When Freddie Spencer points to a particular day as the highpoint of an extraordinary career that brought about three world championships, and a near constant rewriting of the record books of the time, you’d certainly be expectant of something special. The year, unsurprisingly, was 1985.
Before then, the enigmatic Louisianan had made a mockery of most operating at the pinnacle of the sport, amassing achievements and records at a dizzying rate during his teens and early twenties. No one had done so in such blazing fashion since the great Mike Hailwood two decades before.
As if becoming the youngest 500cc grand prix winner at the time at just 20 years and 196 days of age in 1982 wasn’t enough, his defeating of the legendary Kenny Roberts Sr. a year later marked the arrival of a new shade of American splendor.
Make no mistake, ‘The King’ brought his A-game to the table in ’83. But Freddie took his reputation to the stars as their ferocious year-long battle culminated in Honda’s first 500cc championship.
By the tender age of 21 and 258 days (another new record), Spencer had already earned a place among the pantheon of the greats.
Even alongside these feats, Spencer’s greatest day in the sun doesn’t disappoint: a 250cc and 500cc double at Mugello, one of motorsport’s mythical venues, in a year which saw him operating at the absolute peak of his powers. By the mid-80s it all came so easily to him he likened manhandling a 180bhp 500cc two-stroke to “getting out of bed.”
But it also signaled a time when “Fast Freddie” knew the only way from here was down. As he mentions in the preface to Feel, his autobiography, his Mugello success led to him asking: “Is this all there is?”
“That day was the ultimate day, to be at Mugello in the most harsh conditions at the Italian Grand Prix,” Spencer told me last year. “That was just as pure as it gets. It was amazing. Certainly that would be the peak of my performance. What’s better than winning two of the greatest classes on the same day?”
Freddie always made it sound – and look – so easy. Reared on dirt track ovals, he had honed his throttle control to match the ever-increasing power output of the time.
He had a supernatural feel for the front tire, was canny at using the rear brake as an early form of traction control, and had a dazzling ability to adapt to changeable conditions. In terms of raw talent, there had never been anyone like him.
Perhaps that was a reason why the media attributed his success to the supernatural. His feats defied logic. And such was his softly spoken nature and a reluctance to leave his motorhome a slew of speculation built up.
Hailing from the Bible Belt, it was assumed Spencer was deeply religious and furrowed the good book to harvest his god-given speed. By 1985, whispers suggested he even carried an oxygen tank to breathe on between bouts. Both were untrue.
With or without God’s guiding hand, he had decided mid-way through 1984 that a new challenge was necessary.
As that season lagged, and defeat to an inspired Eddie Lawson appeared more inevitable, an idea was hatched and then agreed on to add fresh impetus and hone a focus that had occasionally gone awry in 1984: contest both classes.
Youichi Oguma, Honda’s race boss, agreed and soon Freddie was looking beyond the final races and into a busy winter of graft.
Honda suitably upped the ante, ensuring its enterprise matched that of its rider. 1984 was the first year of the brilliant NSR500, but its original design was deeply flawed. An attempt to lower the bike’s center of gravity led to engineers arcing the exhaust pipes over the fuel tank.
“More a dream than a motorcycle,” as one mechanic noted. A year on and the NSR500 was completely redesigned. It reverted to ‘standard’ engine mounts while the V-four single crank motor was smaller and more compact. Honda’s all-new v-twin 250cc two-stroke, meanwhile, was light years ahead of the competition.
And it wasn’t only a case of machinery; Freddie had the personnel at his disposal. Chief mechanic and technical guru Erv Kanemoto forged his reputation on Spencer’s success. George Vukmanovich, a diminutive American with real technical pedigree, and Jeremy Burgess – latterly a crew chief who oversaw 13 MotoGP rider’s titles – oversaw the 500cc effort.
Stuart Shenton, a figure who went on to curb Kevin Schwantz’s wilder instincts and land the Texan a title in the early nineties looked after 250cc setup. It was what veteran British commentator Chris Carter labelled an “international galaxy” of expertise.
Even early into his grand prix evolution, “Steady” Eddie Lawson was a ferocious competitor that was sure to punish any slip up. He would surely produce the toughest challenge. But Spencer’s Honda compatriots Randy Mamola, Wayne Gardner, and Ron Haslam couldn’t be counted out.
Nor could reigning 250cc champ Cristian Sarron, who adapted so quickly to his Sonauto Yamaha, he was triumphant in only the season’s third race. Meanwhile the 250cc category would be no cakewalk with ex-champions Toni Mang and Carlos Lavado around.
But such was Freddie’s self-belief, sheer logistics were deemed his biggest opponent. The short time between practice sessions and races didn’t just pose a physical challenge, but a mental one, too.
“The 250cc and 500cc practices were back-to-back, there was no time in between,” he told MotoPod back in 2014. “One of the biggest issues was debriefing. I couldn’t afford to give up any time on the 500. So in testing I had to figure that out. That way I’d come in and talk about both [bikes] because I knew that’s how it’d be on a race weekend.”
