‘Racing in 250s was serious but 500s are very serious…’
first impression of the most fearsome racing motorcycles on the planet spoke volumes.
The bikes were ferociously powerful, extremely light and notoriously difficult to ride. They also bit back severely. Accelerating faster than an F1 car, a 500cc GP bike weighed just 130kg but made 200bhp; enough to give them a top speed of around 200mph on the faster tracks. And in an age before electronic rider aids, all of that power had to be controlled by the rider’s right wrist and it was laid down on the ground through a contact patch no bigger than the palm of a hand. The potential for catastrophe was ever present Rossi said: “Racing 125s was like a game, racing 250s was serious, but 500s are very serious. They’re dangerous.”
Like a computer
Although Honda insisted the Repsol team was the only official one, Rossi was essentially given the same equipment as Alex Criville, Tady Okada and Sete Gibernau. He would want for nothing, yet he would have more freedom to do his own thing. It was a perfect arrangement and far preferable to the pressure-cooker atmosphere in the Repsol camp. “We ended up creating a fantastic little team,” crew chief Jerry Burgess later said. “We were ostracised out there – we were doing it on our own.” Burgess was impressed. “We quickly learned that he’s very good at working on set-up. When he comes into the pits he’s like a computer – he gives you a list of six or eight things he wants looking at, like a download. He’s more analytical than the rest of them.” And while Burgess was impressed with his new boy’s method of operating, Rossi himself was impressed with the bike. “I loved its violent character,” he said. “It was so intense that you got an adrenalin boost every time you shifted gears.”
Sleepyhead Burgess instigated a new practice following the Catalan Grand Prix: from now on he would act as Rossi’s alarm clock. Never a keen morning person, Rossi had somehow managed to sleep through half of morning practice and arrived in his pit box in a state of shock. “When I wake up I always have a big confusion for the first five minutes,” he aid. “Then I remember ‘Oh f**k! I’m at the Grand Prix!’” From now on, Burgess’s first task on any given weekend would be to knock on his rider’s motorhome door.
Defecting to Yamaha And then, in a press conference at the final Grand Prix of the year, came the bombshell. “I have done everything with the Honda,” Rossi said. “Win in the dry and the rain, win at my best track, win at my worst track, so I feel I have finished my work with this bike. I’ve had an incredible four years with Honda – three world championships and thirty-three wins from sixty-four races. Maybe my choice seems a little bit crazy but we will see next year.” Rossi had signed for Yamaha and would be taking his crew with him.
His greatest race Rossi’s first race on the Yamaha M1 would be at the Phakisa Raceway near Welkom, South Africa, on 18 April 2004, and it would prove to be, even according to the man himself, the greatest race of his life. His embittered former employers at Honda had refused him permission to test the Yamaha until his contract was up on 31 December 2003, which put Rossi on the back foot. “Their attitude pissed me off,” he admitted. No one, not even Yamaha, had expected that he could challenge for the win first time out. Television commentators, trackside spectators, the teams and officials in the paddock, and the millions watching the live broadcast could not believe what they were seeing. They were, by now, convinced that they were watching the greatest motorcycle racer who had ever lived.
The destruction of Biaggi In what was, to all intents and purposes, his final destruction of Max Biaggi, Rossi crossed the finish line of the South African Grand Prix one-tenth of a second ahead and won on the M1 at the very first attempt. It was, without doubt, the greatest performance of his life and his antics on the victory lap showed that he realised this, too. There were no gags, no costumes, no elaborate silliness; instead a simple display that was far more emotional and powerful because of its spontaneity. He rode his M1 onto the grass, rested it against the trackside fencing, climbed off and, with helmet still in place, mimicked kissing the front of the bike. He then sat on the ground looking utterly exhausted, his shoulders starting to shake.
The legend’s final chapter Seventeen years on he will start the 2021 season out of the factory squad, but still fighting for glory on a Yamaha, still searching for that high of winning. It’s hard to imagine a tenth title – but you wouldn’t write him off just yet, would you?
‘He was always bothering me with questions and wanted to improve’