The Italian GP, steeped in racing history, has always been both glamorous and prestigious. This year there is an extra dimension - the close personal rivalry between Valentino Rossi and Max Biaggi, the only two race winners so far this year. Mugello will be besieged by passionate fans, attending their favourites in this intriguing battle. 

Italy's Mugello circuit is long and fast, looping up and down opposing sides of a steepening valley, overlooked by the famous old Mille Miglia Apennine passes and surrounded by picture-postcard Tuscan countryside. The hillsides make expansive natural grandstands, while the nature of the circuit almost guarantees close racing and thrilling finishes.

One feature is the long start-finish straight, approached from a fast downhill U-turn - achieving a good exit speed is crucial; so is slip-streaming past the pits and grandstands. The hard downhill braking at the end of the straight is one of very few overtaking opportunities, and it is technically very challenging. The rest of the circuit comprises mainly medium-speed ess bends - riders call them "fast chicanes" - which means only one fast line and few passing places.

There are two main requirements, technically speaking, according to Warren Willing, team technical adviser.

"The nature of the corners means you use the front end hard, and you're looking to make the bike steer accurately and confidently. It's also bumpy, so you need to have the suspension working well so the bike doesn't get put off line."

The team is working with Ohlins developing a new front fork, which Willing describes as "being more plush". Gibernau switched to the new fork at Le Mans and reported a better ride and improved braking; so far Roberts has preferred the more direct feel of the older fork he used last year. "We've just started working with the new fork, and I believe we will be able to get that feel as we try different setting adjustments," Willing said.

"The other question mark is the last corner onto the straight. It's crucial to come off that corner fast, but it's a place where the tyres are very prone to develop chatter. It will be very important to find the right tyre-suspension combination that will allow the riders to open the throttle early."

Racing in 2001, the last year of the 500cc championship, has been intense and competitive. The last round - at Le Mans in France - proved it can also be volatile.

After the same rider - Italian former 125 and 250 champion Valentino Rossi - won the first three races, some thought the season ahead was cut and dried. But Rossi was beaten back to third place in France, and conclusions that had been foregone are now forgotten instead.

Italy’s triumvirate of 500 gladiators are Marlboro Yamaha Team star Max Biaggi, winner of the French GP two weeks ago, World Championship leader Valentino Rossi Honda and Loris Capirossi Honda, the man who won last year’s thrilling three-way Mugello battle.  That race broke Italian TV viewing records for bike racing, with more than five million people tuning in to witness the Biaggi v Rossi v Capirossi showdown. And the trio’s ongoing rivalry has pushed viewing figures even higher this year, with more than six million fans regularly watching the action. 

Sunday’s race is set to break more records, with a bigger-than-ever crowd expected at Mugello, a glorious racetrack set in a Tuscan valley, and a natural amphitheatre for what promises to be one of the greatest races in GP history. Italian race fans are world-renowned for their enthusiasm, and it won’t be difficult to spot the rival supporters Biaggi’s legion of followers in red, Rossi’s in yellow and Capirossi’s in black. The atmosphere promises to be more football cup final than bike GP. 

Valentino Rossi (Nastro Azzurro Honda NSR500) comes home to Italy this weekend for what promises to be the biggest race of his career so far. The brilliant 22-year-old Italian, already a 125 and 250 World Champion, races on home tarmac on Sunday for the first time as leader of the premier 500 World Championship.

Not only that, Rossi contests this year's Italian GP amidst a wave of national Grand Prix fever, going for home-tarmac success along with compatriots Max Biaggi (Yamaha) and Loris Capirossi (West Honda Pons NSR500), last year's Mugello winner. Italian riders have won all four of this year's 500 GPs - Rossi dominating the first three and arch-rival Biaggi winning in France two weeks ago - so it's no surprise that more Italians than ever before are watching bike racing on television.

Rossi - the man whose youthful charisma is breaking motorcycle racing into the mainstream - can count upon a huge army of fans encamped upon the hillsides that overlook the challenging Tuscan circuit. But Capirossi and Biaggi will also have their vociferous supporters. Last year the massive Mugello crowd was entertained by a breathtaking 500 GP as the trio raced side by side for victory, Rossi tumbling out of first place and Biaggi falling on the final lap after he'd clipped Capirossi's NSR. That left Capirossi to win Honda's 140th 500 victory, making the marque the most successful name in 500 racing, taking over from Italian brand MV Agusta.

