My hero : Mick Doohan

The Thunder from Down Under! Michael Doohan joined the Rothmans Honda team in 1989 to partner Wayne Gardner and Eddie Lawson at HRC.  He missed a couple of races due to injuries but managed 9th in the final standings of the 500cc world championschip. His first victory came in Hungary in 1990 and as such became a very strong opponent for the dominating Americans Rainey, Lawson and Schwantz in the early nineties. After Schwantz', Lawson's and Rainey's retirement ( albeit the latter was forced to due to a crash at Misano in 1993 which left him paralyzed from the waist down ), Mick's reign over the 500cc category started and he managed 5 world titles in a row between from 1994 to 1998. During this period he was partnered by Spaniard Alex Crivillé in the Honda factory squad. They never got along and this resulted in quite a number of clashes on and off the track. Crivillé managed to beat Doohan once in a while but could not help but playing second fiddle to the Aussie. When Michael crashed in 1999 at Jerez which resulted in severe injuries, he decided to end his racing career.

 

Doohan's tally of premier class wins stands at 54 out of 137 starts and he still holds the record for most wins in one single season, i.e. 12 out of 15 during the 1997 season.

What makes him so special for me ? He was the guy who managed to get into the fight with the big guns and the fact that he got drafted into the HRC team, is a confirmation of the faith and belief Honda put in him. I didn't really like the characters at that time. Rainey was too clean, Lawson too boring, Gardner too much of a hillbilly and Schwantz was a mix of them all ( I liked his bike though ). Doohan's style and throttle control were very different from the dirt trackers and he introduced a new style of racing and riding 500cc monsters. His aim : increase corner speed instead of brutal engine power. In the end, it proved to be a turning  point because more European guys started to get into the mix as well and he more or less ended the era of the dirt track bred racers and the domination of  500cc Grand Prix racing by the Americans. In a way, he changed the face of grand prix racing...