A happy Spencer as he walks...
A happy Spencer as he walks back from the victory podium through the crowd after becoming the youngest-ever winner of a 500cc Grand Prix at 18 years old.
When the biggest motorcycle company in the world decided to re-enter the 500cc World Championship after 25 years away, they could have had almost any rider. Honda Motor Company chose a shy, reclusive, baby-faced 20-year-old from Shreveport, Louisiana who had very little international experience, but who was so blindingly fast that he couldn’t be ignored.
Freddie Spencer was a factory Honda AMA Superbike rider in 1980, winning Road America for Honda on his first try, but even before then he’d announced his arrival. “It was obviously where he was going,” said Ian Mackay, who would later work for Honda Motor Company. “When he beat Gary (Nixon), if there were any doubters they should have been dispelled. You don’t beat Gary Nixon at Loudon. (Spencer) was virtually a child.”
The more impressive victories came in the Transatlantic Match Races. On April 4, 1980, the 18-year-old rode a Yamaha TZ750 tuned by Erv Kanemoto to victories in both legs at Brands Hatch, beating world champions Kenny Roberts and Barry Sheene, among others. Everything changed for Spencer that day.
Spencer rode a replica of...
Spencer rode a replica of his 1980 Honda CB1000F AMA superbike during the Biker’s Classic. “It’s just like I remember…there’s nothing really good about it,” laughed Spencer, “but it’s fun.”
Honda was so anxious to keep Spencer that they let him ride a Kanemoto-tuned TZ500 in his Grand Prix debut at Zolder, Belgium in 1980. The next year he was one of the few riders to race Honda’s oval-piston NR500, which he did in the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (Spencer worked his way up to fifth place before disintegrating valve springs ended his day). All of this was a prelude to 1982.
Kanemoto laid the foundation for Spencer’s Grand Prix career by tuning Barry Sheene’s private Yamaha on the grand prix trail in 1981. That summer, Kanemoto and Spencer were given a glimpse of their future by the venerable Yoichi Oguma, the Honda racing boss at the time. Oguma flew to the U.S. with Takeo Fukui, who would go on to the top job at Honda Motor Company, with the three-cylinder engine that would power Honda’s NS500 the next year.
“Mr. Fukui brought it to American Honda in July 1981,” Spencer recalls. “Erv and I were sitting on one side of the conference table and Mr. Fukui and Mr. Oguma were sitting on the other side and they lifted the cover off the small engine crate sitting in the middle of the table and it was the three-cylinder engine. That was the first time we saw any part of the NS500.”
Spencer became the youngest-ever premier 500cc Grand Prix winner when he beat Barry Sheene and Franco Uncini at Spa-Francorchamps on July 4, 1982. That he was going to win was only a matter of time.
Just some of the many former...
Just some of the many former world champions on hand at the Biker’s Classic included Doug Polen (far left), and Phil Read (cap) and Jim Redman (right).
Just some of the many former...
Just some of the many former world champions on hand at the Biker’s Classic included Doug Polen (far left), and Phil Read (cap) and Jim Redman (right).
Spencer rode a replica of...
Spencer rode a replica of his 1980 Honda CB1000F AMA superbike during the Biker’s Classic. “It’s just like I remember…there’s nothing really good about it,” laughed Spencer, “but it’s fun.”
In the first race of the 1982 season in Argentina, Spencer finished 1.37 seconds behind Roberts and Sheene to take third. He would be on the podium again in Misano, but small problems kept him from finishing every race. On his first visit to Spa, he fell in love.
“I love the area,” he said. “I love the way it looks around the Spa area and the people and I have such great memories and that’s why I look forward to coming to this event.”
The event he was referring to is the Biker’s Classic, an annual gathering of world champions and vintage racers that was celebrating its tenth anniversary this year with a Superbike theme (although there were plenty of Grand Prix machines as usual). There were a number of motorcycles for Spencer to ride, most of which were replicas. The one true ex-Spencer machine was the Two Brothers Racing Honda RC30 that he rode to victory in the AMA Miami street race in 1991.
In 1982 Spencer was something of a mystery. He was too young to be this fast and different from the Americans who’d come before him, Roberts, Mamola, Hennen. He was quiet and religious, with a thirst for Dr. Pepper. He spent much of his time in his motor home. The mythology suggested he stayed on Shreveport time at the racetrack and watched Elvis videos. The truth was different. What wasn’t in dispute was his speed.
