Motorcycle Racing: Then and now...

Motorcycle Racing: Then and now...

I don’t need Mahabaleshwar or Lonavala on weekends – MotoGP on television, a bunch of friends who’re also mad about motorcycle racing and some cans of cold beer work just fine. And while everyone is rooting for Rossi, I’m usually harbouring secret hopes of Loris Capirossi (and till last year, Max Biaggi…) pulling one out of the bag and taking top spot.

Rossi is a racing god no doubt, but my loyalties are elsewhere. Cable TV has been around for less than twenty years and hence most of my motorcycle racing heroes, and the racing motorcycles which I idolise, are from the 1980s and 90s, which is when I started watching racing regularly. Barry Sheene, Eddie Lawson, Wayne Gardner, Wayne Rainey, Kevin Schwantz and Mick Doohan from the two-stroke 500s era. Biaggi, when he was racing Aprilia 250s, was awesome. Capirossi’s 125 and 250 battles were also epic. From World Superbikes, some names that come to mind are Giancarlo ‘The Lion’ Falappa, Raymond Roche, Fabrizio Pirovano, Doug Chandler, Rob Phillis, Scott Russell, Doug Polen and of course, Carl Fogarty.

It’s not that motorcycle racing is any less exciting now than it was in the 80s and the 90s. It’s just that motorcycle racing heroes you grow up watching and reading about, like the music you grow up listening to, always stay with you. They are special in ways that can’t always be logically explained. Kevin Schwantz, for example, may have won only one 500cc World Championship, but for me, he’ll always be greater than Valentino Rossi. A part of the all-American Rainey-Lawson-Schwantz holy trinity, number 34 is magical beyond the number of races and championships won.

Likewise, I worship Freddie Spencer for having won both the 250 and the 500 crowns in 1985. And Lawson, for winning the 500cc championship aboard a Yamaha YZR500 in 1988 and then again winning the 500 crown in 1989, on a Honda NSR500. That both machines were radically different in terms of their power delivery and handling characteristics made Lawson’s victories that much more significant. Of course, Lawson also gave Cagiva their first 500cc GP win in 1992, in the Hungarian GP, and got a Ferrari from Claudio Castiglioni for his efforts! And I do think Lawson’s fire-engine red Cagiva was one of the best-looking racing bikes ever, along with Schwantz’s 1989 Pepsi Suzuki RGV500, various Rothmans Honda NSR500s and green-white-blue Kawasaki ZXR750s from world superbikes. The JPS-liveried Norton F1 rotary racers also have a special place in my memories, as does the extraordinary blue-and-pink Britten V1000, which used to leave Ducati V-twins like they were standing still.

From ferocious, fire-spitting, two-stroke 500s, to tech-laden 990cc four-stroke MotoGP bikes today, and 800cc machines which are going to come in from next year – change has been the only constant in top-flight motorcycle racing. However, one thing still hasn’t changed. What’s still as important today as it was back then is what the oft-injured Barry Sheene used to say. It’s the will to win. And that, thankfully, will never change…