Derbi 125 on test

Taken from the current issue of Classic Racer

Alan Cathcart tests the Jorge Martinez championship winning 125 Derbi and comes away understanding why big isn’t always best.

H ere’s a guaranteed motorcycle trivia banker question. Which rider was the last to win two World Championships in the same season? Did I hear Freddie Spencer with his 250/500 double in 1985? Wrong! It was three years later; exactly two decades ago, that Spanish star Jorge ‘Aspar’ Martinez won the 80cc world crown, for the third time, on his Barcelona-built Derbi and the first ever 125cc World Championship restricted to single-cylinder machines for the same marque.

Everybody loves a David and Goliath story and motorcycle GP fans are no exception, especially when the Goliath is named Honda. Aspar’s 1988 double title year was a vintage season for the underdog, because in winning the inaugural single-cylinder 125cc World Championship, he and the Derbi team not only tweaked the Japanese giant's nose, but also showed that the age of the European factory in GP racing was far from over.

There is little doubt Honda underestimated the potential of Derbi to be as competitive in the new 125 category. The Honda PR men tried to persuade the world’s press they didn't have a works bike in 125GP that season, only production RS125s with some kit parts, but they fooled no one. About the only things standard on championship runner-up Ezio Gianola's Honda by the second half of the season were the main frame spar and the crankcase.
But sometimes even the best laid plans can sometimes go adrift. Aspar, the reigning 80cc world champion, gave the new Derbi a triumphant debut on home ground at Jarama despite a broken exhaust, then went on to win nine of the 11 GP races held that year to clinch the title one round early. His only error came at a drenched Nurburgring, when he crashed. He had a good excuse, though, having just spent 40 minutes splashing to victory in the 80cc race.

For all Gianola's determination and the nail-bitingly close battles between the two, which made 125GP racing such an exciting spectacle, the combination of Aspar's effortless skill and the speed and performance of the new Derbi, left HRC with egg on its corporate face. By mid-season, an obviously frustrated Gianola was reduced to making the classic excuse, claiming publicly that Aspar was only winning because Derbi had so much more money than Honda to spend on development!

Unusual for a works Honda rider to blame his defeat on having been outspent, even if Derbi was far from the dirt-floor moped factory those outside Spain might imagine. Derbi was then still a family business owned by the founding Rabasa family, who only sold it to Piaggio a decade later, was a highly profitable operation producing 90,000 powered two-wheelers each year.

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