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/127823
INTERVIEW B.y Paolo Gazzi U 28 s the man more important than the machine? 'This question is imperative every time the man-machine pairing becomes unbea table, as it was with Carl Fogarty and Ducati in the 1994-95 World Superbike season, or more recently the three world titles won by Mick Doohan on the Honda NSRSOO and Max Biaggi in the 250cc class with the ApriJia RSV. Fogarty was the first rider to try to resolve this puzzle. 'Tm going to Honda to prove that I can make all the difference, even with a four-eylinder bike," said the British star a year ago to explain his divorce from the marque which helped him become the most successful superbike rider ever in jUst three seasons. One year of racing, however, failed to resolve the question. With the Honda, Fogarty scored. four victories, more than any other rider who had ridden the RC45 up to now. But it is also true that the Ducati, without Fogarty, still managed to remain unbeaten and even launched a new star, Troy Corser, the rider who in 1995 ran second to Fogarty. What history has demonstrated, and what Fogarty has understood since last summer, is that rider skill and horsepower are not enough to dominate. In order to become unbeatable, you need that allimportant mixture of determination, lucidity, contempt for danger and enormous belief in the bike which forms inside the head of a rider only if the atmosphere around him is perfect. It was this perfect climate that Fogarty was used to in his Ducati days, but dearly did not find within the Honda team. That's why after just 12 months away, the former World Champion chose to return home. '1£ I could go back in the past, I would make exactly the same decision," Fogarty said. "Honda offered me very good money and, above all, a new stimulus. And also from a technical point of view, I wasn't wrong because the RC45 is not that inferior to the 916." Who better than Fogarty, who has raced on the twin-cylinder Italian bike and the fastest four ever to grace the tracks of the World Superbike Championship, to give an exact technical opinion of both bikes? "The Honda's top speed and acceleration is superior to that of the Ducati and even the bike itself behaves wonderfully well on flat circuits with a perfect track surface," he explained. So why does the RC45 have yet to win a world title after three years of trying? "The problems start to come on tracks with a lot of ups and downs and with imperfect surfaces," Fogarty said. "In these conditions, the Honda becomes virtually unridable. We lacked consistent results, that's all. When t:hir1gs go bad for Ducati, it comes third; on the other hand, on bad days for Honda, we lost the points which in the end made all the difference. Over the years, people have said that the regulations favor the Ducatis, but I don't think that four-eylinder bikes have that much disadvantage. This time we lost because of other factors." Fogarty is still convinced that he could have won a third successive world title. "Unfortunately, in the winter we had bad weather everywhere during testing and this meant that we couldn't really test the bike to its limits," he declared. "We arrived at the first round at Misano already behind with setup. During qualifying I crashed and injured my hand but I gritted my teeth and picked up a sixth and seventh place. "My morale sunk to an all-time low at