Everyone online calls Honda’s V5 the impossible engine that MotoGP had to ban. It was neither. It was the coldest rulebook read in racing, and it settled a grudge Honda had been carrying since 1979.

This is the real story of the Honda RC211V: why Honda built a five-cylinder engine when everyone else stopped at four, how a single line in the 2002 MotoGP weight rules made five cylinders the smartest bike on the grid, and how the humiliating failure of the 1979 oval-piston NR500 set the whole thing up. From Valentino Rossi’s title-winning debut season, to Nicky Hayden’s 2006 Valencia decider, to the day Honda quietly dropped the V5 for a V4, here’s what actually happened, and why nobody ever banned it.

Enjoyed this one? More on the machines that changed motorcycling here:

0:00 The Truth About the Impossible Engine
1:12 The Disaster of 1979
5:52 The Dawn of the MotoGP Era
6:51 Cracking the Weight Table Code
10:07 The Dominance of the RC211V
17:39 The Quiet End of a Racing Icon

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