Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ TEST Cagiva V592~~~ -= ~ reams happen! Yes, even in the hard-edged world of Grand Prix road racing. When Eddie Lawson took the checkered flag first to win the 1992 Hungarian GP aboard the fiery red Cagiva Euro-bike, it was the fulfillment of a decade-long dream for the Castiglioni brothers, Claudio and Gianfranco. Fifteen years ago, as bikemad 'tifosi' steeped in Italian race lore, they'd tried to buy the remains of the glorious MV Agusta GP team in order to bring the four-stroke Italian 'fire engines' back to the race track. Rebuffed, instead they founded their own marque from the. ashes of the Aermacchi/Harley-Davidson factory in their home town of Varese, and called it Cagiva. Tackling the might of japan Inc. at World Championship level might have seemed a futile ambition back then, but the Castiglionis were' crazy and enthusiastic enough to try. They assembled a top team of experienced engineers, adding to their numb.ers· over the years as the development of the line of Cagiva 500cc racers, starting with the first such 100% Made in Italy bike which debuted in 1981, evolved. The bikes gradually improved relative to the works japanese machines, to the point that the brothers became convinced that all that stood between them and their dream of beating Honda, Suzuki and Yamaha in 500cc GP racing was the lack of a truly top rider on their bikes. Last season, the missing link arrived, in the person of Eddie Lawson - the greatest GP rider of his generation. The die was cast - and 18 months later, in the sunset of his GP career, Lawson proved the Cagiva was now a real contender, first by earning pole position for the Dutch CP at Assen, then - after crashing out of that race in a controversial incident while battling for the lead with Kevin D 12 II By Alan Cathcart Photos by Phil Masters Schwantz - taking Cagiva's longawaited first GP victory in- the very next race in Hungary. Cagiva had arrived in the big time - and in doing so, had given substance to the youthful dreams of a pair of enthusiasts with the financial wherewithal to realize their desires. It's a modern-day motorcycle fairy tale that came true! Lawson's subsequent pole position for the British GP at Donington proved Hungary wasn't a fluke, and riding his Dunlop-shod V592 Cagiva GP-winner at an end-of-season test session at Mugello 'only a couple of weeks. after I tested its Honda and Suzuki rivals underlined the extend of the Italian team's achievement. For the first time in almost 10 years of testriding each of the series of Cagiva 500cc GP racers, I can honestly say the Italian bike is now for the first time truly comparable with its works japanese rivals. In the past decade there have been highs (1987,1991) and there have been lows (1985, 1989), just as Cagiva's fourwheeled Latin counterpart Ferrari has been so maddeningly inconsistent over the years. But after Lawson's arrival, everything started coming together in a big way. Last year's bike, the V591, showed real promise - but there was still a little gap between it and its rivals that Cagiva needed to close. This year they did so - and, with the debut at Assen of the 'Bombardone', Cagiva's version of the Big Bang engine concept pioneered by Honda, they actually leapfrogged ahead of Yamaha, who were slower to react to the changing technical order in GP racing, and even Suzuki, whose similar narrow firingangle engine didn't seem to work as well as the Cagiva's. It has taken a long lO-years - but at substantial cost in both financial and human terms, Cagiva have finally made it to the Major League of GP players. They're a force to be reckoned with, now. Actually, though .Honda deserves tbe credit for introducing the Big Bang era to 500cc GP-racing, it wasn't their idea in the first place to close up the firing order in terms of crankshaft rotation, in search of improved traction and rideability. As has already been noted, Suzuki experimented with a similar concept on their square-four RG500 engine back in the 1970s, but never fitted it in a chassis, so never recognized the improvement in track behavior the Big Bang theory delivered. But Cagiva also built a Bombardone version of their square-four 500cc engine back in 1985, when. designer Ezio MascherQni tried to solve a . persistent traction problem (due mainly to the inferior chassis design of the time) by reducing the spaces between' the firing strokes. But unlike Suzuki, Cagiva actually fitted the result into their C9 chassis, and tester Massimo Broccoli covered a lot of miles on the bike, in the course of which he discovered what Honda reminded everyone of this season: big bangs equal good ·grip. But even though the engine delivered the same power on the dyno as a conventional motor, there was one big problem which prevented Cagiva from ever racing the C9 Bombardone: having the cylinders firing so close together made it impossible for the rider to push-start it by himself, even when warm - the back wheel would lock every time, with the sort of compression ratio needed to produce good horsepower.

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