Max to Supermax
Four years into his 500GP career, and Max Biaggi still hasn't won the ultimate prize the sport can offer. In a couple of years, he lost to riders he is rated higher than by most. When will Max become more than just another factor?
For a bloke with four Grand Prix World Championships to his credit, Max Biaggi has been having a bit of a slim time in the last few years.
During his run of four straight aces, from '94 to '97, Max was the sublime 250 GP entity, winning a hat-trick of Aprilia crowns before proving his quarter litre brilliance with another successful campaign on a relatively ordinary NSR250 Honda, and earning himself a promotion to the upper deck of Dorna's Magic Bus as a result. But could he become a winning 500 rider, especially against the 'best-ever' Mick Doohan and a whole legion of experienced 'best of the rest' vee-four competitors?
Max answered swiftly and emphatically with a win in his first ever 500 race, at Suzuka. The significance of securing pole position and the race win was nothing short of earth-shattering, arguably one of the greatest single achievements in the modern history of GP racing. Or am I hyperventilating on the old hyperbole?
To put it into context, it took all - and I mean all - of the post Roberts Senior World Championship contenders, even the greats like Rainey, Lawson, Schwantz, Gardner, Doohan and (whisper it) Rossi, a lot longer than a single 500 race to leapfrog onto motorcycle racing's highest podium step. No home-town advantage, no special one-off factory missile, no spur of external expectation was driving Biaggi that day, but he still won a clear victory.
The honeymoon didn't last, even if Max did put up the most credible fight against Doohan that year, and won another race.
Armed with a factory Yamaha the year after, Max was expected to be an even stronger challenger, and then a real championship favourite, especially after Mick Doohan's career ended against the trackside signage at Jerez.
For Biaggi, it simply never happened (any more than sporadically) from then to now, with first Criville (time-servingly), Roberts (cleverly), and Rossi (comprehensively) outperforming Max, the great competitor who for some reason frequently failed to compete. For most observers, that was due to his inability to change from his devastatingly perfect 250 style on tracks like to Suzuka and Brno, to a more 500-friendly point, slide and squirt technique when it was the only way to go fast for 25 laps on the plethora of Scalextric tracks the GP classes scoot around.
Max denies it. He denies a fair few things really, as the following interview explains. And he is still firm believer in Max Biaggi, even if Max has, at best, enjoyed in the bittersweet status of second most successful 500GP rider for the past four seasons, the best man Yamaha have had for the last three of them, and yet still not on the same plateau of dominance he first ascended to and then dominated in the 250 championship.
We spoke to him only four days after the final Rio GP, and despite being prodded in a language other than his own, Max's often bamboozling eloquence was set on a full power, as was an underlying defiance which burns on through his crystalline clarity of thought, expression and gesture.
Is Max crushed after his latest disappointments and Rossi's stellar season? If he is, he's disguising his pain behind a Praetorian Guard of impressive power.
Let's just say that self-belief is obviously not a commodity the Biaggi company store is about to run out of anytime soon.
