Barry Sheene: How I sorted the RG
Call it an XR, call it an RG. When Barry talked to CR he called it the RG and told our man Stuart about the ins and outs that this bucking Bronco put him through. A determined bit of development ensued.
Certain bike-and-rider combinations seem made for each other, to the point where it’s hard to mention one without thinking of the other. Carl Fogarty and the Ducati 916; Mick Doohan and the Honda NSR500; Valentino Rossi and the Yamaha M1. Although he also rode Yamahas for several years at Grand Prix level, Barry Sheene will always be thought of as a Suzuki man. And that’s because he not only developed the firm’s seminal RG500, he also won 18 races and two world titles on it and paved the way for the bike to become one of the most successful 500cc GP racing motorcycles of all time.
“It was a frightening machine at the time. Along the mile-anda-half main straight on the test track, the bike would stand up on its back wheel all of the time as it sailed over the gentle rises in fifth gear. Put it into sixth gear and it would rear up again and veer from side to side. It was a real beast that was almost impossible to ride in that state.” Barry Sheene had travelled to Japan in early 1974 to be shown Suzuki’s latest prototype Grand Prix racer. It was a 497.7cc water-cooled, square-four, two-stroke with rotary-valve induction that would soon become known to the world as the RG500. It wasn't a revolutionary machine; it was based on Suzuki’s 250cc RZ63 square-four of the mid-1960s, but it was powerful and, in 1974, power was everything, as Sheene’s former Suzuki team-mate, Steve Parrish explains: “In those days you weren’t looking for much else other than horsepower. As far as chassis stiffness was concerned, anything did the job, because you had no grip and no brakes. So all you needed from a chassis was something to hold the engine, forks and swingarm in place. Horsepower was everything.” It was Barry’s first trip to Japan and to Suzuki’s Hamamatsu headquarters where the entire race department comprised just 30 people. “The greatest thrill of the visit was being allowed into Suzuki’s secret room where they had this 500-4 ready to be unleashed,” Sheene later recalled. “I was the first rider ever to be allowed to try it. I felt privileged. But after doing one lap of the test track, I had to stop and think about it because it was so violently fast. It was just an incredible projectile. Over 150mph it
would zig-zag six feet either way up the main straight of the test track.” Clearly there was a lot of work to be done, but Barry’s initial feedback was well translated by Suzuki’s race engineers (he himself became fairly fluent in Japanese) and when the bike arrived in Europe for the start of the 1974 Grand Prix season, Sheene reported that it felt much easier to ride. The machine that he first tested was rumoured to produce 100bhp but the square-four engine was now detuned to produce around 90bhp to broaden the powerband. The original open-cradle frame would also be replaced mid-season by a full loop frame in a bid to improve the bike’s wayward handling. The early RG500 was a genuine hand-built prototype and, as such, its specifications changed almost constantly, but when Barry turned up at Clermont-ferrand in France for the first GP of the 1974 season, and the first for the RG500, he could have fooled anyone into thinking the Suzuki was the finished item. Sheene scored a sensational second place in what was only his second 500cc GP (his first had been on a Suzuki XR05 twin – little more than a glorified road bike – at Imatra, Finland, the year before, and had ended in a DNF) and he was beaten only by reigning world champion Phil Read and his rampant MV Agusta. So there was every reason to be confident that Suzuki had built a winner, though the bike was still far from perfect, as Barry explained in his 1976 book ‘Barry Sheene: The Story
So Far’: “There were a few headaches to overcome, such as the below-standard suspension and the tendency for the bike to go light at the front. That’s why I kept up a succession of wheelies during the closing stages of the race as the fuel tank became lighter and lighter. I know the crowds really appreciated those antics but they weren’t entirely intentional. Certainly not at 140mph in my first 500cc Grand Prix on an untried machine!” Sheene’s optimism and faith in the RG500 was soon to be shattered to such a degree that he seriously considered turning his back on racing. By mid-season he had written to Suzuki Japan requesting a test ride for his best friend Gary Nixon with a view to him becoming his team-mate in Grands Prix. Sheene had managed to score another podium on the bike in Austria (though he was lapped by Giacomo Agostini and Gianfranco Bonera on their MV Agustas) but he had also suffered a series of mechanical failures and felt that Nixon’s input would help speed up the development of the RG500. He lived to deeply regret writing that letter. During the test Nixon’s bike seized and he was struck by test rider Ken Araoka