Report From Italy

REPORT FROM ITALY

CARLO PERELLI

WHAT IS A contact breaker spring? A tiny little thing in a whole motorcycle. Yet it was just a broken contact breaker spring which robbed Italy’s youngest star, Giacomo Agostini, of this year’s world championship title for the 350 class.

It happened at Suzuka, during the Japan GP, after eight hard-fought world championship meetings. Giacomo was already leading the race by 20 seconds, ahead of teammate Mike Hailwood (the eventual winner), and Jim Redman. His hopes were rising and rising. Then trouble struck and he had to stop at the pits! So, although finishing second to Hailwood, Redman retained the title. A fine performance all the same, considering Giacomo was racing for the first time in world championship events, facing far more experienced riders on powerful machines. But Agostini’s career can only be described as meteoric. In recent years no other Italian rider has reached the peak so quickly.

Born in 1942, he first raced in 1962 and was fully factory-supported by the following season, switching in 1965 to the most successful Italian factory team, the allconquering MV Agusta concern. Now, a few details. His native town is Brescia (of “Mille Miglia” car race fame), but since early childhood he has lived in Lovere, on the shore of Lake Iseo in Northern Italy. Naturally, first approaches to motorcycling were made with dad’s lightweight, and he soon developed a particular liking for fast riding on the winding mountain roads around his town. So his first attempt, with a 175cc Morini “production racer” he had bought secretly, was in a famous hillclimb event, the TrentoBondone, and he came home second among the cream of the specialists.

Although opposed at the beginning by his parents, he went on competing and by the end of the season was judged Italy’s best newcomer. This earned him a place in the Morini works team for 1963 and riding production machines of 175cc that year he was practically unbeatable. By the

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end of the season he made the great jump from 175cc production racers to 250cc GP machinery and he did it in great style. In the Italian GP at Monza, riding the fabulous single-cylinder double-knocker Morini for the first time, with the famous “old elbow” Tarquinio Provini as teammate and against the stiffest opposition, he led until stopped by a loosened exhaust pipe!

Next year Provini joined Benelli, so Agostini graduated to the Morini top rider. They engaged in terrific scraps in the Italian Senior Championship meetings and Giacomo won them all! But then came the break with Morini. Wishing to compete in the world championship events, which Morini is scarcely interested in, Agostini accepted the offer from MV Agusta, who promised to enter him in the 350 and 500 classes of the world championship.

Again graduating, this time from singlecylinder 250s to 350 and 500cc multicylinder machines, Agostini showed no decreasing capabilities. To begin with, he won all the Italian Senior Championship races and on some occasions also got the best of the supreme Mike Hailwood, now his teammate. In the international field he showed his terrific skill, particularly at the German GP on the difficult Nurburgring circuit, where he was victorious with the debut of the MV 350 “three;” at the TT, where he finished third in the three-fifty class on his first visit to the “magic isle;” at the East German GP on the perilous Sachsenring circuit; at the Finnish GP, where he again won the 350; at the Italian GP, where his numberless fans could again applaud him as the 350 winner, and even at the unlucky Japan GP.

Agostini’s style is not spectacular but clean and natural, even with the big MV four-cylinder which he seems to master with no particular effort in spite of being no giant. Very good natured in ordinary life, he shows tremendous determination in his approach to racing, carrying out his physical training and all-around “sound” life with remarkable will power for a 23-year-old youngster. He has a fine sports car (Porsche) but is more often seen around with a touring motorcycle, or a trials mount for rough going (“fine for the sense of balance,” he says); and this especially during the cold winter days. He never gets bored with learning the circuits, even if he has already competed on them, and often spends a whole week inspecting them, both on foot and by motorcycle, but of course for the TT it took quite a bit longer.

Agostini admires such aces as Carlo Ubbiali (the diminutive Italian now retired and nine times World Champion in the lightweight classes), Gary Hocking, John Surtees, Tarquinio Provini, Silvio Grassetti and Remo Venturi, but he says he never tries to “copy” from them: he wants always to ride in his own way, and judging from the results he has done quite well up until now. And there are even bigger hopes for 1966!