Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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VOL. 52 ISSUE 18 MAY 5, 2015 P125 ship points on the Elf. Many had scoffed at the entry dismissing it as nothing more than a modi- fied sidecar engine. They made believers out of many of those naysayers. While the '96 season was promising, things seemed to stall for Elf in 1997. That season Borja was joined on the team by German Jürgen Fuchs. Borja ended the year ranked 17th, Fuchs 20th. There were highlights though. Borja once again scored four top-10 finishes, Fuchs earned the best result for the team by scoring sixth at the Rio de Janeiro Motorcycle Grand Prix, finishing less than seven seconds adrift of the podium and beat- ing a slew of factory machines. The bike suffered a slew of DNFs, the biggest culprit being the crank bearings, part of the cost of having an innovative vertical crankcase split and having fewer main bearings. The original concept was to make available Elf 500 customer bikes for the very attractive price of $100,000 to private teams, but Elf dropped out and the goal of a low-cost customer machine was never realized. The machine was rebranded as a MuZ for the 1998 season. MuZ, the legendary East German company with a Grand Prix pedigree, was by then owned by a Malaysian concern. The 1998 GP season was also notable for the first entry of Kenny Roberts' Team Marlboro Roberts Modenas KR3. So it was MuZ and Modenas as the outliers up against the Honda, Yamaha and Suzuki Grand Prix teams. The first-year MuZ effort didn't go well. The team tried four different riders, with Swiss Eskil Suter be- ing the highest ranked MuZ rider, finishing the sea- son in 26th with just three points-paying finishes. Things improved greatly in 1999, what ultimately would prove to be the final season for the swissau- to-powered machine in Grand Prix competition. Ju- rgen van den Goorbergh was the breath of fresh air for the MuZ team, as was a new Suter-built chassis. Van den Goorbergh provided one of the big- gest surprises of the 1999 Grand Prix season when he rode the MuZ to the pole at Catalunya in June of that year. It was a landmark accom- plishment for the swissauto engine, which was now in its fourth season of Grand Prix racing. It incidentally also marked the first premier class Grand Prix pole for a Dutch rider since Jack Mid- delburg accomplished the feat at Spa in 1982. "It was one of those laps that you get every so often when everything just goes smoothly," Van den Goorbergh said. "No slides, tight corner lines and everything perfect. All the same, I was surprised to be on the pole and surprised that nobody went faster in the last few minutes." In the Czech Republic Grand Prix Van den Goorbergh proved his Catalunya performance was no fluke when he won his second pole. The Dutchman had a flawlessly smooth style that suited qualifying well, but he admitted learning to translate that smoothness to success in long races proved elusive. "I see what some of the top guys do when their tires start to wear down and I'm not ready to do that yet," he admitted. "I still have plenty to learn." In the end Van den Goorbergh managed just two top-10 finishes and ended the season ranked 16th. Luca Cadalora also raced the MuZ early in the season with a best finish of eighth at Jerez. Anthony Gobert and Noriyasu Numata also scored World Championship points on the bike that season. And that was it. The team lost its backing and after the 1999 season the team pulled out and swissauto's four-year adventure in 500cc Grand Prix racing was over. The team goes down in history as another one of the unconventional ma- chines to have competed in Motorcycle Grand Prix racing, but the two poles earned by van den Goorbergh means the Swiss power plant will never completely fade into obscurity. CN PRIX RUN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives