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Suzuki RG500: the first modern grand prix bike
Forty years ago this summer Barry Sheene secured his first 500cc world title. His 1976 success is memorable because it marks a high point for British motor sport, when much-loved…
MotoGP's last four-stroke win - before the odds were stacked in its favour
MotoGP
It’s fifty years since Giacomo Agostini became the last rider to win a MotoGP race aboard a 500cc four-stroke, in the face of racing against 500cc two-strokes
Agostini and MV in the 1970s, when the Italian rider and marque made MotoGP history
David Phipps / Sutton Images
Fifty years ago – August 29, 1976, to be exact – Giacomo Agostini rode his booming MV Agusta 500cc four-stroke to victory in the West German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, beating a grid full of ring-ding-dinging 500cc two-strokes.
The 500cc MotoGP class survived for another 25 years – roughly 220 races – but this was last victory by a four-stroke on equal engine-capacity terms.
Why? Because a two-stroke engine fires twice as often as a four-stroke, firing every crankshaft revolution instead of every two revolutions, so it produces considerably more power, which is why it came to utterly dominate world championship racing from the 1960s and 1970s.
The two-stroke’s reign was ended by increasingly strict global emissions legislation, because at that time two-strokes produced more noxious emissions. As a result, most manufacturers stopped selling two-stroke road bikes, so it made no sense to race two-strokes.
When series-owners Dorna and the manufacturers decided to re-introduce four-strokes in 2002, they knew they’d need much bigger engines to defeat the existing 500cc two-strokes, so they decided on a massive 98% capacity advantage. The 500cc two-strokes would have to race against 990cc four-strokes.
MV wasn’t going to bother, until Ago turned up with £250,000 of Marlboro money
Agostini was MotoGP’s main man when the two-stroke first conquered the championship. The Italian stallion won most of his titles with MV four-strokes during the 1960s, then switched to Yamaha to win the two-stroke’s first MotoGP championship in 1975.
Ago already knew it was over for the four-stroke, but he returned to MV in 1976 because Yamaha had decided not to run a full-factory effort that summer. In fact neither was MV going to bother, until Ago turned up with £250,000 of Marlboro money to fund the team.
At the first two GPs of 1976 – France and Austria – Ago and the MV were destroyed by the two-strokes. The eight-times MotoGP king finished both races about a minute behind winner Barry Sheene, riding a factory Suzuki RG500 two-stroke.
Agostini today with his MV Agusta at home in Italy
MV Agusta
On the drive home from Austria, Agostini stopped off at the Italian Suzuki importers to obtain his own RG500 – Suzuki had started selling production RGs to privateers at the start of the year and the bikes were already swamping MotoGP grids.
For the rest of the year, Ago’s race truck carried an MV and an RG500. Mostly he raced the RG – which made ten horsepower more and weighed 15 kilos less – but the bike was very fragile in Ago’s hands. Indeed he failed to score a single finish with it.
From the archive
Nürburgring was the last of 1976’s ten GPs (yes, the championship finale was in August!) and two things were on Ago’s side. First, Sheene had already wrapped up the championship, so he headed straight for the beach, rather than contest the last few races. Second, threatening clouds rolled across the Eifel mountains, making his torquey MV four-stroke a friendlier proposition than his peaky RG two-stroke.
Yet this was not only a pragmatic decision.
“For sure the MV would be better in the rain,” Ago remembers. “But also I knew this was almost the end of my career and my last chance to win with an MV Agusta, so it was also an emotional choice.”
Suzuki privateer rider Virginio Ferrari started from pole, but when Ago bumped his MV into life he was gone, loudly cheered by the fans, who were getting used to seeing the two-stroke have everything its own way. He completed the seven laps of the 14-mile/23km Nürburgring 52 seconds ahead of Marco Lucchinelli, another Suzuki privateer.
“That day I tried very, very hard because I wanted to win the race,” adds Ago. “I was so happy because to win again with the MV at the end of my career was very good and very emotional. That day everything was 100%: the engine, the handling, the braking and also the rider, so altogether this is why we had a very good performance.”
Barros and Jacque came so close to scoring the last two-stroke MotoGP victory at Sachsenring in 2002
Grazia Neri/Getty Images
This was also Agostini’s 68th and last MotoGP victory. MV withdrew at the end of that year, while Ago returned to Yamaha for 1977. He retired at the end of that season.
The 2002 MotoGP season was very special, because the new 990cc four-strokes went head-to-head with the existing 500cc two-strokes. There was much excitement about this duel of technology – would the four-strokes steamroller the two-stroke 500s or might the 500s be fast enough to win a race or two?
A two-stroke victory very nearly happened at twisty Sachsenring, where Olivier Jacque, aboard a Yamaha YZR500, and Alex Barros, riding a Honda NSR500, were ahead of the Honda RC211Vs of Valentino Rossi and Sete Gibernau in the final laps. Then Barros fell, also taking out Jacque.
Barros returned to his garage and said, “This bike is sheeeet!”
Barros scored the two-stroke’s best result against the 990s, riding his heart out to finish just 2.2 seconds behind Rossi at Assen, where the lighter 500’s better manoeuvrability was an advantage through the track’s high-speed sweepers.
Barros switched to an RC221V for the last few races of 2002, twice beating Rossi. Following the season-ending Valencia GP the Brazilian did a back-to-back test of the NSR500 and RC211V. He rode the four-stroke first, then switched to the two-stroke. When he returned to his garage he gave the NSR to his mechanics and said, “This bike is sheeeet!”.
The last time a two-stroke competed in MotoGP – McWilliams and the Proton KR3 at Sachsenring in 2003
Uwe Meinhold/AFP via Getty
Why so? Let Andrea Dovizioso – who won a 125cc world title and many 250cc GPs on two-strokes, before racing Honda and Ducati MotoGP bikes – explain.
“I think there are a lot of special things about two-strokes, like the sound and many other things that are nice and unique,” the Italian told me a few years ago. “But if you are on a good four-stroke you can have everything under control.
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“You cannot compare two-strokes with fourstrokes, because they are completely different worlds. Everything changes because you have engine-braking, which has a big effect, plus you have power from the beginning of the rpm. So the way you approach everything – from the first touch of braking to the middle of the corner to the first touch of the throttle – is completely different.
“On a four-stroke you are always connected. On a two-stroke, no, because there’s no engine-braking, so when you’re braking, you’re connected to the brake but not to the engine.
“And exiting corners on a four-stroke you again have everything under control. On a two-stroke you have that strange torque curve and it’s impossible to stay on the limit of that curve, so for the rider to play with the bike it’s easier and better on a four-stroke.”
Two strokes weren’t actually banned from MotoGP until 2007, but the vast majority of the grid was already on four-strokes by 2003. The last two-stroke to race in MotoGP was ‘King’ Kenny Roberts’ Proton KR3 at the 2003 German GP.
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