His pedigree on a 500 was without question. So it came as a great relief when he tested Honda’s all-new 250 in Japan at the end of ’84. “We connected right away,” he wrote in his autobiography.
“I picked up every sensation on corner entry of every lap and formed a new union with this machine … I felt so blissfully comfortable.” It took just a handful of hours testing for Freddie to conclude this feat was possible. “By the end of the morning,” he wrote, “I had hope.”
Having shed seven pounds to get to a competitive weight for the 250, the year started well. He won an emphatic triple – the F1, 250cc, and main event – at the Daytona 200.
Lawson beat him hands down in South Africa at the first grand prix, but there was a first 250cc win, achieved with the minimum of fuss. Incredibly he won the 500cc race next time out at Jarama, despite breaking a bone in his right hand in morning warm-up.
A split exhaust dropped him to ninth in the quarter-litre affair after initially leading. Then rain dashed his hopes of a double triumph at Hockenheim next time out, meaning he carried a four-point advantage over Lawson after round three and trailed Martin Wimmer and Mang in the 250cc class.
Arriving in Italy, Freddie knew the weekend ahead would be pivotal. Along the famous 0.7-mile front straight, his NSR500 was some 10mph quicker than Lawson’s Yamaha. “That’s discouraging,” noted the Californian.
More than that, Spencer had finally found a Michelin front tire that gave him total confidence. This was where he planned to step it up. “Hopefully we can ease away at the beginning,” he noted after setting pole.
That Sunday, the 500cc race ran before the 250cc affair, an oddity for the time. Motorcourse editor Peter Clifford insinuated Honda had a say in the decision. “Honda seemed to be able to exercise quite a lot of influence in these matters and the programme was revised.” The idea, he argued, was so Freddie could attack the big race with full strength.
They needn’t have bothered, as Spencer’s first race of the day was as straightforward as they come. After shaking off Ron Haslam and Randy Mamola in laps one and two, Freddie put his head down.
Lawson, a famed slow starter at the time, botched his getaway. Spencer’s advantage was some five seconds by the time ‘Steady’ Eddie had made his way through to second.
By today’s standards, Mugello’s track surface was shocking, a mismatch of asphalt types, colors and contours. As if the bumps weren’t bad enough, grip was at a low in the unrelenting afternoon heat causing the rear end of his NSR to just slip, slide, and spin-up.
Yet watching footage from that day, it’s remarkable how effortless Spencer makes it look. His body movements atop the 500 are laconic and refined, Mugello’s endless run of high-speed chicanes taken with smoothness and total precision. He eventually led Lawson home by nine seconds.
“I won the 500 race and I’m standing there on the podium and they’re playing the national anthem,” Freddie told me in 2019.
“And they [the 250s] are literally leaving the cold grid. I popped the champagne and I couldn’t drink any because I still had to race. I looked at Eddie [Lawson], who never said much, and he goes, ‘Better you than me!’”
If race one was a cakewalk, the 250cc bout was anything but. The earlier physical exertion left Freddie feeling “as if my legs were made of Jell-O” as he struggled to fire his machine up during the push start.
As he made it to turn one, he was 19th. Hopes of a double appeared dashed. Yet the very best riders have a knack for making the impossible possible. One-by-one he picked them off until he stalked long-time leader Lavado in the closing laps. There was only going to be one winner.
No question, that was at the pinnacle. No one had won the two grand prix on the same day since Jarno Saarinen, twelve years before. He had seized the initiative in both classes and would not relent until the very end. Wealth, fame, and adulation were all his for the taking.
Yet a strange, uncomfortable feeling came over him that evening. As he inspected his two winner’s trophies in his motorhome in the Mugello paddock he was struck.
“I wondered if this was all I was supposed to know,” he later wrote. “At 23 years old it was an odd and unsettling sensation.”
Three more 500cc and 250cc doubles would follow that year. He wrapped up the 250cc title with two races to spare and sewed up the 500cc crown with victory one race later. No one – not even Hailwood – had ever managed this.
But success didn’t taste as sweet as it did in ‘83. “This was more matter of fact,” he later noted.
Little did we know it at the time, but these efforts had sapped everything out of Freddie. It was a bruising year. He struggled with foot injuries from earlier crashes, tore a tricep muscle in Austria, and ended the year by splitting his knee open at a non-championship race in Japan.
His withdrawal from the final GP at Misano on the basis of an injured thumb, when his team and bikes were there and ready to race, was a distressing portent of what was to come. That winter numbness overcame his right wrist and was never remedied.
But mentally, Freddie could never summon the same motivation. He was in competition from the age of six and racing had become more like a job than a thrill in his grand prix years.
Now, he freely admits that by the end of 1985 he was completely burned out. “I was just drained, mentally, physically, and emotionally.” He would never even approach such heights again.
How unfortunate it was to see Freddie attempt a host of comebacks in 1986, 1987, and then 1989 when he was clearly so far – physically and mentally – from his own exalted standards.
But as veteran journalist Michael Scott once wrote, “His star had shone so brightly that for it to fade was only a way of restoring that natural balance.” There could be no doubting that on May 26th, 1985 in Italy that very star shone brightest.
Photo: MotoGP
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