Spencer rides through the...
Spencer rides through the famed La Source hairpin at Spa on the replica CB1000F superbike.
The famous dauntingly fast...
The famous dauntingly fast Eau Rouge section of Spa-Francorchamps, with Middleburg (4) leading Sheene (7) and Crosby (5), with Roberts (3) leading the second group during the 1982 race. Spencer is at the tail end of that group as he began to work his way forward on the underpowered but agile NS500.
Images of Spencer from 1982 show a cherubic face with bangs. Thirty years on he still has the Louisiana twang, but he’s filled out a little and has a goatee. Spencer has been through a lot since he won his last 500cc World Championship in 1985.
Spencer aboard the two-stroke...
Spencer aboard the two-stroke triple Honda NS500, Honda’s first two-stroke Grand Prix racebike that needed a little work. “I was just hanging on there,” recalls Spencer. “It didn’t have a lot of torque and acceleration.”
“Yes, I had some wrist problems,” he said. “I had a nerve problem in my wrist that really we could never get fixed. And unfortunately it really affected my ability to be able to ride at an elite level. But I had an incredible career. I always look at things. I’m really fortunate to be able to do what I was able to do and to accomplish that and so I’m thankful for that.”
Spencer doesn’t dote on the past. The fans at Spa are here to see him and he’s engaging and willing to sign autographs until his arm falls off.
Most people have a hard time remembering details of events so far in the past, but not Spencer. He remembers everything, every gear change, every tire, every bump in the track, every lap time.
The start of the 1982 Belgian...
The start of the 1982 Belgian Grand Prix, with Graeme Crosby (5), Randy Mamola (2), Barry Sheene (7), Jack Middleburg (4), Marco Lucchinelli (1), Marc Fontan (9), Kenny Roberts (3) and Kork Ballington (11). Winner Spencer is behind Lucchinelli.
In qualifying for the 1982 Belgian GP the late Dutchman Jack Middleburg was on the pole with a lap of 2:39. Spencer was second. He picks up the story. “In the race, got a pretty good start, but I was maybe about fifth or sixth and I felt really good in practice, but the thing about this track is it’s so big,” he said. “And you can carry a lot more speed than you realize and I remember probably in practice improving my lap times maybe over the session by four or five seconds, which is not uncommon. But in the race, about the third lap, I really started getting comfortable using the whole track. And the amazing thing was I didn’t really feel like I was pushing any harder. I was just using what was there of the racetrack, so I would just carry more speed. That’s kind of like riding this inline around here,” he said in the garage he shared with one of the vintage Honda superbikes he’d ride that weekend, “versus, the other bikes have more power. But I just know I can carry speed. So about, like I said, the third or fourth lap, and Kenny was in front and I got in second and ran him down and got in the lead and then he faded back.”
It wasn’t the three-cylinder that suited the track, it was the track that suited Spencer that made him so fast.
“It just…this racetrack really suits me,” said Spencer. “I love high speed technical stuff. I’m glad that most of the middle part is not like the road course. I mean you can carry speed through there, but that’s just matter of being willing to hit this point and that point and that point and just keep the throttle on, which I would certainly try to do. But the parts that I like were the parts where you connect the sections, like I said, downhill, off camber and it really required a lot of precision.”
“The three-cylinder worked well because of the corner speed that I could carry. Because, really, on a track as high speed as this — like Silverstone, it wasn’t that great, as we know later in the year. I mean, I was just hanging on there, because usually at that time, and that was the last year I really raced it, as much as people talk about the acceleration, really it didn’t have a lot of torque and acceleration, most of the time would work out OK, because I had to pick the throttle up so early and get it moving. And if the gear ratios would keep it close enough together. So it was a good balance here of high speed, but also technical.”
After Spencer won the race, he stopped quickly and tried to make a U-turn on the pit lane and tipping over at walking pace. “One of the most famous kind of pictures is when I turned around I fell over. It was on such a slope here and I went to put my foot down and (tipped over), all the fans and stuff were running down (to help me).”
The fans still flock to Spencer. Some things never change.
