The 1982 Superbike race at Daytona is one of the more infamous races in Superbike history.

Superbike racing in the early 1980s was a bubbling cauldron of massive cheating with very few factory Superbikes rolling to the grid in full accordance with the rule book.

The '82 Superbike race (not the Daytona 200, mind you) saw Kawasaki, Honda and Suzuki battle for the win. While this Youtube clip concentrates mostly on Honda's Freddie Spencer ("Spencer's pulling away from the pack! In third!") and was probably produced as a Honda or Honda dealer promotion, you can get a slight vibe of what the race was all about.

Kawasaki-mounted Eddie Lawson led the race by skipping a pit stop for fuel while all of the other Superbikes—including Spencer—did stop to take on more fuel.

Lawson was headed both for an amazing upset win at Daytona and to deliver Kawasaki their first win at the Speedway. How Lawson was able to skip a fuel stop and lead the race was a source of interest and conjecture for years afterwards.

If you concede that nearly every bike on the front row of the grid back then was illegal (and not just slightly illegal. Insiders says that many machines had illegal frames, engines, forks, etc) then it's not too surprising to learn that Lawson's crew had applied a little Smokey Yunick-inspired help to the KZ1000.

Suffice to say Lawson had plenty of fuel and didn't need to make a stop.

Shortly before the end of the race, however, the mechanisim that enabled Lawson's more than enough fuel supply failed and his machine burbled to the finish, handing Spencer the win.

There are a variety of great scenes in this footage, including Wayne Rainey's Kawasaki on the grid, Spencer golfing in full-on 80s attire and late great announcer Roxy Rockwood in victory circle.