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/128026
Alex Criville's Repsol Honda NSR500 By ALAN CATHCART PHOTOS BY KOICHI OHTANI AND KEL EDGE ... e 1999 racing season was not only the year in which Honda's NSR500 scored its 500cc World Championship victory, it was also the season in which the sorcerer's apprentice more than proved his worth - stepping into the master's title-winning shoes. Last season, after a seven-year spell learning the skills of his 500cc racing trade, Alex Criville moved out from the shadow of Mick Doohan and took the 500cc class by the scruff of its neck, scoring an emphatic World Championship win. He did so thanks to a string of six GP victories - four of them in succession, and two more than any other rider. In doing so, the Spaniard not only preserved Honda's six-year title-winning streak, he also brought added joy to HRC's Spanish petroleum sponsors by becoming the first Spanish rider ever to win the 500cc World Championship - as well as the first European to do so in 17 years. In the five seasons since the Repsol colors first appeared on the NSR500, the team has won 52 out of 73 races which is an amazing average of 70 percent. They've also added 53 pole positions and have occupied 118 rostrum places out of a possible 213. Pretty dominant, wouldn't you say? But this year, for the first time since that run of results began, both Suzuki and Yamaha have seriously threatened Honda's supremacy at the top of the GP tree. This has little to do with Mick Doohan's unfortunate and premature retirement from the GP grids, given that the Suzuki/Kenny Roberts Jr. combo won the first two races of the season (before Doohan's injury) - in contrasting conditions. But at the other end of the season, for the first time in many, many years, the rostrums at each of the two South American races that ended the century of Grand Prix racing were both completely devoid of Honda riders. Indeed, in the final race of the year in Argentina, the first NSR500 rider home was the new World Champion, in fifth place. It's not the way HRC will want to remember the old millennium. The chance to ride Criville's titlewinning NSR500 at Motegi, just a couple of weeks after I'd tested his closest rival's (World Championship runner-up Roberts, Jr.) Suzuki, at Jerez, provided a fascinating window on the suddenly more intense struggle for 500cc supremacy that's in the process of unfolding - especially as Criville was on hand to provide advice on riding the bike. A closequarter evaluation of the relative merits of the Honda and its rivals is also assessed (see interview). In being on hand, Criville took an unheralded step down memory lane, allowing history to repeat itself - for it was almost exactly 10 years ago to the day that we first met. That's when I last tested a bike on which he had become World Champion, by riding his titlewinning JJ-Cobas 125 at Jarama. However, Cobas didn't have the resources that HRC does. Back then they could only organize the Spanish sunshine for my Criville caper whereas, the second time around a decade later, with typical thoroughness, Honda had arranged for me to test the World Champion NSR500 in contrasting conditions - pouring rain on the first day, then bright sunshine the second. Such efficiency - and such good contacts. Actually, once I'd gotten over my initial reluctance to do much more than splash around slowly aboard a 190 hp motorcycle weighing 286 pounds and concentrate on keeping it upright, the wet session was actually quite educational. It was also a replay of the Japanese GP on the same track earlier in the year. That's when Doohan's determined-downpour charge in his last GP race wasn't enough to unsettle Roberts and the Suzuki. Mick - and Honda - had to settle for second. This was the first time I'd ridden a Honda NSR500 in the rain since 1991 at Suzuka (the last year of the old 'Screamer' engine format, with its 180-degree crank throws and evenlyspaced 'Two-Up' firing strokes, with each pair of pistons sparking together, thanks to a crankshaft layout which sees the two right-side pistons rising and falling together, followed 180 degrees later by the two left-side pistons). The next year, 1992, fea-