TOP GUN!

Valentino Rossi’s victory in the 2001 Brazilian GP in Rio on his NSR500 represented the end-game for the 500cc two-stroke four-cylinder motorcycle in the premier class.

It also was a final hurrah for the ultimate evolution of what turned out to be the 500cc category’s longest-lived, and most successful, factory racer.

The 18-year career of the NSR500 at the top of the 500cc World Championship points tables makes Honda’s V4 two-stroke the best of the best. Better than the other factory two-stroke V4s that would pick up titles here and there. When Rossi won the NSR’s final race at the end of the 2001 season, the bike he was riding was the ultimate evolution of the breed which was born almost two decades before…

It could be argued that rivals in history such as the MV Agusta and Yamaha works machinery could boast a better pedigree and return, but these were all chopped and changed in their overall designs during the years they were in contention. Meanwhile, Valentino’s 2001 title-winning bike had the same essential 54 x 54.5mm single-crankshaft V4 crankcase reed-valve engine format which Freddie Spencer debuted back in 1984 as the first of the NSR500 line. He then, of course, went on to win the first of the NSR family’s ten 500cc world titles in the following season.

To underline the fact that the NSR500 was the ‘best of the best’, consider the fact that the 79 500cc GP victories scored by MV Agusta were earned with a variety of triple and four-cylinder models between 1952 and 1976, some with two-valves per cylinder, others four. But by the conclusion of 500cc GP racing’s lifetime at the end of 2001, Honda’s V4 had scored 131 Grand Prix wins in seven years less. That’s a