WHY THE 750S HAD TO GO

In 2002 the sportsbike world was going through a fairly seismic shift, brought on not only by customer demand, but also changing regulations in World Superbikes and MotoGP. The dawn of the litre bikes was beginning…

On the road, after initially Yamaha followed Honda’s lead and broke out of the traditional 750cc inline four class with the 1998 YZF-R1 and then Suzuki followed suit with the 2001 GSX-R1000, the writing was on the wall for the three-quarter litre bikes. A fact not helped by MotoGP switching to four-stroke in 2002 and V-twins cleaning up in WSB.

Upset with Ducati’s dominance, Honda had already thrown their toys out of the pram and abandoned the RC45 in 2000 and developed the SP-1 and SP-2 as a show of defiance before announcing that they were going to withdraw completely at the end of 2002. Yamaha had already thrown in the towel at the end of 2000, Suzuki’s effort was effectively a privateer team with factory support (Alstare Corona) and only Kawasaki were attempting to give it a shot with a (fairly small) factory-backed squad. But their success was limited to a few fourth places. Tellingly, in the 2002 season, every single WSB race was won by a V-twin and an inline four never even made the podium. Something had to give and it ended up being the WSB rulebook…

In 2003, the WSB’s organisers allowed the new generation of 1,000cc line fours to compete against the twins in an effort to win back the manufacturers from MotoGP, effectively killing the 750cc inline four class (although someone forgot to tell Suzuki). Initially the litre bikes’ performance was restricted, but after this led to the ‘Ducati Cup’ 2003 season, the rules were relaxed and finally Troy Corser on the GSX-R1000 gave an inline four litre bike the title in 2005. While this rule change may have helped litre bike sales slightly, the fact that MotoGP was now four-stroke had a bigger impact as WSB’s crowds were dwindling and MotoGP’s (helped by Valentino Rossi’s popularity) were on the rise. By 2003 every Japanese manufacturer was competing in MotoGP (and so were Aprilia who withdrew from WSB at the end of 2002) and in 2004 the next generation of ‘MotoGP-developed’ inline four litre bikes emerged – very few of which were run as ‘officially supported’ teams in the new-look WSB championship, showing how little the championship meant to the manufacturers. Aside from Ducati of course…