Mick Doohan's Photo Pages

Once the 1999 season started, things were obviously not right with the bike. During the first two races, Mick strugled with the NSR trying desperately to make the thing handle.

In the post race interview Mick said "It is obvious that we still have a lot of work to do on the bike!". He knew that HRC had changed something, but as usual they were keeping quiet about the whole affair. When Jerez came round, HRC finally admitted that they had changed the forks a tiny bit. The only trouble with that is, on a 195bhp motorcycle a little bit can soon escalate to a lot. With the probelm sorted, Mick went out on a screamer of a qualifying lap, slaughtering everyones fastest times by three seconds. On the second lap, the NSR drifted wide and the back tyre touched the slippery white line, where it had rained the night before. The back tyre spun up and Mick was hurtled at 120mph towards a sign, he hit it and lay there motionless while the paramedics danced around his body.
Everyone feared the worse, but he wasn't nick named the Iron man of racing for nothing..............

Another shot from 1998 after he clinched the title and cebrated the way that we have seen him do many times before.

1999 and one of the very few photos of this year. After all, he only raced in two races.

Now days, Mick Doohan is the General Manager for HRC, overseeing all development to the bikes. He is also acting as a great mentor for many of the riders, including the new hopefull  working with Jerry Burgess and Dick Smart. And that is 'Valentino Rossi'.

This is when Mick left the Jerez circuit and headed for tests as the whole world held it's breath!

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