While Barry Sheene fought off Kenny Roberts and Randy Mamola around the Le Mans Bugatti circuit, a group of Honda R&D staff hunched around the world’s two most technically advanced motorcycles in the back of the pits. They radiated frustration. Despite massive effort, Honda’s new four-stroke engineering tour de force had fallen short. It had failed to qualify for the French GP of 1979. It was one of the lowest points so far in the short and massively under-achieving life of the Honda NR500…
