Flashback: Doohan versus Crivillé at war

Mick Doohan and Spaniard Alex Crivillé enjoyed some passionately fierce 500 GP contests from 1994 until the forced retirement of the Australian.

Doohan was a five-times 500cc world champion from 1994-1998, turning the Honda NSR500 which both he and Crivillé rode into the benchmark machine of the second half of the decade.

Having joined Doohan on the factory Honda team in 1994, Crivillé was the rider who pushed his colleague the hardest for the title. The challenger recalls the 1996 season as being the one in which he came closest to getting the better of Doohan.

"1996 was the year when I was the most prepared in all aspects. Physically and mentally I was very strong and the bike was more competitive compared to other season," said Criville. "It was the time when the fans started to separate into groups for either Doohan or Crivillé."

Crivillé won the title in 1999, finishing his career two years later with 15 premier class wins to his name, and Doohan also remembers the 1996 campaign as perhaps the most hotly contested between the pair.

"In 1996 he definitely stepped up his level," said Doohan. "Without taking anything away from him I probably played a different type of race strategy that year, which caught me a few times and he capitalised on it. He was quite clever in fact because he was using that to his advantage and I was caught with my pants down, so to speak, a few times."

Doohan added: "Your team-mate is the only other person out there on machine perceived to be the same as yours. You don't want to be the second one in that race! You always want to be quicker than your team-mate. Thankfully I was quicker than my team-mates nine times out of 10."