1978 SUZUKA 8 HOURS
The inaugural Suzuka 8 Hours of 1978 was the making of Yoshimura. Four decades after his dad humbled Honda, Fujio Yoshimura recalls the event
Reliving the unbelievable antics of the first Suzuki with Pop’s son Fujio
The Suzuka 8 Hours has been the world’s most important motorcycle race for the past 30 years. The Japanese industry pours more money and resources into winning the event than any other race, but it wasn’t always so. The first 8 Hours grew out of the popular six-hour scene in Japan, the USA and Australia, where the Castrol 6-Hour for bog-stock bikes was one of the world’s best-known races.
Honda spent most of the 1970s out of Grand Prix racing, sulking at the two-stroke takeover and spending their money on the FIM Coupe d’endurance series, including the hugely popular Le Mans and Bol d’or 24-hour races. It was inevitable they would want to show off their successful RCB1000 endurance bikes (based around bored-out CB750 engines) at their home circuit, hence the Suzuka 8 Hours.
The race was hugely important to Honda from the outset, with Soichiro Honda turning up at Suzuka (half a mile from his biggest factory) to tell his engineers that victory must be theirs. But as much as Honda wanted to win, so did Hideo ‘Pop’ Yoshimura want to stop them.
The two companies had fallen out a decade earlier, when Yoshimura was tuning Honda car engines. “When we tuned cars in the late 1960s, we didn’t do chassis parts, so they came from Honda,” recalls Fujio, son of Pop (who died in 1995). “Sooner or later Honda stopped us getting the chassis kits. That’s when the war started, so there was a big desire to beat Honda!”
But how could a small tuning business founded on an island off the Japanese mainland defeat the world’s biggest motorcycle manufacturer?
Honda’s Suzuka line-up was impressive: its numberone team comprised endurance legends Jean-claude Chemarin and Christian Leon, who had already won three endurance rounds that year, including the punishing 24-hour street race run through Barcelona’s Montjuic Park. Back then, two riders did all the riding! The second RCB1000 was ridden by Britons Charlie Williams and Stan Woods, who had chased the Frenchmen home in the 1977 endurance series. Honda also had a further ten factory-supported teams.
“We raced our sit-up bike because it was the only thing we had – for sure, Mr Honda expected Honda to win!” grins Fujio, who was 30 at the time.
By 1978 Yoshimura already had something of a reputation. The Yoshi GS1000 won first time out in March 1978, with Steve Mclaughlin taking the laurels in the 50-mile Daytona Superbike race. “How come we were successful after only a few months with the engine? Because we had spent so much time tuning Z1 engines and the GS1000 was basically a copy of the Z1!” explains Fujio. “Suzuki were definitely more helpful than Honda and Kawasaki, who both had their own racing teams. We concentrated on engines and only had a small knowledge of suspension, so Suzuki helped us a lot with everything else. They supplied chassis parts and drawings, along with Kayaba forks and laydown Kayaba shocks. The frame was gusseted but otherwise stock. The brake calipers were also stock, with Harry Hunt aluminium discs from the US.
“Wes Cooley rode for us in the AMA Superbike series, so we asked him to ride for us at the 8 Hours and got him to recommend a co-rider. He instantly came out with Mike Baldwin, who was riding a Moto Guzzi in the US.”
Despite their Daytona success, Pop and Fujio weren’t at all confident about the 8 Hours. Their GS1000 – which produced 130bhp, getting on for double the stock output – could last 50 miles, but could it survive 700?
“We did a lot of work on the engine. We developed and cast a new two-ring piston with one compression ring and one oil ring, instead of the standard two compression and one oil. Pop hand-ported cylinder heads and handground camshafts, he spent countless hours doing that. And we made our own exhaust and fitted Keihin CR31S, which were the most popular race carbs at that time.
“We had various problems. The engine occasionally broke valve springs on the dyno, which worried us. Then the cam-chain slipper kept breaking on the dyno; we had never had this problem with the Z1, which used steel rollers at the top of the chain run, so we did some machining and fitted steel rollers. We finished that job right before we left for Suzuka. We figured it would work, but we were on a knife edge.
“The people from Suzuki and RK chains were also worried about the final-drive chain. They said it wasn’t designed for 130bhp, so RK made four special drive chains for us – they were the first O-ring chains.
