Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Giacomo Agostini and the 500cc MV Agusta Giacomo Agostini won 15 World Champions hips and 110 Grands Prix. Fittingly, his final GP win came on an MV Agusta in the 1976 West German Grand Prix. Ago will ride the bike during Camel Motorcycle Week at Daytona International Speedway. By Mike Nicks h e n G iacomo Agostini cros sed th e finis h lin e in the 1976 Wes t Germ an Grand Prix, h is victory on a 500cc MV Agusta mar ked the bigges t s h ift in d irection the s port had ev er known. Even tod ay, some critics suggest that world cham pionship racing has n ever recovered the m agic it exerted over spectators up until the close of thaf rainy day on the Nurbur gring circu it. It wasn't jus t that the win was Agostini's H Oth and last Gra nd Prix success before he retired at the end of the sea so n, or even th at it represented MV' s 270th and final first-place finish after 26 yea rs of top-line compe tition th at p rodu ced 37 world championsh ips. More sig nificantl y, th is w as the last Gr and Pr ix race to be wo n by a fourstroke motor cycle. From that moment onward, tw o-stroke p ower ruled . Th e four-str okes that had drawn up to 200,000 fans to Eur opean Gran d Prix circuits were now a spent force, .as inef~ec tive as d in osau rs in a wo rld that had changed beneath them. Younger fans mi ght say, "We ll, so what? We can see four- stroke race bikes in World Superbike competition, where two-strokes ar e not even p ermitted to W 48 run." But th ere is one vast difference between su perbikes and classic-era fourstrokes: Today's racing motorcycles are silenced; th e MVs an d their con tem po raries ran unsil en ced, with four separate megaphones! Can you imagi ne Top Fuel dragsters running with muffl ers, or Formula 15ne race cars forced to stifle the scream ing wail of the 17,ODO-rpm engines ? A world of noise wo uld be m issing, and that's the differen ce between the u nrestri cted GP fou r-strokes of yesteryear an d th e silenced Supe rbikes that whisper past us in the '90s. Fortunatelv, Rob Iannucci is a man w ho likes romake a lilt of noise. The New York lawy er wh o heads the Team Obsolet e classic racin g operation rattl ed tho usands of eardrums last year when h e introd uced H on d a ' s astoun ding 250cc six-cylinder Gran d Pr ix b ike to Dayt ona. Th e 1966 24-valve m achin e spun to nearly 18,000 rpm in de mo nstration laps. This year Iannucci is going one better: th e very MV tha t Agostini rode in th at fateful race on th e Nurburgring. The bike w ill be ridden in parade lap s by Agostini himself, who won the 200mile classic on the Florida circuit on a Yam ah a in 1974. • The reuniting of the MY and Agosti- ni will thus mark a triple 20th anniversary - the final Gr and Pri x success of MY Agusta; four -stroke techn ology; and the Italian rid er, now 50. . "Th e bike represents th e closing of the greatest dynasty the wor ld of Grand Prix racing has ever known," Ia nn ucci en thuses. " It ap pears that it sat undisturbed since the end of the 1976 season. This I acquired it w hen I bou gh t the ex-MY factory collection in the late '80s." Agosti ni, speaking fro m Italy, said, " It will m a ke a wonderful so uven ir return to Daytona for me. I raced fourstroke bikes and tw o-stro kes, bu t the so u nd of th e unsil en ce d fo ur-strokes was so much nicer - like music for the people." gyy "Agc. . :=. .o_" _ iacomo Agostini is one of the giant figures in road racing history. G He won 15 Grand Prix world championships, 13 on MVs and two on Yamahas, and was known to adoring crowds simply as "Ago." .' He entered his first major race in 1963, and was quickly talent-scouted by MV. He achieved his first Grand Prix race win on a three-cylinder 350cc MV in 1%5, and took his first world championship in the 1%6 500cc category. He then won the SOOcc title every year until 1973, when he was beaten by MV rival Phil Read . Ago was sometimes criticized for Winning against weak opposition in the years after Honda retired at the end of 1%7, despite the fact that in '66 and '67 he denied Mike Hailwood and the 500cc four-eylinder victory in the world's premier road racing class. He could hardly be blamed if other factories declined to challenge MV. His critics forecast failure when he made a controversial switch to two-stroke power in 1974, but he silenced them by immed iately adapting to his new Yamaha and winning the Daytona 200. He followed this with wins for Yamaha in the 1974 3500cc world championship and the 1975 500cc series. Agostini claimed another Day tona classic in 1982, this time as a team manager, when Graem Crosby won the 200-miler on his Yamaha . "I'm looking forward to getting back to Daytona, " Ago said in Italy last week. "I have many friends there."

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