Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·RACER JEST Cagiva V594 i.e. (Below) European contributor Alan Cathcart visited Mugello for back-toback rides on Caglva's carbureted and fuel-Injected V594 Grand Prix bikes. Handling Is 250-lIke, with high comer speeds. By Alan Cathcart Photos by Kyoichi Nakamura RC development engineer Shigeru Hattori, the man in charge of Honda's world championship-winning NSR500 race project, summed it up best of all. "Honda and Cagiva have a similar approach to technical development," he said at the end of last year, as news began to filter through confirming the long-held suspicions that Cagiva was indeed withdrawing from 500cc GP racing in favor of an all-out attack on the Superbike class with their new four-cylinder F4 design. "Of course, it is our aim to win races and eventually the Wor.ld Championship, and it's nice when we can succeed in doing this. But successful development of new technical concepts and design solutions as part of our 500cc GP race program is very nice! If you can combine the two, then that gives the greatest satisfaction of all. Cagiva especially among our rivals has a similar approach, which we very much admire. Their withdrawal from GP racing would be a very great disappointment for us at Honda." Well, it happened - and not only their Honda rivals have lamented the Castiglioni brothers' decision to call an end to their is-year battle for supremacy in the 500cc GP class. They had achieved their greatest success in 1994, when after the first two races of the season Cagiva rider John Kocinski led the points table with a win and a second place, while eventual world champion·Mick Doohan and the Honda team struggled to come to terms with the Italian bike. Soon, of course, they did - but Kocinski still held second place going into the final round at Barcelona, only to be outpointed there by Yamaha's Luca Cadalora. Still, third place in the World Championship was H If) 0\ 0\ """' ~ .1-< OJ ~ o 22 not only Cagiva's best-ever season finish yet, it also underlined that the beautiful red Italian bikes were a serious force in GP racing, with technology that was arguably superior to two out of their three Japanese rivals - and the future beckoned in the form of the fuel-injected version of the Cagiva V-4 engine that had come close to being raced rnidseason. But the decision to withdraw was . made, and Cagiva's GP team took a year off, directing their talents toward the development of a very different kind of fuel-injected four-cylinder engine. But just to show what might have been, Cagiva prepared a single V594 bike for Pier-Francesco Chili to ride in the '95 Italian GP at Mugello. In his first 500cc GP ride for half a decade, the c.urrent superbike rider qualified third on the grid, ahead of the entire Yamaha and SuZuki GP tearns, then battled for third in the race before running off the track and winding up 10th. Still, it was a forceful reminder of the inherent potential of a bike that hadn't received any development for almost one whole year. "This is a bit of a holiday for us," joked Cagiva race boss Riccardo Rosa, now Technical Director for the whole Cagiva Group, "but the way Chili is going, a very fast holiday!" The Mugello performance raised hopes of another outing or two during 1995 for the Lady in·Red, but though there are enough spare parts to support at least one more one-last-time, the cancellation of the. Imola GP meant it didn't happen, and now almost certainly never, will. Instead, Chili's fast lady is now destined to join its fuel-injected sister inside the- new Cagiva ·race museum planned for the Varese factory. But before they headed there, the Cagiva twins had one last appointment with the race track. A few weeks after their Italian GP outing with Chili, the Cagiva race team returned to Mugello for a final· test session with both Chili's ex-Kocinski V594 and the fuel-injected prototype that hadn't even been fired up since Fogarty last rode it in qualifying at Dorrington in '94. As the incredibly priv-

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