[kropotkin thinks...] - Guest Blog: Mat Oxley - Bigger bangs for bigger bucks

[Ninjette Newsbot]

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This season Marc Marquez will use a new engine configuration, inspired by Honda’s first big-bang GP bike of the early 1990s

Many moons ago I used to buy a plane ticket to Tokyo every November and then a bullet-train ticket to Suzuka, where HRC would let a few of us ride its GP bikes around Soichiro Honda’s magnificent figure-of-eight circuit.

On the very first lap of my first visit in 1989, Eddie Lawson’s title-winning Rothmans Honda NSR500 flew into a blood-curdling tank-slapper down the back straight, flat-out in sixth gear. I pulled into the pits, where an HRC mechanic fussed around the front of the bike, then grinned widely as he turned the steering damper up to maximum and sent me on my way. No more tank-slappers but now the NSR turned like an oil-tanker. And Lawson won the world title on this bike. Some achievement.