Last July, at the USGP, Roberts presented Soup with a trinket—a piston and rod from the Roberts V5 MotoGP engine. He also had suggestions of a place we could display it. We're happy to note no one would see it there, though. image by tim huntington

After nearly a year of having to write and say the words "Roberts Honda" it still hasn't shaken the shell of weirdness.

King Kenny Roberts was associated with just one manufacturer for his entire racing career—Yamaha. He was on a Yamaha shortly after his rookie roadrace and for the most part stayed on Yamaha until after he retired. Showing just how deep Roberts' relationship with Yamaha ran, he ran the factory GP team after he retired from racing.

There was a time where just seeing an XR100 play bike out at Roberts' house drew snickers. A Honda at Roberts' place. In the name of all that is holy ...

Fast forward to the end of the '05 season. The Roberts KTM deal cratered in a big and public way and after nearly a decade of running their own machine in Grand Prix and MotoGP, the Roberts group looked to be on life support. Lack of a sponsor big enough to float the boat was corroding the Roberts team into a rusty hulk of its former self.

Even on the amateur level racing burns cash and the burn rate builds exponentially once you reach the world championship. Roberts spent millions on a series of two and then four-stroke engines for his GP bike; in the end he seemed unwilling to put more of his millions in the engine manufacturing pot.

"We were close to turning out the lights," Roberts said last March at Daytona.

Prayers to the Patron Saint of Tuning Forks had no immediate effect.

Could it be, that Roberts would leave racing not of his own free will? This from a man who stood by a garbage can at Daytona in 1984 and contemplated retirement this way: "Maybe I'll be back; maybe I won't. I might retire. I might not. We'll see what I feel like doing." A master of his domain, indeed. Yet this trouble had a air of permanency. Shutting down a business makes it that much harder to try and turn it back on. Employees leave. Relationships with suppliers need to be re-formed. That the lights were going out in Roberts' shop in England wasn't just a metaphor.

However, sometimes in life, when the days are darkest, help comes from the most unlikely of places.

HRC—for the better part of three decades the arch-enemy of Roberts with and without Yamaha—made it known that if it was engines that Roberts needed, then they'd be happy to supply him with RC211V engines. Team Roberts would have to build their own chassis, but after nearly a decade they are well-versed in welding and extruding.

Initially Roberts thought the offer was a ruse, but in exploring the deal, KR discovered that HRC really was willing to supply him with engines, and, incredibly, the deal came with few strings. Most OEMs won't let anyone not in their employ see details inside their GP engines. HRC, according to Roberts, didn't seem too concerned with who saw what.

Soon the highly unconventional effort was rolling, with Kenny Junior as rider and the entire effort on Michelin tires-the latter a detail that should not be discounted.

"It was either get everybody focused, or start letting some people go. Junior stuck in there and got them all focused, and drove that focus to building a better motorcycle."

Roberts was somewhat skeptical at Daytona as to what they might accomplish in their first year. That was not an uncommon attitude within the team.

"We had, to a degree, forgotten how to win," Roberts said after the season ended. "We had been so wrapped up in keeping things running that we sort of fell into a rut of trying to solve basic problems."

"It started out on a bit of a high, and then it went to a real low. At China we were like, 'Man, what is happening?' We kept at it. We couldn't just quit. And it turned around in a very, very short time, and all of a sudden we're racing with the big boys. For us, we learned a lot. We know a lot anyway, but we learned a lot, and I'll tell you, it really inspired our racing team. Because our racing team kind of forgot what it was like to go for pole position. It sounds odd, but some of the guys in our squad hadn't ever seen a pole position or a top three. It's been a long time since we looked at our bike leading a race, let me tell you. And you lose a lot. It's funny to say that, of course, but you do. You get sort of complacent with it, and you just kind of keep trying and keep—but it's not at the intensity level that brings the best to the table. I think Junior saw that right off, and some of the low points we had in the beginning was simply because of the intensity level, and everybody in the team, including myself, wasn't good enough. That's one thing that he brought to it, is a vision of "Hey, we're not good enough. In the pit. We're not good enough when I'm out there riding around. That's one thing that we just forgot about. That's something that we just neglected."

"It was either get everybody focused, or start letting some people go. Junior stuck in there and got them all focused, and drove that focus to building a better motorcycle."

Junior was nearly immediately fast. The package was clearly ready to push to the front—in short order as fast and at times looking like a better all-around package than the factory HRC bikes. Roberts and company spun their wheels for a few rounds but worked through it with everything they learned in the last ten years. By Valencia the team had constructed at least six completely different chassis for their RC211V engine to mate with.

The King is, to say the least, rarely speechless. However it was clear that once the results came he was beaming inside.

Kenny Roberts in a Honda shirt remains an odd sight for the long-time fan. One mainstream press man, after examining the Roberts RC211 at Daytona, remarked, "If all he needed was engines then didn't Yamaha supply him with engines?"

Roberts will debut his 800cc Honda RC212-powered V-4 machine at the Sepang tests later this month. There were informal plans for two Team Roberts riders in 2007, but they backed that off after realizing they probably could not support two riders the way they'd like.

Team Roberts are already on their second chassis for the 800cc RC212.