Valentino Rossi may have had his greatest successes in the World Motorcycle Championship in the four-stroke era from 2002 onwards, but he still thinks back wistfully to the two-strokes
With the introduction of the MotoGP class exactly 20 years ago, a memorable era in the World Motorcycle Championship slowly but surely came to an end. We are talking about the 500cc era with two-stroke engines. For the MotoGP bikes, as used by the big factory teams from 2002 onwards, came with four-stroke engines whose displacement of 990 cubic centimetres was almost twice as large as that of the 500cc two-strokes.
There were still a few 500cc bikes in the field in the 2002 MotoGP season. Sito Pons’ Honda team, for which Loris Capirossi and Alex Barros rode, as well as Alex Hofmann in two races, started the season with the NSR500. In the course of the season, however, they upgraded to the RC211V. And Barros won two of the last four races of the year with this bike.
Erv Kanemoto’s Honda team and Pramac Racing, which was also a Honda customer team at the time, finished the 2002 season with the NSR500. In the following season, 2003, these last 500cc bikes finally disappeared from the scene. And with them the two-stroke bikes disappeared.
The last Grand Prix victory in the two-stroke era in the motorbike world championship was achieved by none other than Valentino Rossi at the 2001 season finale of the 500cc class in Rio de Janeiro. Rossi is also the one who won the last world championship title in the two-stroke era in the same year. Even today, the Italian thinks back to that memorable time with wide eyes and a grin.
“We could talk for a long time about two-strokes and four-strokes,” Rossi says and describes: “I rode two-strokes for a long time. And I think it’s obvious that they had a lot of charisma. That was true both in terms of outward appearance and in terms of riding. “
“The sound alone,” Rossi thinks back wistfully, “was much more that of a racing bike compared to the four-strokes.” But for all his wistfulness, the “Doctor”, now retired from motorbike racing, knows that at a certain point the two-strokes were no longer considered up to date.
“The world has changed, the MotoGP scene has changed. And I remember how it was a shock for me personally, just like for all the other riders. We had really taken the two-strokes of the 500cc era to our hearts.”
“But it’s also a fact,” Rossi continued, “that you always had an uncomfortable, let’s say uncomfortable, feeling when you were riding these machines at the limit. Especially when accelerating, they were really very dangerous. “
The majority of Rossi’s long and successful career in motorbike racing, which spanned more than two and a half decades at World Championship level alone, was in the four-stroke era. And so, looking back, he says: “I had a lot of fun with the four-strokes, too. Especially when accelerating, these bikes are simply easier to control thanks to the electronics. And they’re incredibly fast on top of that. “
“Nevertheless, the two-strokes will always have a very special place in my heart, and in the hearts of all motorbike racing fans,” Rossi concludes his comparison.