KENNY ROBERTS ON SPA 1982
In 1982 Kenny Roberts made the first big tire change of his career. Having won three 500cc World Championships on Goodyears, Roberts was reluctant to switch brands. But he’d lost the 1981 title to Marco Lucchinelli, whose Michelins were clearly superior.
Roberts tested both Dunlops and Michelins, the Michelins at a two-day test at Laguna Seca Raceway. The Dunlops felt more like Goodyears. “It moved around. You could feel it,” Roberts said. There were other reasons — “I think that the Michelin guy at that time was a little arrogant,” he said — so he went with the British rubber.
“I remember Freddie asking me, ‘Why did you go to Dunlop?’ I tested Michelin and I couldn’t even spin it. I said ‘The tire was so stuck I felt that if it ever came unstuck I’d be down the road not even knowing why.’ And that made me real nervous, because I was used to Goodyears that were moving around all the time.”
Roberts rode the OW60 in 1982, “the bad one,” he calls it. At Spa he remembers shredding the tire in about eight laps. “You couldn’t keep tires on it,” he said. “It was hard on the tire, because the suspension was not right. And it had a very quick accelerating motor and it just burned the tire up. Then you’re in for the ride of the your life. About halfway through the race, you’re doing everything you can to not crash.
“What I remember about it is just trying to get it out of the chicane, because out of the chicane you’re still turning at Spa and I couldn’t accelerate out of the chicane because it was on its side where the tire was gone.
“The thing was either on or it was off. I was trying the back brake, I was doing everything I knew how to do to try to get the thing to go around the racetrack; I just couldn’t do. So I don’t remember even racing with Freddie at that race. I was in such trouble as it was. Them guys were all gone. I raced them four or five laps, Franco (Uncini) and all them guys. Then they just left.”
JEREMY BURGESS ON SPA 1982
Jeremy Burgess was Randy Mamola’s crew chief at Spa in 1982. This was before he moved to Honda in 1983 to work with Erv Kanemoto and Spencer, where they’d win three world championships. This was before Mick Doohan, with whom he’d win five 500cc World Championships. And before the seven premier class titles — one 500cc, six MotoGP — with Valentino Rossi.
“We were having a pretty bad year that year, because we started out on Dunlops, because it was an English Suzuki team, as they always did,” Burgess recalls. “And Dunlop had built that year for Daytona an enormously big rear tire which we took down to Argentina for the first Grand Prix and Randy (Mamola) struggled there. And actually the thing I remember now about the Spa race were Randy’s comments in practice about following (Graeme) Crosby, that Crosby could change his line in the corner — had a lot more agility — whereas the Suzuki with the big Dunlop was just a one-line bike. And the agility of the NS Honda that Freddie had, obviously, everybody knew, and we found out a year later how good it was.
“And, yeah, Freddie was fast. What can you say? He was always fast on it. He was good all year. They had some silly problems with the bikes from time to time, but…the next year all of that was tidied up fairly quickly and the is rest history, so to speak.”
FRANCO UNCINI ON SPA 1982
History may have been different had Franco Uncini not had a problem in the race. The Italian was leading at Spa when he developed a large blister on the side of his front Michelin tire. It grew to the point that it was hitting the front fork tubes on his Roberto Gallina Suzuka “and then there was a vibration and step-by-step I finished. I insisted. I didn’t care about what’s going on. I said, ‘I don’t care.’ I keep going until I have to stop.”
Uncini finished, but not in the lead. Eventually he was passed by both Spencer and Barry Sheene, dropping him to third.
“They normally work good,” Uncini said, a fact that both Spencer and Kenny Roberts could attest to.
Roberts remembers telling crew chief Kel Carruthers, “I would come in and say, ‘There’s no way I can do that. There’s no way that that tire’s going to stick the way that he’s putting it in there.’ And so we were battling.”
Why the tire developed a blister was never known. “Maybe because was a little bit higher speed on that racetrack or some defect on that tire,” Uncini speculated.
“If you see the picture of that time, I was crying on the podium,” Uncini, who’s now the IRTA Riders’ Safety rep, said recently. “I was really serious and was very upset and nearly to cry. Honestly, I’m sure I can guarantee that when I was in the airport I was crying.”
The tears would be replaced by smiles in due time. Uncini won five of the eight races he entered that year and the 1982 500cc World Championship.