1997 Castrol Honda Rc45 World Superbike Champion Racer Test - Champion At Last

Exclusive track test at Sentul of 1997 World Superbike champion John Kocinski’s factory Castro! Honda RC45, compared in same-day testing with teammate Aaron Slight’s similar machine.

- Alan Cathcart

Honda’s V4-engined RC45 had a difficult birth, at a time when Superbikes were challenging 500GP lap records. It took four years for the successor to the legendary RC30 to win the World Superbike championship, but on the eve of Honda’s corporate 50th birthday, American John Kocinski delivered the prize the company’s founder Soichiro Honda coveted above all others on two wheels: the top honour in fourstroke racing for a company whose corporate and sporting success over the previous half-century had until recently been based on ever more sophisticated four-strokes.

To do this in 1997, the company’s engineers produced a virtual four-stroke GP bike that revved to nearly 15,000rpm. It was a sweet triumph for Honda, whose previous World Superbike titles had been won a decade earlier in 1988-89, courtesy of Fred Merkel and the Team Rumi RC30. Honda then sat out the Superbike class at world level for three years at the start of the decade, while they worked on their next-generation successor to the RC30. But throughout this time they continued to win Suzuka 8-Hours endurance races run to TT Formula 1 rules on the RVF750, which allowed full-on four-stroke racers with essentially just the engine castings derived from a streetbike.

The absence from contention as the Superbike class attained significant World status must have been acutely frustrating to Honda management, in commercial as well as sporting terms.