Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127176
After being honored with an invitation to join Randy and them at Rijeka in early October for their final test session of the season, I sadly had to pass it up through injury. But just when I'd given up hoping, a lastchance ride materialized at the Ital ian press la unch of the new Ducati 906 Paso: OK - onl y a handful of laps at Misano on a clear but cold winter 's day with the temperature near freezing and the tires refusing to warm -up properly. But still, my chance to sample th e latest version of a bike that adds immeasurably to th e co lor and interest of the GP grids and, in the hands of th e most popular rider in World Championship racing, to th e spectacle as well. In view of the low ambient temperature there was no way the Pirellis could be gotten warm enough for me to ' make a valid critique of their performance, a real pity ' as I was loo king forward to sampling the Italian rubber: Peter Ingley had even gone so far as to mount a bias -belt fron t to the bike instead of th e su pereffective radial that .Mamola had raved about this year, fearing that the radia l wo uldn't heat up enough to work even partly adequately. Under the circumstances, therefore, the handfu l of slides I got trying to harness 150 bhp (at the rear wheel, at 12,200 rpm, according to veteran Cagiva mechanic Gilberto Milani) couldn't be laid at the tires ' door, especially as I got them by winding the throttle open half as hard and twice as late as the bike's normal jockey. Well - we all have our personal limits of bravery; it 's just that Rand y's are about 10 points further up the scale than most other GP riders and about a 100 higher than yours truly's! Worth noting that Pirelli produced no less than 49 different rear tires during 19881 But paradoxically, the conditions in which the test was made enabled me to appreciate the improvements that Cagiva have wrought to the V588 all the more: I'd sincerely assess the V588 as a 200% improvement in terms. of rideability and feel over the V587, and on a different planet to the previous three designs the team' em ployed before they settled on their fourth, the Yamaha-like present bike with its twin contrarotating cranks and bank of trick twin-choke Mikuni carbs positioned between the cylinders. These are available in three sizes, 34mm for slower tracks like Jerez and Laguna Seca, 37.5mm for quick ones like Pa ul Ricard, and the 36mm size fitted for the test and used at the majority of tracks during the season. Randy Mamola scored one 1988 rostrum placing on the Cagiva V588 in spite of uncompetitive Pirelli t ires. That's a point worth noting, since it shows that Cagiva set the bike up as usual for a race at Misano rather than softening it as much as possible for a journalist to ride - yet in spite of that, the power delivery is so velvet-smooth you could be riding a sort of hyper-fast road bike. This in itself is a major step forward for Cagiva, whose previous machines were often powerful but harsh and raw-edged to the extent that they were not only uncomfortable to ride , but had an inconsistent powerband with a 'hole' just where you didn 't' want it, or else a ligh tn ing-switch delivery that was so fierce as to be unmanageable. . Under the joint control of Mascheroni and Vukrna novich, 1988 . has seen the Cagiva gain immeasurably in sophistication and controllability, making it not o nly more powerful than last year's bike, but also far easier to ride - a rare combination of achievement. The lack of grip at Misano highlighted this development to perfection: honestly, I doubt if on even last year's bike I'd have stayed upright, in spite of its already A lan Cathcart rode the Cagiva V588 at M isano in Italy and found it to be far easier to ride than it s predecessors. improved rid eability compared to the '86 9O-degree V4 CIOIV 's peaky performance. The V588 has a smoother, more subtle and more 'elastic' (as they say in Italy!) power delivery than its predecessors, and also a much wider powerband. You get motive power from as low as 6000 rpm without clutch slip, a little hiccup from 80008500 revs when presumably the electronic power valve starts to open, but from then until no less than 12,700 rpm in the form I rode it at Misano, the Cagiva delivers suberbly liquid, strong, smooth power. This was a big surprise but a very p leasant one; even if peak power is achieved at 12,200 revs, it gives Randy the 500 rpm overrev facility the American school of GP riding prefers, and really explains how he's able to stage the sort of spectacle we've grown ..llW,Is.t.,qmed to witnessing from ~im 'Tn fhe 500cc G Ps on the red Italian bike, and get away with it - well , mostly! With that sort of engine characteristics, the Cagiva stops being a bike you have to master and becomes one you can work with, and in the case of a master craftsman lik e Marnola, that means you can ride it with the sort of elan lesser mortals like the rest of us can only dream of. With his super skills, Randy can make a bike like this do practically anything he wants it to do short of actually talking to him, and I'm not taking bets against that happening, either! This is one fine motorcycle to ride, especially I should imagine in the wet where its controllability on and off the throttle would be a big asset: O f other bikes I've ridden I can only compare it to the '87 Honda NS R500 title-winn er, which the C agiva definitely rivals in terms of power ra nge and flexibility, coupled with rea lly impressive to p speed. What a pity that the P irell i part of the equation didn' t enable us to compare the Cagiva's performance directly to its riva ls in 1988: I'm now certain there was precious little between them, mechanically speaking. The process of refinemen t has been extended to other parts of the mechanical package, like the onedown left-foot gear change, which is so much smoother than last year's harsh, notchy action as to be practically silky; coupled with the light, progressive clutch, it makes zipping down through the gears for a tum something you can do automatically with out h a vin g to mak e a co nscious prod with the boot to overcome the stiff action which was necessary to stop the bike jumping out of gear'under load. Then there's the riding positio n, not as ex treme as before with seem ingly less weight o n the arms and wrists in spite of having the forw ard weight bias slightl y increased to 53/ 47 ~;, so that th e bike feels better balanced and more controllable, especially under the excellent braking performa nce of the big 320mm Brembo discs and their four-pot calipers. These ' are no longer the flavor of the month in GP racing, but at my sort of pace they provided outstanding stopping power, yet unlike on its predecessors, the Cagiva felt very stable on the turn-in and didn 't either understeer on th e brakes or drop into turns heavily and suddenly as was the case a couple of years ago. Designer Luigi Botta's Peraluma n/Carpental aircraft alloy twinspar chassis is now almost as finely honed as the legendary Yamaha YZR500 fram e, and for 1988 received only two major alterations, one at the start of the season and the other towards th e end. The first was th e distinctive 'hunchback' swingarm, first tested last November to allow new powerup pipes to be fitted whose fatter, longer mid-section interfered with the old conventional swingarm. Yamaha had ' the same idea at the same time, which may say more about the level of development the Cagiva team have now reached than any secret collaboration between the two companies. The O hlins rear unit in its distinctive near-horizontal position still offers superb control over Misano's few remaining bumps, but sadly the other major chassis change was absent from the bike I rode; The Swedish company's upside-down forks which by the end of the season had become de rigueur on the Ca g iva and which tire II