Details of Cars

Cagiva GP500: the 500 that finally won a Grand Prix

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1994 Cagiva C594, the GP500 raced by John Kocinski
1994 Cagiva C594, the GP500 raced by John Kocinski. Photo by Klaus Nahr from Germany, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Cagiva GP500 was a 500-cubic-centimetre two-stroke racing motorcycle built by Cagiva for the 500 cc world championship. It appeared in several versions over the years it was raced, and it gave the Italian marque its first premier-class Grand Prix win.

Cagiva GP500 at a glance

Cagiva GP500 key facts
Maker Cagiva, Varese
Class 500 cc Grand Prix, two-stroke
Known versions C587, V593, C594
Riders Randy Mamola, Eddie Lawson, John Kocinski, Doug Chandler, Alex Barros, Mat Mladin
First podium with Randy Mamola, lead rider from 1988 to 1990
First victory Eddie Lawson, 1992 Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring
1994 season John Kocinski third in the world championship on a C594

The Italian Wikipedia has no article on the GP500; this page is based on the English article and on the racing section of the English article on Cagiva.

History of the Cagiva GP500

Cagiva began racing in the Grand Prix world championship at the end of the 1970s, and its GP500 was developed through a series of iterations designated C587, V593, C594 and others as the project went on. Randy Mamola, the team’s lead rider from 1988 to 1990, took Cagiva’s first podium finish, and the project also received some technical assistance from Yamaha.

Cagiva C591 of Mat Mladin at Eastern Creek in 1993
The Cagiva C591 of Mat Mladin at Eastern Creek in 1993. Photo by Stu Newby, CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

In 1991 Cagiva signed the former world champion Eddie Lawson. The following year, at the Hungarian Grand Prix at the Hungaroring, Lawson won — the first 500 cc Grand Prix victory for the Cagiva GP500. The English article singles the result out as the moment the long project paid off.

John Kocinski also won a Grand Prix on a Cagiva GP500, the C594, and finished third in the 1994 world championship. Over the years the machine was raced at some point in their careers by Randy Mamola, Eddie Lawson, John Kocinski, Doug Chandler, Alex Barros and Mat Mladin.

What the record was about

The motorcycle behind this entry is the works 500 racer, not one of the road-going Cagivas. Its successors in the range were the road-going two-strokes that carried the lessons of the racing programme — the Freccia first, then the Mito, whose SP525 version of 2005 was explicitly a homage to the C594.

Design and features

  • 500 cc two-stroke: Cagiva’s entry in the premier class of Grand Prix racing.
  • Continuous development: the C587, V593 and C594 were successive versions of the same project.
  • Star riders: Mamola, Lawson, Kocinski, Chandler, Barros and Mladin all raced it.
  • First win in 1992: Eddie Lawson at the Hungaroring, the marque’s first 500 cc Grand Prix victory.

Cagiva GP500 versions

  • C587: an early version of the GP500.
  • V593: a later development of the same machine.
  • C594: the 1994 version, raced by John Kocinski and later honoured by the Mito SP525.
  • C591: the 1993 machine, one of which was raced by Mat Mladin at Eastern Creek.

The Mito SP525 was built as a homage to the GP500, and you can read about it in the Cagiva Mito article. More Cagivas are in the Cagiva collection.

Sources

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