and seriously injured. Barry blamed himself and the RG: “I was so cut up about what had happened to my old mate that I gave serious thoughts to quitting racing,” he said. “If it had not been for me getting Gary fixed up with a 500, the whole sorry incident would not have taken place. That seizure on his Suzuki, which was an almost identical bike to mine, left me short of 100% confidence with the bike. Would I suffer the same fate? What were the chances of my Suzuki locking at speed? As this was still largely an experimental year for the 500-4s, those questions did crop up in my mind from time to time.” In signing for Suzuki, Sheene had turned down a dream ride at MV Agusta. It was not an easy decision: the legendary Italian firm had won the 500cc world championship for the previous 16 years in a run of dominance not seen before or since in GP racing. Barry was well aware that he was taking a gamble on Suzuki and its new motorcycle. “The MV magic was then still fairly strong – only a fool would turn them down. But I knew Suzuki’s hopes were high with their 500-4 and I had taken pride in seeing my suggested modifications make the bike perform better and better. It was my project just as much as Suzuki’s.” The RG500’S first race win came at the non-championship British Grand Prix at Silverstone at the end of 1974 (the Senior TT on the Isle of Man still counted as Britain’s round of the world championship and Sheene famously refused to ride there). For many paddock pundits that debut win had been too long in coming and Bazza couldn’t resist taunting the doubters as he crossed the finish line. “When I eventually passed under the chequered flag first at Silverstone, I couldn’t resist putting two fingers up to those who maintained the 500-4 was no good or else it was such a beast that it would kill me. That day was a great step forward for me, the bike, and the factory.” The bike was clearly improving but Barry still felt that, overall, it had been a poor debut season for the RG. “I must admit its first year was marked by countless problems,” he said. “Its handling never improved, gearboxes and drive shafts would break, and I was thrown up the road many, many times through mechanical failure.” But he wasn’t about to quit. Instead, Sheene offered to fly to Suzuki’s headquarters in Japan and stay there until he got the bike working. “When, after a disappointing year, the Suzuki factory seemed to be losing interest in the project and were on the verge of abandoning further production work, I urged them to continue. ‘That will be a good
bike. I’ll come to Japan to develop it for you and I won’t leave until I’m happy with it,’ I told the head of the race shop at Hamamatsu.” He was true to his word. “At the end of five long, hard, demanding weeks, during which change after change was made, often with no apparent improvement, the machine was eventually reborn and felt every inch a winner.” Just how skilled Barry was when it came to developing a motorcycle has been the subject of some debate. Few people are better placed to answer that question than his long-time mechanic in the Suzuki GP squad, Martyn Ogborne. “Engine-wise, Barry was good at setting the carburation to suit him, but give the bike to someone else and they couldn’t ride it. He had the ability to set the chassis up – to a point – and was fairly good with the transmission, but he wasn’t as methodical as some other riders, like Randy Mamola and Pat Hennen. They were real thinkers and would set the transmission to make up for any carburation problems, while Barry would tend to ride round a problem by using the carburation. He was good at moving the power around to suit him. In general, I suppose he wasn’t the greatest thing since sliced bread when it came to technical expertise,p but he was bloody y good all the same,” Ogbourne said. Sheene’s best mate, and 1977 team-mate, Steve Parrish offers another insight into his developmental and set-up abilities. “He was phenomenally good at convincing himself that whatever he did to the bike made it faster – he had so much self-belief. He could change his wheelbase and go half a second a lap faster! He was brilliant at developing a bike that was right for him; whether he was brilliant at developing a bike for everyone is another matter. I know that Pat Hennen used to set his bike up very differently to Barry. Barry and I had similar riding styles – except that I was slower than him – so I found his set-up worked pretty good for me.” After finishing sixth overall in the bike’s debut year in 1974, Barry took his, and the Suzuki’s, first genuine GP victory at Assen in 1975 – a feat made doubly impressive given that the win came just a few months after Sheene’s massive and well-documented crash at Daytona, when his rear tyre blew out at 175mph. Barry won a second GP in Sweden but they were the only two highlights of an otherwise disappointing year, his RG500 letting him down so regularly that he failed to finish any other GP that season and could only manage sixth place in the championship again.
