RIDEFAST NOVEMBER 2021

A Little Bit Of History – Pay Attention:
Despite dominating the premier class of racing with
Mick Doohan and the NSR500, Honda was getting
a hiding in the increasingly popular World Superbike
series by Ducati.
In 1988, new rules in superbike racing allowed V-twin
engines up to 999 cc to compete. Prior to the rules
change, 750 cc four-cylinder motorcycles were the
dominant force in production based competition.
During the first two years of the World Superbike
championship, Honda won the series with their
RC30, powered by a 750 cc V-4. In 1990, however,
Raymond Roche secured Ducati’s first world title
aboard the Ducati 851. During the next 11 years,
Ducati would go on to win 8 World Superbike Championships
with their V-twins, (Honda won two and
Kawasaki, just one).
Honda was unable to win consistently, particularly
because of rival V-twins’ displacement advantage
over Honda’s V-4. So… Honda built The VTR 1000
to prove that they could outsmart Ducati on the track
using a V-Twin engine.
Farther and Son duo the Labuschagne Bos
The fact that Honda had already built a big V-twin
in the shape of the VTR1000 Firestorm gave them
a good foundation. Although the SP-1 has a totally
different engine, Honda had already encountered a
few of the quirks that you get on big-capacity twins
that you don’t find on inline fours or V4s.
With the SP-1, Honda needed more than a road bike
motor. They needed a proper superbike engine which
led to its own issues. The new bike, the VTR1000SP1,
(suffixed ‘W’ for the works bikes in WorldSBK), had
a relatively upright single crank V-twin engine layout,
four valve per head fed by two fuel injectors per
cylinder. Engine capacity maxed out at 999cc, by
regulation. Philosophically radical it may have been
but it was relatively conventional, aside from the road
bikes’ side mounted coolant radiators, brought to the
front on the race bike. And it worked well from the
very start.
During the SP-1’s development, reliability became a
concern with crankcases and conrods unable to deal
with the huge demands placed upon them through
not only the 170bhp-plus the WSB race engines were
producing, but also their need to rev in order to hit
these power figures. All with a huge 100mm diameter
piston. On the road bike this wasn’t an issue because
it only revved to 10,000rpm but the race bikes were
hitting 11,500rpm.