How Aprilia's world championship juggernaut hit its straps

By 1991, Loris Reggiani's breakthrough Misano win was becoming an increasingly distant memory. A follow-up 250cc victory had failed to materialise thus far. And despite having joined the 125cc grid from 1988, Aprilias had yet to score a win in the smallest category either. But this was the year that the investments back at base began to bear fruit. 

In June, the charismatic Pier Francesco Chili struck gold with a narrow win at Assen aboard a works-supported bike. Then, next time out at Paul Ricard, prodigal son Reggiani added a fine victory of his own. The bad feelings of that 1988 split were long gone. Leader of a major performance development push in 1991, he had become something of an inspirational figure for the factory. 

That wasn't Aprilia's only joy in 250cc road racing. Its bikes dominated the European championship that year, with a Roman youngster called Max Biaggi coming out on top of a three-way battle. The likes of Chili and Reggiani knew very well that they hadn't heard the last of this kid. 

1991 also saw breakthrough in the 125cc category, with Alessandro Gramigni securing Aprilia's first victory at Brno. Reggiani emphasises both Jan Witteveen and Carlo Pernat's roles in taking Aprilia to the next level that year: "It was because Witteveen brought a new system and a new organisation to Aprilia. It was much better than before. He had long experience of leading world championship teams. Pernat had a lot of experience as a team manager. He was working at Cagiva and knew exactly how to work for a winning team."

By now, Reggiani also understood what he had lost when he went to Honda. It was something of an Aprilia trademark in those years - albeit not one made for every riding style: "When I was racing for Honda, the bike was much powerful but I didn't like the power delivery of the Honda as much as Aprilia's. The Aprilia was a little bit more difficult to manage but it was much more aggressive. For a rider who wants to enjoy riding a bike, it was much more gratifying."

If 1991 had brought back the joy of winning races, 1992 gave Aprilia its first champion. Sole works rider Gramigni took the 125cc riders crown, though Honda did enough to keep Noale's paws off the constructors silverware. It was still a key success for Aprilia's business model going forward, as privateers began to queue up to lease its 125cc bikes in years to come. The concept was not to have a works team and theoretically offer every customer the same equipment. That proved both popular and profitable.

Back in the 250s, Aprilia ramped up its results to the next level that season. There were six wins as Reggiani and Chili finished second and third in the championship behind Honda's Luca Cadalora. One of those six, significantly, was claimed by Biaggi, as Chili's rookie team-mate at the Valesi squad took honours at Kyalami, the venue where it had all begun back in '85.

Reggiani leads the pack as Aprilia hits its stride in 1992 with a 2-3 in the 250cc championship and a first world title in 125cc with Gramigni

At Hockenheim that year, Chili led a podium lockout. Cadalora was over 20 seconds behind at the end of that race on what was then a notorious power circuit. A clear sign of the massive progress in the engine department, it's little wonder that Witteveen lists that result as one of his top memories from the time.

The 1993 season was something of a hiatus on the 250cc side as Biaggi repeated Reggiani's move of ducking off to Honda for a season. Reggiani, for whom the old reliability issues made a comeback, was best with third in the championship. But a significant moment came at Donington Park, when Jean-Philippe Ruggia's quickest lap in the 250cc race was just a tenth off that of the 500cc clash. That lent weight to a big idea Witteveen was toying with: entering the top category with a lighter 400cc twin that might just be the perfect compromise between agility, weight and power...

Biaggi was back 'home' for 1994, and promptly took an Aprilia to the top of the mountain in the 250cc class at long last. Not only did he win the riders title, but he did so in a golden era for the category. At a time when Mick Doohan was making 500cc racing a little dull at times, the 250cc races that opened the action most Sundays were often the highlight. They featured beautifully-presented bikes, thrilling racing, an intense mix of personalities and an array of specialist talents - the 'smaller' classes were more than mere stepping stones back then - for Biaggi to defeat. In his introduction to that year's Motocourse, Michael Scott referenced "a 250cc contest of such a high standard as almost to defy its protagonists". 

"I had a very good relationship with all my team-mates except Biaggi, because he is a bad person" Loris Reggiani

It came down to a tense final round at Barcelona, where narrow points leader Biaggi won to seal the title ahead of Honda's Tadayuki Okada. Frustratingly for Noale, a constructors trophy still remained elusive. The same went for the 125cc class, despite Kazuto Sakata snaring the riders' crown to secure a first brace for Aprilia. Sakata winning for Aprilia was significant: it was unheard of at the time for a Japanese rider to race for a European factory. Another sign of a serious shift in the power balance within the lower categories.

"It was a wonderful time," reflects Witteveen on the period. "Also very emotional. We were considered a small company, and when you can beat the likes of Honda and Yamaha as a small company, it's satisfying."

1995 finally opened Aprilia's constructors championship account, while Biaggi defeated Yamaha's Tetsuya Harada to the riders' championship. The final leg of Biaggi's title hat-trick was much closer, however. In 1996, Ralf Waldmann came home just six points behind Biaggi, who ended the year as something of a lone ranger against a slew of Hondas. He then departed for the Japanese marque once again, winning a fourth riders' title the next season. 

With respect to the 125cc category, it was Biaggi's three 250cc titles in the mid-nineties that truly established Aprilia as an indelible winning name in world championship racing. You can still see the traces of it today: the black 'factory colours' clearly evoke the iconic Chesterfield-backed machines Biaggi rode in that era. (Up until 1993, factory bikes had been a combination of red, white and purple.) And the man himself is a regular paddock presence as a brand ambassador - albeit, puzzlingly, not one who saw fit to be interviewed for a piece about Aprilia's glorious past.

