The Motorbike Archives

The guest of honor was late. But that didn't mat ter, because the guest of honor was Freddie Spencer, who that afternoon had given Honda the most coveted prize in motorcycle road racing, the 500cc World Championship.

Freddie was. in one of the hotel's two phone booths trying to get across his elation to friends back home in Shreveport, Louisiana. His mechanic and friend, Erv Kanemoto, was on the other hotel phone doing the same to family back in Santa Clara, California. Left to their own inclinations, the two might still be there.

When Freddie and Erv finally arrived, the applause was exuberant but polite. You don't whistle for royalty. The two took their places at the head round table, Freddie sitting next to his fiancée, Sarie.

Freddie spoke in the measured rhythmic tones he invokes for public ceremonies such as press conferences and, now, World Champion- ships. "First of all I'd like to thank my mom and dad," he began, to no one's surprise. "And all of the people here that made it possible. And a big thanks to Honda." He may have said more; that's not important. Even those few words satiated the expectant crowd, the crowd that had waited for a title since the World Championships began in 1949. Spencer had delivered. This shy, introverted, 21-year-old gentleman had done for Honda what no one before him had been able to do, not even Mike Hailwood.

His title-clinching performance in the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola was a paradox. He knew the title would be his if he just finished second to Roberts in the race. He knew he couldn't let anyone finish between him and Yamaha's Roberts, and he didn't. He was a comfortable six seconds ahead of the threat but, more important, had so much in reserve he could easily have knocked off two seconds a lap if he had needed to. So, for possibly the first time in his racing career, he was content to hang back and be the runner up. This prize was too big to toss away with a youthful show of vanity, and the championship went to "Fast Freddie" by a scant two points.

Freddie came to Honda in 1980, or rather Honda came to him. Dennis McKay, then the head of the racing department, flew east to Loudon, New Hampshire, to see what the fuss was all about. He brought with him Mr. Shimuzo, an assistant to the vice president of the parent company. They were impressed enough to sign Freddie to race the Suzuka eight-hour even though he told them he was only 17 and legally not able to race in Japan. He didn't race, but in November he went to Honda to negotiate, immediately hitting it off with McKay. McKay signed him for 1980 to ride the Superbike class. Since Honda had no competitive Formula One bike, Spencer was free to ride Erv's silver Yamaha TZ750.

For Freddie, 1980 was a pivotal year. In 1978 he won the Novice title, and in 1979 the Lightweight title. He had won some Superbike races, even a couple at Daytona, but he still hadn't proved himself on big bikes. In March, during Speed Week at Daytona, he set out to do exactly that. He was a minute in front of the eventual winner when his crankshaft went.

Keep trying. Off to Europe and a vast new world of racing. He'd traveled extensively in the U.S. but hadn't seen much. The airport-racetrack-airport routine allowed him to spend his time in homogenized hotel rooms. The Match Races in England took him to Europe, but it was the gentlest introduction possible. You see, for Spencer England was not really Europe. Yes, of course, it's a long way from Shreveport, but they speak, basically, the same language, and that's the biggest cultural barrier to overcome. On the Continent it humbles you to learn that dogs understand more of the local tongue than you do.

Another barrier is food. "I'll never forget," racer-in-limbo Richard Schlachter says. "It was Freddie's first trip to England and we were all sitting around eating steak and kidney pie in the Pentagon at Brands Hatch. Freddie was just sort of moving it around on his plate, not really eating it. Erv and I were watching him. Finally he asked what it was, and we told him steak and kidney pie. He said, "Kidneys. You mean like kidneys?" You should have seen him. The poor guy turned green."

The food and language barriers, apparently, didn't affect his riding. Roberts led all scorers, but Freddie won two races and the American team crushed the Brits. Later in the year he rode one of the old transverse-four Yamahas in the Belgian Grand Prix at Zolder, but the bike wobbled so much it split the gas tank, splashing him with fuel. At his next Grand Prix, Silverstone in 1981, he valiantly tried to make Honda's NR500 four-cylinder four-stroke look as if it were worthy while it coughed, swallowed a valve, sputtered, and died when he was running fifth. To be honest, three top riders, Barry Sheene, eventual World Champion Marco Lucchinelli, and Graeme Crosby, had crashed on the third lap. Otherwise, Spencer would have been running a not-soimpressive eighth.

His career in the U.S. hadn't exactly skyrocketed either. In 1980 Wes Cooley took the Superbike title, and in 1981 Eddie Lawson won it, riding for Kawasaki. People began to wonder whether the tales of Spencer were more hype than truth.

So when Freddie went to Europe full time in 1982, advanced notice and high expectations preceded him, though they were not exactly warranted. Although he rode ungodly fast, the bottom line was this guy had never won a major championship, and they were suspicious. He came not from California, but from a place they'd never heard of, except that it was in the same state as New Orleans, and that they had heard of. He was a recluse, he rode for Honda, he was teamed with the volatile World Champion Lucchinelli and the docile Takazumi Katayama, and he was known to believe in God; practically unheard of on the mostly atheistic Continent. He didn't drink, smoke, philander. He could not classify the major hallucinogens. What do you make of this phantom who comes out, rides like no one they've ever seen, and disappears back into the air-conditioned comfort of his motor home? Why doesn't he wander around the pits? Why isn't he a little loud like the other American riders? What, basically, is wrong with him?

