A Suzuka corner’s hidden history

‘Spoon’, ‘130R’, ‘Hairpin’, ‘S Curves’. The corner names at Suzuka have prescriptive, unembellished quality. Except for… Degner.
For a brief time in the 1960s Ernst Degner was a proverbial thorn in Honda’s side, helping Suzuki develop a series of 50cc racing motorcycle engines capable of screaming beyond 17,000rpm, and enabling Mitsuo Itoh to become the first (and so far ...Keep reading