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/127837
with such a glorious sporting tradition
as Benelli - is to go racing, and while not
everyone might agree with that, I have
good partners with a similar viewpoint.
Let's talk about your enthusiasm for
racing. Not many owners of a motorcycle company are as young as 29 and
used to race until very recently. Give
us a synopsis of your career.
I started racing motocross in 1984 at the
age of 17, first on a 125, then moving up
to a 500 in '86. But then I hurt my shoulder and stopped racing off-road, by
which time I was old enough to pass my
big-bike road test and bought a fourcylinder Suzuki street bike. It only took
a couple of months to find my way onto
the race track with it at Misano, and
after that I was totally hooked.
So I started road racing in 1989, and
ran in the supersport class with bikes
like a Ducati 851, Bimota Bellaria and a
CBR600 Honda. But in August 1992, I
had a big accident and hurt myself quite
badly, after which my parents asked me
very strongly to stop. With an increasing responsibility in our family's company, of course I had to say yes.
So I became a team owner instead,
and founded Team Gattalone. In fact,
this is the name of our boat (presumably
a catamaran - it means "big cat") Because my brother and I spent one
entire trip aboard it racking our brains
on what to call our new race team without thinking up anything better, so in
the end we called it after the boat.
We entered World Superbike in 1994
with an HRC-kitted Honda RC45, but
this was the first season for Honda's new
bike, and we had many teething troubles. So for '95 we switched to Ducati
and Pier-Francesco Chili started riding
for me, with immediate success against
the factory teams, even though we
developed the engines completely ourselves. The only factory parts we
received were big-bore cylinders and
pistons last season. In '96 at Hockenheim
our bike was fastest of all through the
speed traps at 303 kph (188 mph), and
again at Monza when Chili, won once
more for us. All of this was a great credit
to our engine tuner Pietro Gianesin.
But now for '97 we have factory
Ducati motorcycles, which for a tiloso
like me is a dream come true - even if
we're not allowed to look inside them,
so we must only hope they're even
faster than our own engines.
After two seasons on the edge of success, I have big hopes we can win the
World Championship for Ducati once
again in 1997.
While at the same time starting work
on a future competitor for them?
That's some way in the future, but in
any 'Case Massimo Bordi and his staff at
Ducati have been very supportive about
our Benelli venture. For the next couple
of years, though, Benelli will be operating in a very different marketplace to
Ducati - though maybe their race engineers will use Benelli paddock transport
at World Superbike rounds!
~
Looking into the immediate future,
what new scooter models do you envisage for BenelIi? Do you plan to join the
present trend toward four-stroke
designs?
Yes, for sure. We actually began work
on the project last week. We project a
20-month R&D cycle for this product,
which ties in neatly. with Minarelli's
plans to have their new water-cooled,
overhead-cam, four-valve 125cc fourstroke scooter engine ready for production at the end of 1998. We will launch
the BeneUi 125 Speed Scooter at the
Cologne Show in October 1998, but
before that we will expand our two-
was rebuilt and production started again in 1947 with the 125cc Leoncino two-stroke single, Benelli's most famous and longest-lived model
which stayed in production for the next 12 years.
Later, bikes like the 250cc four-stroke Leonessa twin and a 175cc single also appeared, with sales fueled by Dario Ambrosinj's World Championship victory in the 250cc class in 1950 aboard an updated version of
the prewar Benelli single, on which he won all but one of the GP races
held thafyear.
But, tragically, Ambrosini was killed in practice for the French GP
enelli's place in Italian motorcycle culture almost exactly paraUels
that of the equally historic M,lserati marque on four wheels. Each the following year, and Benelli's racing effort folded, though street bike
was founded by a family of brothers, each won Grand Prix races production continued to boom. However, after an abortive attempt at
and World Championships, but played second fiddle in the public eye making a desmo version of the single, Benelli again demonstrated its
and on the race track to the more illustrious product> of single-minded capacity for radical thought in 1960 by developing the world's first
autocrats (MY Agusta and Ferrari), and each tasted success in the mar- four-cylinder 250cc GP bike to actually go racing.
ketplace before falling prey to commercial hardship and, doubly ironiThough the small Italian team was no match on a season-long basis
cally, ending up in the hands of the very same financial entrepreneur: for the Honda/Yamaha/Suzuki steamroller, riders Tarquinio Provini
Alessandro de Tomaso.
and Renzo Pasolini frequently tasted GP success throughout the 1960s,
His efforts to milk their prestige only succeeded in devalUing their before Aussie 1