The answer is simple—nothing. He races in Europe as he raced in the United States, ignoring that he's away from home. Spencer follows the same routine for every Grand Prix. He flies from home to the race at the last possible minute, sometimes qualifying on the same morning he arrives. Flying first class does wonders for jet lag. His motor home has arrived, is set up and stocked with food. His leathers are clean, his television and video recorder are set up, the propane and water tanks are full. "Hey Freddie," Mamola asked in the pits one day with Erv, Freddie's driver, Audrey, and some others standing around. "How long does a tank of propane last in that thing?" "I don't know," Freddie answered. "I guess it's the one that came with it." 'Nuff said.

The man on whom Spencer depends the most, yet is bonded to with synergy, is Erv Kanemoto. Erv has worked with. some of the best riders in the business. Gary Nixon, Barry Sheene, Mamola, Scott Brelsford, Walt Fulton Jr., to name a few. Kanemoto is one of those rare people whom everyone wants. He's worked for or been offered work with virtually every motorcycle company in the United States. Freddie first rode a Kanemoto bike in 1979. He did it again in 1980. In 1981 Erv went to Europe to work for Barry Sheene, partially as a fact-finding mission. "I knew if Freddie kept racing he would have to go to Europe because that is where all the money ends up, where all the motorcycles are, and everything else. And I knew with his ability he'd have to be there soon."

"Soon" turned out to be 1982, when he was ready for a full-time commitment. Last year he did indeed prove himself—two wins, four pole positions, four lap records. He had second place in the points standings locked up when Franco Uncini center-punched him at Hockenheim two turns from the end of the season. The collision sent him to the hospital with a broken collarbone.

In '83, though, he was back, strong, rested and looking to win. He went to the first Grand Prix of the year at South Africa and won comfortably. Roberts backed off when he knew it was hopeless; there were 11 races to go.

At the French Grand Prix on the legendary Bugatti circuit at Le Mans, Roberts was fast qualifier. He dispatched Spencer early in the race only to have a muffler crack at the halfway point. Robbed of precious horsepower, Roberts slipped backward as Spencer led the first Honda 1-2-3 sweep of the 500 class, teammates Ron Haslam and Marco Lucchinelli following.

The next week on yet another heavenly surface, the Monza Autodrome in Northern Italy, Spencer led another unprecedented finish—the first American sweep of the victory podium: Spencer, Mamola, Lawson. It might have been the top four, but Roberts ran into two very large problems. Coming up on a backmarker in the fast right-hand "Parabolica" turn, Roberts used too much front brake, lifted the rear wheel, and went skidding into the dirt on the outside of the turn. Pictures show he never let go of the clutch and remounted in fourth place only to run out of gas on the final lap. How the top contender for the World Championship could suffer such an amateurish error was baffling. "It's not my department," Roberts calmly said after the disappointing race. "But if I'd run out of gas while I was in the lead, I'd have burned it." Spencer held his biggest advantage of the year, 45-20.

Hockenheim haunted Spencer, although not physically, and ultimately his luck held. The 4.22-mile, thumb-shaped course appeared to favor the horsepower of the Yamahas, but Freddie was making a mockery of the competition when the expansion chamber on his number two cylinder cracked, burning a foul-smelling hole in his carbon-fiber fairing. He dropped back to fourth while Roberts cruised effortlessly to his first win of the season and his first win in almost a year. At the same time, a gift from the heavens poured forth—for Spencer, anyway. Spencer was fading slowly, about to be overtaken by a group of four riders, including Lawson and Mamola, when the race was red-flagged for rain on the fifteenth lap. Another lap or two and his fourth would have been a ninth; for once he liked the rain.

No one questions that the finest display of motorcycle finesse executed during the 1983 season was on the Jarama circuit for the Spanish Grand Prix. Lap after lap Spencer and Roberts went at it with ballet-like grace, probing each other's defenses, drafting and passing, waiting for the final lap. Their rear tires had been worthless for most of the race: they were riding on the thin edge and occasionally over. Spencer lost the front end once in a big way, skidding along on his knee, righting the machine, and continuing. It was the sort of magical save of which Billy Smith would be proud, and after pulling it off to a stunned audience of one—Roberts--Spencer looked over at him as if to say, "Hey, Kenny, did you see that?" Roberts was held up for an instant by a couple of no-hopers fighting for double-digit placings, and at the line it was Spencer by 10 feet.

Roberts later spoke full of feeling. "For the guy to go all the way down to the last lap—and I have to say that was the hardest I've seen someone ride on the last lap to beat me—is something. Especially in Spain, because usually no one can keep up with me even three-quarters of the way through the race. And he was tired, really tired, but the last lap was the best he did. I had a little help from Middelburg, but he still rode a hell of a last lap."

The teams moved across the continent to the northwestern part of Austria at Salzburg, for the Austrian Grand Prix. Freddie flew ahead with Sarie (a stunning beauty-pageant winner and college junior at LSU), and took time off to visit the Von Trapp Castle, where the "Sound of Music" was filmed. Roberts, at one earlier break in the season, had taken Lawson and Mamola to the concentration camp at Dachau, where thousands were gassed during the Second World War. "That's perfect," a British journalist noted. "Freddie goes looking for Julie Andrews and Roberts heads for the death camps."►