Biaggi led Aprilia's title-winning breakthrough in the 1990s with three consecutive crowns for the Noale manufacturer

Photo by: Pascal Rondeau - ALLSPORT - Getty Images

Indeed, there's a consensus that although Biaggi brought home the bacon - he added two World Superbike titles for Aprilia in 2010 and 2012, don't forget - he could be a difficult man to work with. In his grand prix career, at least, he moulded a team around himself - but perhaps in less admirable fashion than a Michael Schumacher or a Marc Marquez. 

"I had a very good relationship with all my team-mates except Biaggi, because he is a bad person," declares Reggiani. "Never honest. He likes a lot to make psychological war with the riders around him."

"He was challenging," agrees Witteveen. "He was like the king, [who believed] things wouldn't work without him. But he was technically very good. A good rider who could explain problems to the engineers well. He was also a good starter - he wanted to start from pole, get out in front right away, build up a lead of three or four seconds, and win."

Biaggi's last title season with the factory was also the Aprilia debut of Italy's next young superstar: Valentino Rossi. The wild-haired, bright yellow crazy kid's Brno win that year helped Noale to its long-awaited breakthrough 125cc constructors' title. He seemed destined to fulfil his two-year plan by taking the riders' championship in 1997, and did exactly that before stepping up a class.

Rossi's timing could not have been better. His debut 250cc year coincided with Aprilia's most dominant season of all in the class. For 1998, Rossi slotted into a happy, high-profile factory trio alongside Loris Capirossi and another honorary Japanese Italian, Harada. With Biaggi having moved up to 500cc, the omens were good. But nobody could have foreseen Aprilia winning every race but one of the 14 staged that season.

All three factory riders got in on the winning act, though it was part-timer Marcellino Lucchi who cheekily snatched the big one at Mugello. That was a 1-2-3-4 finish, with the Aprilias also locking out the front row - which had room for four bikes in those crowded times. No wonder that Italian Grand Prix goes down as one of Witteveen's personal highlights in a year brimming with success and topped off by a second 125cc title for Sakata.

The private Aprilia battle for the 250cc riders crown that year was tight, with only 24 points covering the three protagonists as Capirossi emerged with the title following a controversial accident with Harada at the Buenos Aires finale. But Rossi, having made his 250cc breakthrough at Assen (where else?), was the man with the late momentum, winning the final four rounds. His sophomore year felt like a box-tick exercise as he roared to nine wins and sealed the deal with a race to spare. 

Rossi missed out on the 250cc title to fellow Aprilia rider Capirossi in 1998, but reversed that results in 1999

Photo by: Torsten Blackwood / AFP via Getty Images

Young Rossi also managed to leave a better impression on his team than Biaggi had done, remarks Witteveen: "Rossi was a completely different rider. But also good! Valentino had the advantage that he knew what he wanted... and he didn't want to test too much. I remember the race in South Africa, in Welkom, he qualified only sixth and he was around half a second off pole. I asked him if there was a problem, since the gap was quite big, and he said, 'There's no problem. I'll win easily tomorrow!' And that's what he did. He was a guy who prepared for the race."

While the 1998 250cc season may have been Aprilia's high noon in the junior classes, Noale would continue to collect titles for over a decade to come. The roll of honour is long, but 2002, 2006 and 2007 deserve special mention as further years in which Aprilia won both championships in both classes. And Marco Melandri's 250cc crown in the first of those seasons headlined a campaign nearly as good as '98, with Aprilias only missing out on victory twice.

It would also be remiss not to mention the rider who took the championship in '06 and '07: Jorge Lorenzo. The Spaniard twice defeated Andrea Dovizioso to secure those crowns, becoming the only rider other than Biaggi to take multiple 250cc titles for Aprilia.

Instead of Reggiani reaping the rewards of all that early work for Aprilia, then, it was the adversarial Biaggi who got the glory. The timing of that, you might say, was entirely in keeping with Loris's nickname

The winning went on all the way until the end, namely the transitions to Moto2 in 2010 and Moto3 in 2012. The politics around that somewhat bitter conclusion are for another day, but it is fitting that Hector Barbera led an Aprilia 1-2 in the last 250cc race at Valencia in 2009. Perhaps even more apt was Aprilia locking out the final 125cc podium, also at Valencia, two years later. Its future MotoGP factory rider Maverick Vinales stood at the top of it, while Nicolas Terol walked off with Noale's last riders' title at the time of writing.

And where did Reggiani disappear to after that middling 1993? Noale's oldest ally, now in the twilight of his career, was given the task of leading that lightweight, twin-cylinder '500cc' attack in 1994. An interesting, quirky and often promising campaign that is also a story in itself - but never a winner. 

Instead of Reggiani reaping the rewards of all that early work for Aprilia, then, it was the adversarial Biaggi who got the glory. The timing of that, you might say, was entirely in keeping with Loris's nickname. But though he admits the whole business was bad for his morale, the bond to Aprilia still runs deep even 31 years after he finally hung up his helmet. 

"When I see Aprilia winning, I feel emotional, of course," says Reggiani. And that's only natural for a man who put together the first grand prix Aprilia in his garage. 

Aprilia in 125cc and 250cc world championships

125cc
151 wins
152 poles
10 constructors titles
10 riders titles 

250cc
9 constructors titles
9 riders titles
143 wins
166 poles

Lorenzo, celebrating in Roman army attire, added two 250cc titles to Aprilia's collection in 2006-07

Photo by: Filippo Monteforte / AFP via Getty Images