Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·R OADRACE · Goodbye, Cagiva By Michael Scott Photos by Henny Ray Abrams 52 t was at Donington Park that Cagiva announced that they were to quit motorcycle racing. .They would finish the European season, they said, and that would be that. After years of trying, the game was over . That was in 1990. The ne xt serious talk of retirement came at the end of 1993, in the form of a threat to Honda, who were interested in hiring John Kocinski for 1994. Cagiva had rescued the troubled superstar during 1993, and he'd won the ir first dryweather GP for them. If the y lost him now, they would quit. Or so the stories went. And not for the first time, Japan Inc. were prepared to help their honorable (and only) European rival. At the end of 1994. however, factory owner Claudio Castiglioni would say nothing about Cagiva's GP future, beyond insisting: "I have never said we were going to quit." This time, it seemed certain, he really didn't mean it. Rumors of impending withdrawal had been circulating all year, ever since the company ran into well-publicized cash-flow problems in March, temporarily halting the production line of the tasty new Ducati 916. There were also minor tax-offense charges, while the change in government put a stop to a useful source of funds. . Cagiva had bought several lameduck companies (like Moto Morini. Mini-Moke and H usqvarna), a nd received money from subsidies in the process. Furthermore, though 16 yea r s of effort had finally forged the once tragicomic Italian works team into a fully competitive fighting force after any number of false starts; the cost far outweighed the returns. Cagiva had spen t tens, no, hundreds of millions of dollars, all to move from also-tans to almostwins; and it wasn't getting any cheaper. Ducati's race program. at far lower cost, h ad yielded a string of world and national titles. and continued to do so in 1994. Cagiva were baled out by a consortium of banks during 1994. It is said that the rescue package carried a firm pre- . condition - that Cagiva must stop the expensive and almost fruitl ess activity of GP racing, at least until they could afford to do so once again. The final factor was th e imminent arrival of the new in-line four 750, designed by Ferrari, to bear the Cagiva name alongside the hot-shot 125s etc. This is a head-on challenge to the Japanese in superbike racing as well as on the road, and word from the factory was that Cagiva owners Gaudio and Giancarlo Castiglioni were read y to transfer their affections to this new project, even though it was yet to be accepted for the 1995 Superbike series. This is the most trenchant of the above reasons. If there is a single common thread running through Cagiva's racing history, through all the different machines, designers, engineers and riders who have pushed the project this way and that over the years, it is the sheer enthusiasm and love of GP racing of the two brothers. Between them they had built up an industrial giant on the bones of the bankrupt Aermacchi concern at Varese, and they went GP racing out of pure passion. If the new Ferrari/Cagiva superbike has stolen their hearts, then they will leave GP racing for the same reason. At the time of going to press, there was still no official confirmation of what they intended to do in 1995. They might yet return. Perhaps this was another stratagem to manipulate the rider market - some thought they wanted to be rid of Kocinski. others that they were desperately trying to keep him. It remained a mys tery . Yet the writing on the wa ll was dear. By the last race of the season in Barcelona. crew members were openly looking for jobs. Doug Cha nd ler's crew chief Kel Carruthers was looking for work; while the longer-serving Cagiva employee Fiorenzo Fanale (ex-Eddie Lawson, ex-Kocinski) was also touting his resume around . Doug Chandler did not expect his contract to be renewed; nor did Kocinski . At least not after the race, when he was officially released for the remainder of the season, freeing him to test other machines. And two months later even team manager Giacomo Agostini announced he had other plans for 1995. It really did look as though Cagiva were leaving. Racing cannot afford sentimentality, yet everybody knew tha t they would leave a big hole in the 500 class. They were important not only because they had improved so much over the past four years, and not on ly because they were often tec hnically adventurous, adding much interest to a somewhat stagnant design pool. Their greatest val ue was as a co un terpoint to the Japanese. With them gone. it would be up to the V-twin Aprilia to fight the big three. Looking back. nobody could speak of a glorious hist ory . The progress of the Cagiva has been fitful in the extreme - a decade and a half of high hopes turned to disillusionment. a process repeated over and over as technical staff and riders were regularly replaced. Franco Uncin l was one of the first factory Caglva riders. The Italian Is shown here In the 1981 Dutch Grand Prix In Assen . Time and again, th e same words wou ld be echoed. Upon jo in in g. th e rider / en~neer could hardly speak highly enough of the factory 's dedication to improve, their willingness to wo rk all hou rs to keep up a constant st rea m of new eq uipment and ideas, their fast response time and enormous potential. One or two years later the same people would leave, complaining about hopelessly confused development; and a damaging lack of coherence. It seemed nobody could overcome Cagiva's tendency to try and develop too many ideas at once, when what succeeds in racing is a meticulous, even plodding approach, working through one idea at a time, each to its logical conclusion. The sort of thing the Ifalians do so badly, and the Japanese so well . Cagiva always went for big names. Their munificence in fees to riders and technicians was legendary, and for everyone person they did manage to imbue with enthusiasm in this way, you could be sure there would be one or two others who had been sorely tempted by the Cagiva dollar. They always aimed for the very best of riders. They didn't always succeed in getting them, recording near misses with Kenny Roberts, Wayne Rainey and Barry Sheene, among ot hers; and were often forced to settle for second-best. But even in the rea lly bad ea rly years they had good 'men : almost-cha mpion Virg inio Ferrari, 350 champion Jon Ekerold, 500 champion Marco Lucchinelli; then the real big-time - Randy Marnola, Eddie Lawson. John Kocinski.. . Many were fading s tars. It was the

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