Return of the screamer

The VJMC’s Steve Cooper remembers…

If the 1996 season had been anything it had been prophetic and 1997’s was going to be the true validation of HRC’s relentless pursuit of Grand Prix domination. The top five places were all Honda’s with two more inside the top 10. Neither Yamaha nor Suzuki had anything or anyone that could come close to the NSR500s and their riders. So good was the machine with Doohan on board that together they won 12 of the 15 races that season;took a pair of seconds only for Doohan to fall off at his home GP Phillip Island whilst leading by six seconds. Try too hard? A moment’s lapse of concentration? Bad luck? Regardless of that unfortunate off, Mick Doohan had now won the 500 GP crown an amazing four times and, almost unheard of, had actually secured it at the British Donington GP with four races still to go! This would prove to be Doohan’s most impressive season when he scored a phenomenal 340 points with second-placed rider Tadayuki Okada ‘only’ managing 197. Arch rival yet teammate Alex Crivillé had started well and won his home GP at Jerez but following a bad practice crash at Assen mid-season he would go on to miss a further four subsequent GPs, effectively wiping out his chances. Okada had started the season well and looked to be in with a chance but Doohan had played a wild card, totally wrong-footing his Honda teammates.

Despite walking away from the more powerful Big Bang motor with water injection back in 1994, Doohan reckoned, or realised, he might need an edge for the 1997 season. Against all logic, track-proven records, data and, crucially, results, the gritty Aussie decided to revert back to the so-called Screamer motor.  This was, at first glance, a moment of pure madness – with its full-on power delivery The Screamer was the bike that had given Doohan those horrendous leg injuries. Surely only a madman would give that particular animal a second opportunity to bite back?

The truth was that The Screamer engine was ultimately snappier in its power delivery and if that gave the man an edge he was prepared to give the motor a second chance. That none of his teammates wanted to risk The Screamer was testament to its reputation and the easier going (a relative term) nature of The Big Bang motor. No one wanted to risk the tyre spinning missile for fear of serious injury!

And yet there was method in this apparent madness – the 1997 Screamer wasn’t the same beast as the original, tyre-eating, bone-breaking, 1991 machine. Substantial revisions based upon the intervening years had meant HRC’s boffins had revised the all-important electronics that were increasingly controlling key elements of the bike; they’d also learnt even more about port designs, making The Screamer’s power delivery less volatile and unpredictable. Then add in six years’ worth of suspension and chassis knowledge, and the bike’s fearsome reputation was actually more myth than fact. Doohan went on record to state that The Screamer’s power was the same as the Big Bang’s but, crucially, Doohan had demonstrated in closed season testing he was the master of the bike. In reality, all of the other Honda riders had really only ever ridden The Big Bang versions of the NSR500 and were intimidated by The Screamer’s fearsome reputation. When the likes of Crivillé, Okada and Aoki had tried, The Screamer had bitten them hard and often spat them off. Doohan knew how to ride that bike but wasn’t about to reveal his techniques to anyone who might try to beat him. His all-season dominance was therefore as much about the psychology of the apparent supremacy from the awesome machine as is was about its real potential.

All of which gave Mick Doohan a serious edge and almost certainly helped to partially demoralise his teammates and potential rivals. That Doohan had self-belief was also a key element of his now almost total domination of the premier class, but there was another rider in the wings ready to start snapping at the champ’s heels. 250 GP supremo, Max Biaggi, had signed up for the big time and what he might have lacked in 500GP experience he certainly made up for in confidence – 1998 was going to be something rather special.

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