“The biggest problem we had was with the clutch, which had been designed for an 85bhp engine. At Daytona, Steve’s clutch broke on the cool-off lap, right
after the chequered flag! The stock GS had damping springs in the clutch basket and we kept having problems with play between the basket and the primary gear, right up to the day before qualifying at Suzuka. I finally found the problem on the Friday – the rivets that held the basket to the primary gear kept shearing because the damping springs were too weak. Stiffer springs fixed it.
“We used the CR carburettors right up to qualifying because they made lots of power, but they were also very hard to control and used a lot more gas. Wes and Mike complained about the hesitation and so on. We also had 29mm Mikuni smooth-bores, so I swapped to them. They were a lot friendlier for the rider and used 15% less gas – a massive difference. It was the first 8 Hours, so no one really knew how far a tank of gas would go. We were very cautious and not at all confident about the race. We had lots of power, but also many problems. We heard the other teams were saying that our bike was fast but wasn’t going to last – they felt they didn’t have to worry about us.”
At least Yoshimura had probably the best tyres. “I brought four sets of Goodyear slicks from America as hand-baggage. Kenny Roberts had started doing 500 GPS that year with Goodyear and was winning races, so I talked to the Goodyear guys and told them Suzuka would be important for them. We had a set for qualifying, two sets for the race and one set spare. The other teams ran treaded front tyres; we were the only guys with full slicks.”
Of course, slicks meant ground-clearance problems, so Yoshimura cut and welded both sides of the crankcases and ran a very small magneto.
Despite all the gremlins, qualifying went well. Cooley
‘A WAR HAD STARTED. THERE WAS A BIG DESIRE TO BEAT HONDA’
and Baldwin ended up second fastest behind a Yamaha TZ750 two-stroke, a popular left-field choice for endurance racing. Graeme Crosby and Tony Hatton were third on a Yoshi Z1, Leon and Chemarin were fourth and Masahiro Wada and Akihiko Kiyohara were third on a Kawasaki KR350 GP bike. At that time endurance racing was essentially a run-what-you-brung discipline.
The TZ – ridden by American 250 champ David Emde and Isoyo Sugimoto – led the first laps, chased by the KR350, Cooley and Croz. Stan Woods went home redfaced after wrecking his RCB on the very first lap. “The TZ took off, but we knew they had to stop for gas more often,” said Fujio. “Before halfway we were leading the race, with Emde behind. Leon and Chemarin tried to catch us and dropped a valve, so both RCBS were out.”
When Yoshimura changed tyres after four hours, they nearly put themselves out of the race – or at least, Cooley did. “At that time the riders helped out doing pit work as well. Cooley was changing the front wheel with an impact wrench. It went ‘dagga-dagga-dagga’ and one of the stub bolts snapped off. So we had a huge problem – we were worried the axle could come out. The riders also knew it could be a big problem! But we couldn’t do anything about it. Luckily, there were two threads left on the bolt, so we could just about put the nut back on. In the next pit stop, we ground off part of the nut and bolt so the nut couldn’t come off.”
And there was more: one of the rearshock mounts broke at the weld. So Cooley and Baldwin were riding around, waiting for the front wheel to fall off or the rear suspension to fail. As dusk fell, the Yoshimura pit prayed for the bike to hold together. And it did. Cooley took the chequered flag with a four-lap advantage over Emde’s TZ750. Crosby took third, despite running out of fuel at one point.
After the race was over, Yoshimura discovered that they’d been even luckier. “We found that one of the frame down-tubes had broken during the race, but no one had noticed! After that Suzuki fitted rubber-mounted side plates to the production GS1000 engine, so we were already helping them.”
Fujio has no doubt about the importance of their victory in the 8 Hours. “I think this event made Yoshimura – that and our 1979 Daytona Superbike win, with Crosby. Even now, with all the racing we’ve done, it’s always dramatic to win, but that race was special because we had so many problems, right up to qualifying.
“We didn’t expect that much of a reaction after the race. We fixed our problems and we won, but all the press and all the Suzuki guys were saying that this was such a huge, huge moment! A bike like this – which looks like a stock street bike – beat the real endurance bikes made by the Honda factory. So it became big, big news and, sure, Honda didn’t like it! We’ve since won three more 8 Hours – in 1980, 2007 and 2008 – but the first was definitely the best!”
‘COOLEY AND BALDWIN WERE WAITING FOR THE WHEEL TO FALL OFF’