wins 10:49 What it was worth 11:58 One more thing CREDITS ARCHIVE FOOTAGE Short excerpts are used for commentary and historical criticism. None of it is licensed to this channel, and no claim of ownership is made over any of it. Each clip is credited on screen while it plays, and no source mark, channel bug or broadcast logo has been cropped or covered. If you hold the rights to any of this material and want it removed, contact the channel and it will be. Honda Collection Hall NR500 walkaround - SHOGO190 (   • 1970年〜80年WGP 2ストGP全盛時代にあえて果敢に挑戦した4ストGPマシン【...  ) - 19 excerpts, 71 s 1979 British Grand Prix, Silverstone - Theo den Hugt (   • Silverstone 1979 500cc Race  ) - 15 excerpts, 55 s 1980 British Grand Prix - ANTIER (   • 1980 GP 500CC - Gran Bretaña -  ) - 15 excerpts, 55 s 1982 Belgian Grand Prix, Spa - yds250 (   • MotoGP - Belgian Motorcycle 500cc GP - Spa...  ) - 7 excerpts, 25 s NS500 Honda Collection Hall 2014 demonstration run (   • Honda Collection Hall 走行確認テスト「NS500 1984年」...  ) - 4 excerpts, 14 s PHOTOGRAPHS (Wikimedia Commons) - all are museum or motor show exhibits, not race photographs: Honda NR500, Honda Collection Hall - Rainmaker47, CC BY-SA 3.0 (two views) Honda NR500, 1979 - Iwao, CC BY-SA 2.0 Honda NR500 (1979) - Rikita, CC BY-SA 3.0 Honda NR500 - Sasa21, CC BY 4.0 Honda NR500 (1982 All Japan Championship machine) - Rikita, CC BY-SA 4.0 Honda NR500, the 1982 2X, Honda Collection Hall - Rainmaker47, CC BY-SA 3.0 NR500 engine, 1987 Tokyo Motor Show - contri, CC BY-SA 2.0 (three views) Oval piston and crankshaft, Honda Collection Hall - Ux z, CC BY-SA 3.0 Honda NS500, Freddie Spencer, Belgian GP 1982 - Rikita, CC BY-SA 3.0 Honda NS500, 1983 - CC BY 2.0 Honda NS500, 1982, Honda Collection Hall - Rainmaker47, CC BY-SA 3.0 Honda NS500, 1984 - Rikita, CC BY-SA 3.0 Suzuki RG500, Barry Sheene 1977 - Rikita, CC BY-SA 3.0 Suzuki RG500, ZweiRadMuseum NSU - CC BY-SA 3.0 Suzuki RG500 Gamma, 1981 - public domain Honda RC166 - Rikita, CC BY-SA 3.0 Yamaha YZR500 (OW20) - CC BY-SA 3.0 Yamaha YZR500, 1980, Kenny Roberts's machine - CC BY-SA 4.0 Soichiro Honda, Asahigraph 1955 - public domain Illustrations are original technical drawings made for this episode. They are drawings, not photographs, and are used where no photograph of the moment exists. Music by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution: "Crossing the Chasm" "Rocket" DSPEEDY MOTO - a new MotoGP story every week.