{"id":569412,"date":"2019-08-06T09:36:32","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T08:36:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/opinion\/when-mighty-mick-won-his-first-crown"},"modified":"2019-12-05T03:25:34","modified_gmt":"2019-12-05T03:25:34","slug":"when-mighty-mick-won-his-first-crown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.motorsportmagazine.com\/articles\/motorcycles\/motogp\/when-mighty-mick-won-his-first-crown\/","title":{"rendered":"When Mighty Mick won his first crown"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s a quarter of a century since Mighty Mick Doohan won his first 500cc world title at Brno. Here\u2019s how he did it…<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Mick<\/p>\n

Mick Doohan would dominate the 1994 season to take the championship by almost double the points of his closest rival <\/b>Photo: GPMP<\/em><\/p>\n

There are many parallels between Mighty Mick Doohan<\/a> and Magical Marc M\u00e1rquez<\/a>: their crazy talent to ride the ragged edge, their mastery of the front tyre, their premier-class records and milestones, their enjoyment of mind games and perhaps most of all their love for destroying and demoralising the opposition.<\/p>\n

Doohan\u2019s crew chief Jeremy Burgess had a phrase for this last obsession, borrowed from the rough and rude world of Aussie rules football: \u201cCrush the c***s!\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is what M\u00e1rquez did once again at Brno<\/a>. He had no reason to take risks and could\u2019ve been forgiven for engaging cruise mode to conserve his huge points advantage, which is, of course, exactly why he didn\u2019t. The idea is to mess with your rivals\u2019 heads, until they see you as unbeatable, so they go into each race already beaten.<\/p>\n

He did it in qualifying, skating around the partly soaked circuit on slicks to better everyone by 2.5sec. And he did it again in the race, when he beat everyone by 2.4sec.<\/p>\n

His 58th<\/sup> MotoGP pole position equalled Doohan\u2019s all-time pole record and his 50th<\/sup> race win makes him only the fourth rider to reach the half-century, alongside Doohan, Giacomo Agostini<\/a> and Valentino Rossi<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was fitting that M\u00e1rquez reached these landmarks at Brno, because it was at Brno that Doohan won his first 500cc world championship 25 years ago, in August 1994.<\/p>\n

Undoubtedly, Doohan\u2019s five consecutive titles \u2013 1994 to 1998 \u2013 constitute the greatest comeback in Grand Prix history. In June 1992 the 27-year-old Aussie went into the Dutch TT leading the series by 52 points from Wayne Rainey<\/a>, but then he crashed in final practice, sustaining spiral fractures of his right tibia and fibula.<\/p>\n

‘In the post-race media conference he made an ominous announcement. \u201cI know my determination won\u2019t dwindle. I feel like I\u2019ve got to win another title to make the point.\u201d’<\/p>\n

He elected to go under the knife at the local hospital, where surgeons botched the op that should\u2019ve fixed the break and had him back on a bike in a few weeks. The surgeons were on the verge of amputating the leg below the knee when MotoGP medic Dr Claudio Costa arrived in a Lear-jet ambulance and spirited Doohan to his own clinic in Bologna, where he sewed the Aussie\u2019s legs together, so that the left leg\u2019s blood supply might save the right leg.<\/p>\n

Doohan spent the next year and a half in and out of operating theatres, after returning to racing at the end of 1992 with so little feeling in the leg that he couldn\u2019t even keep it on its footpeg.<\/p>\n

The operations are too numerous to go into here. And they weren\u2019t just fixing the leg, they were also fixing injuries he suffered while trying to go fast again before the leg was up to it.<\/p>\n

His number-one surgeon was Arthur Ting, the go-to MotoGP bone-fixer of that era, who also fixed up Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson<\/a> and many others. Despite working with so many racing legends, Ting was in awe of Doohan\u2019s ability to deal with pain.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe took so little pain medication it\u2019s almost superhuman,\u201d says Ting. \u201cIt\u2019s like he\u2019s reset his pain thermostat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Doohan was far from fully fit throughout 1993 and was still walking wounded at the start of 1994. But he had worked out how to ride around his injuries.<\/p>\n