By 1976 Suzuki Japan had withdrawn from racing and left Suzuki GB to run its GP effort. Sheene still received ‘special’ bikes from the factory that were superior to his team-mate John Williams’ machines; they weighed eight kilos (18lb) less and made 103bhp as opposed to 100bhp, much to Williams’ chagrin. Barry’s bikes also had gas forks and specially-made lightweight calipers that improved handling but, as he said: “I still had to ride the bike to the maximum. If all my rivals had been aboard the same works RG500 as mine, I’m positive the results would have remained the same.” Parrish remembers the favoured treatment Sheene received as Suzuki’s golden child. “Whatever he wanted from that motorcycle, the Japanese would do. Barry had a lot to do with head angles, offsets, seats, handlebars, where the gearshift was going to be – all that stuff. He was always sending telexes to Japan asking for a new yoke or a different swingarm. His dad Franco did a lot of work bracing up swingarms and frames but generally anything Barry needed he would get Tady, his engineer back in Japan, to make for him. Only Barry received that kind of treatment. His team-mates just got what they were given.” Suzuki also started selling production RG500 racers in 1976 and they proved to be so competitive that RG500S – both customer and factory models – filled the top six places in the world championship standings at the end of the season. In fact, the only nonSuzuki in the top 10 was Giacomo Agostini’s MV Agusta in seventh place. But top of the pile, for the first time, was Sheene, who took his first world championship with four rounds to spare and didn’t even bother turning up to race at those final meetings. He took the title in Sweden after an extremely reliable year for the RG500, and in true Sheene style, he wasted no time in celebrating. “That night we drank our way through 30 bottles of champagne – and at Swedish prices of £14 a bottle!” Barry was also quick to praise the bike he had worked so hard to develop. “My Suzuki was something special and only once did it falter (with fuel starvation problems). Every other time it went beautifully, although we had to work continuously on the machines. There were, of course, plenty of items replaced, like gearboxes, through the season.” Ogborne remembers ‘working continuously’ on Sheene’s bikes. “Barry was very much involved with working on the bikes and very focused on how he wanted the bike set up. He didn’t get so involved when we had the engine in a million bits, but he’d give us ridiculous lists of what he wanted doing to the bike. Sometimes there’d be 40 things on the list and we only had an hour to work on the bike. I’d say: ‘You’re f***ing mad. We’ve got an hour – pick out your top 10 you prat!’ He wanted us to do eight hours work in one hour!” The Suzuki had been so dominant and reliable in 1976 that the factory opted not to make any major changes for the following season. Apart from some more aerodynamic bodywork, the 1977 bike remained much the same as the previous model. “It was generally felt that the disc-valve Suzuki, with minor alterations to the suspension, had shown itself to be good enough the previous year not to need major surgery,” Barry said. And it was. He went on to enjoy his most successful year ever in GPS, taking six wins and his second, and final, world championship on the by now well-sorted RG500. The pairing would never again be so dominant. For 1978, Suzuki employed a stepped cylinder arrangement that lowered the RG’S centre of gravity, improved handling, and produced a better power curve. But it wasn't enough: Yamaha’s 120bhp TZ500 in the hands of Kenny Roberts proved to be more than a match for the Suzuki and the American would take the world title at his first attempt. It was during that 1978 season that Barry’s relationship with Suzuki started to sour. During practice at Imatra he had told his Japanese mechanics he felt sure that one of the crankshaft bearings was on the brink of breaking up. According to Sheene, they didn’t believe him, and refused to strip the bike. When the bearing failed on lap five of the race, so too did the implicit trust and mutual respect between Barry and the Suzuki factory that had helped make the RG500 the success it was. Sheene may have lost the title to Roberts that year, as he would for the next two consecutive years, but what annoyed him more was when Suzuki began listening to his new team-mates, Wil Hartog and Virginio Ferrari, about the direction the RG should take for the 1979 season. For Barry, Suzuki’s number one boy for so many years, and the man who had led development of the RG500 since the beginning and taken it to two world titles, it was all too much. He took three wins in 1979 and finished third
in the championship before announcing he would be running his own team in 1980 riding customer Yamahas. Sheene would only win one Grand Prix (Sweden, 1981) in his three-year stint with Yamaha and by 1983 he had decided to return to Suzuki. But having burned many bridges at the factory, and suffered another near-fatal crash at Silverstone in 1982, he was no longer in a position to command factory machinery. The RG500 had rediscovered its winning ways with, first, Marco Lucchinelli, and then Franco Uncini winning the championship in 1981 and 1982 respectively, but Barry was up against it on a non-works bike and enough metalwork in his legs to fill a Meccano set. He still rode his heart out and scored an astounding third place – his final GP podium – in the wet at South Africa in 1984, but the RG was on the wane in the face of Honda’s new NSR500 and Yamaha’s reed-valve OW76. Sheene rode his last-ever race on a Suzuki RG500 at Donington Park on September 22, 1984, in the televised ITV World of Sport Superbike Challenge. Playing to the crowd as ever, he came from nowhere on the last lap – over two seconds behind – to draw level with Honda’s rising GP star Ron Haslam. The two were so close over the finish line that it took some time before a result was announced. The photo-finish verdict eventually went to Haslam, but Barry had proven that, even battered and bruised as he was after so many horrendous crashes, both he and the bike he had first ridden in a test in Japan exactly 10 years before, were still capable of taking the fight to the new breed of Grand Prix riders and the Hondas that would eventually usurp the RG500’S crown as the greatest racing motorcycle ever built.
Perhaps not the perfect day for pre-season testing at Donington Park... This was Barry’s first official day back on the Suzuki after three years away on Yamahas. Despite the photography, it really wasn’t a frosty reception at Donington.