25 Years of GSX-Rs | Race Bred

The world champion endurance racer that inspired the GSX-R

Endurance racing is rightly regarded as one of the most demanding forms of motorcycle sport. Bikes run at race pace for up to 24 hours, stopping just long enough to take on fuel, fresh tires and change riders. Endurance events are a brutal test of mechanical durability, and Suzuki excelled at this discipline in the early ’80s. And the most successful bike of that period—Suzuki’s world championship-winning GS1000R/XR41—served as the prototype for the GSX-R750.

A lighter bike is easier on tires _and _riders, so Suzuki toiled to make the XR41 as lightweight as possible. The welded aluminum frame with trick, single-shock rear suspension weighed less than half as much as the steel, twin-shock chassis of the XR69 it replaced. And since endurance racing subjected the air-cooled engine to such extreme heat stress, engineers incorporated oil jets aimed at the bottom of the pistons to cool this notorious hot spot. These race-bred innovations were applied directly to the GSX-R750 production bike.

The XR41 was immediately successful. HB International/Suzuki France riders Herve Moineau and Richard Hubin won decisively at Suzuka, Silverstone and Jarama on their way to the 1983 FIM World Endurance Championship. A rule change in ’84 reduced the displacement limit to 750cc, and this was the bike that evolved into the GSX-R750 that debuted at the Cologne Motor Show in September of that year. The production bike was remarkably faithful to the championship-winning racer—so faithful that the GSX-R750 won its international endurance-racing debut at the Bol d’Or in ’85.

Dual headlights are a dead giveaway: The production GSX-R750 is basically a street-legal version of the HB Suzuki XR41 that won the 1983 FIM World Endurance Championship.