FEATURE
After being founded in 1976, Honda Britain Racing had grown to become one of the biggest outfits in almost all areas of motorcycle sport as the 1980s dawned.
As part of Honda’s European Championship Endurance winning team (as partner with Honda France), TT Formula 1 world champion and serial winner in various British championship classes, the team was attracting some serious rider talent and by the early part of that decade it had signed up riders like Ron Haslam, Mick Grant, Wayne Gardner and Joey Dunlop.
Gerald Davison, the man who founded the Honda Britain team, was personally responsible for signing them all. He explains his very deliberate reasoning for signing such big names. He recalls: “From 1976 onwards, I was in the enviable position of being able to afford very talented riders, and I had a deep-held belief that it was more cost-effective to have the fastest riders than to always guarantee to have the fastest bike.”
The success of the Honda Britain team convinced the bosses at Honda Japan that Gerald Davison was the right man to head up the project that would see Honda return to Grands Prix for the first time since 1967, when Mike Hailwood had ridden the fearsome Honda-4. “I was asked by Honda’s second president, Kiyoshi Kawashima, to form a company to take Honda back to the ultimate prize – road race Grands Prix, but with a four-stroke,” Davison says of Honda’s decision to campaign the four-stroke NR500 when all other bikes on the GP grid were two-strokes. “For that, I set up HIRCO (Honda International Racing