Preseason testing started in February, at Eastern Creek, outside Sydney, venue for the season-opening Australian GP.<\/p>\n

\u201cStraight away I felt better on the bike,\u201d Doohan recalls. \u201cBut I was pretty tentative. With all the operations I\u2019d been through I didn\u2019t want to injure myself again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Round 1: Australian GP (Eastern Creek), March 27 <\/strong><\/p>\n

At the first race he was beaten into third by John Kocinski<\/a> on a Cagiva and Luca Cadalora<\/a> on a Yamaha<\/a>. He wasn\u2019t at all happy about that. Something wasn\u2019t quite right \u2013 the bike wasn\u2019t behaving like it had in 1993.<\/p>\n

\"Mick<\/p>\n

Mick Doohan’s first win of the 1994 season would come at the Malaysian GP<\/strong> Photo: MotoGP<\/em><\/p>\n

Round 2: Malaysian GP (Shah Alam), April 10<\/strong><\/p>\n

Doohan had the same problem again: a lack of suspension balance. He only just made the front row, but the following day he won his first race of the year, after crew chief Jeremy Burgess had an inspired overnight rethink.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe couldn\u2019t keep any corner speed, so we geared the bike down,\u201d says Doohan. \u201cThat way I could put the bike into a turn, park it, stand it up and accelerate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Round 3: Japanese GP (Suzuka), April 24<\/strong><\/p>\n

This was long-haired local hero Norifumi Abe\u2019s<\/a> GP debut, when he battled for the lead with Doohan and Schwantz. Abe crashed out, but not before he had won the hearts of thousands of race fans, including a 15-year-old Valentino Rossi, who was so taken with Abe\u2019s wild-riding style and heavy-rock hairdo that he rechristened himself Rossifumi.<\/p>\n

Doohan got beaten into second by Schwantz, but while racing with Abe he noticed that the youngster\u2019s 1993 NSR500 was getting drive where his 1994 model was getting none. That got him thinking.<\/p>\n

A pre-Spanish GP test at Jarama<\/a> revealed the truth. A feature of Doohan\u2019s 10-year grand prix career with HRC was the Japanese engineers always pushing to develop and move things forward, while Doohan simply wanted to stick with what he already knew.<\/p>\n

He understood that one of the most important factors in motorcycle racing is rider\/bike intimacy. To ride faster than anyone else you must know your machine so well that you know what it\u2019s going to do even before it does it. That way you can ride the ragged edge and survive.<\/p>\n

For example, at Mugello<\/a> 1993 Doohan had won his first GP since the Assen<\/a> accident after requesting 1992 cylinders, exhausts, suspension and so on for his 1993 NSR.<\/p>\n

It was the same story in 1994. \u201cThey kept telling me I was running 1992 suspension, but I was a second faster once we fitted my old \u201992 forks, and the front tyre didn\u2019t chew up anymore. I was pissed off; that took some of the trust out of our relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Round 4: Spanish GP (Jerez), May 8<\/strong><\/p>\n

Doohan may have been upset, but by the time he got to Jerez he was bursting with confidence and aiming to deal reigning champion Schwantz a morale-crushing defeat at a track that suited Suzuki\u2019s<\/a> fine-handling but not-so-fast RGV500.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew it\u2019d be psychologically good to beat Schwantz there. It\u2019d bum him out because Jerez isn\u2019t a horsepower track, and after that we were going to two horsepower circuits.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pair fought an epic duel, both shattering the lap record on the final lap, Doohan taking the chequered flag four tenths ahead of Schwantz. Kocinski joined them on the podium and probably wished he hadn\u2019t. Neither the winner nor runner-up liked the former 250cc world champion, so they blinded him with champagne, leaving him to stagger to the Clinica Mobile for help.<\/p>\n

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