This weekend Rossi and Capirossi will be aiming to take another step towards making their own little piece of history. Both men are former 125 and 250 World Champions aiming to secure the triple crown with success in the 500 series. Only one man in GP history has won all three titles - Briton Phil Read, who took 125, 250 and success in the sixties and seventies.

Mugello is therefore a hugely important event for these two men. And the apparently laid-back Rossi (the man who made a mobile phone call while waiting on the grid for the French GP!) will feel the pressure just like any other ambitious sportsman. "If you care about the result, of course it's not easy, you always feel the pressure," he says. "There will be a lot of expectations on me, Loris and Biaggi, and I think there will be an amazing atmosphere at Mugello, even bigger than last year."

Rossi qualified third for last year's Italian GP, his first race on a 500 at the track, and had just taken the lead when he fell. "I was simply pushing too hard," adds Rossi, who has worked at improving his 500 style, using a Honda XR650 dirt bike. "I ride the bike on the dirt, it helps you with your throttle control, plus it's a lot of fun! Now I can spin the 500's rear tyre much better and I love that, it's the biggest fun!"

Capirossi, whose 2001 results have yet to give him fair reward for his speed, can't wait to get to Mugello. "My home race is the start of a run of circuits that I really like - Mugello, Barcelona, Assen, Donington and the Sacshenring," says Capirossi, who currently lies fourth overall, riding a 2000-spec NSR. "Mugello will be very difficult to win though. I think Valentino will be hard to beat - he has a perfect feeling with his bike. We are improving my bikes all the time, we got new engine parts at Jerez to improve speed and now we just want to keep improving our chassis set-up. The 2001 bike, like Rossi's, seems to have better rear traction, especially after half-race distance. But Mugello is more a front-end track, there's a lot of fast corners, which you go into really hard on the front. I have a good front-end feeling with my NSR so that makes me confident." 

Capirossi's team-mate Alex Barros (West Honda Pons NSR500), who took pole at last year's Italian GP but crashed out of the race, will also be out to raise his pace at Mugello after a run of lower-top-ten finishes. "I feel better and better with my bike and I think we can hope for improved results from Mugello onward," says the Brazilian.

Former 500 king Alex Crivillé (Repsol YPF Honda NSR500) won the 1999 Italian GP at Mugello and believes this year's event will allow him to take another step back to his very best form. "I think we are heading in the right direction," says the Spanish hero who is getting faster and faster after a difficult 2000 and steady start to 2001. "Mugello will be a good track for us after the problems we had at Le Mans. I feel confident I can get back towards the front there."

Team-mate and class rookie Tohru Ukawa (Repsol YPF Honda NSR500) makes his 500 debut at Mugello this weekend and although the track was never good to him in his 250 days, he's sure he'll do okay on the 500.

"After Le Mans, we think that the tracks I liked on the 250 are the tracks I don't like on the 500!" smiles Ukawa. "I won the Le Mans 250 race in 2000 but had a tough time there on the 500, while I never liked Jerez on a 250 but had a good race there on the 500! We always had problems on the 250 at Mugello, so I'm really confident for this weekend!"

Honda's other V4 rookie Chris Walker (Shell Advance Racing Honda NSR500) will be out for more points on Sunday following a best-ever 500 finish at Le Mans. But team-mate Leon Haslam (Shell Advance Racing Honda NSRV500) will be missing after breaking a wrist in France.

On the Suzuki side of things. Roberts has challenged for pole and led races but the finishing positions have been hard to attain. Delays in pre-season testing meant that when the racing began in April, the team was still putting the finishing touches to the 2001 bike, the latest version of the machine that swept Roberts to a convincing win last season. The team has always known that the bike needs just a little more development to get right back to winning once again.

Kenny Roberts says they need more - "Suzuki has promised us some stuff to test for Mugello. The aim is to get a better response from the engine. At this point, we need some help to get the bike more consistent, and to smooth the power delivery. At a place like Mugello, you need that for those long, deep corners. Whether that means I can get to the podium, or whether it will just help make it easier to ride around - we'll have to see. I'm hoping it will help improve our lap time, and we can go forward from there."

Sete Gibernau thinks it is about time he had some luck - "What is amazing is that so many things have happened this season that are just bad luck. During qualifying in France I never got a chance to set a good lap time, and we still had settings we wanted to test. That's not how you want to go into a race, and it showed. What we need in Mugello is for everything to go smoothly through qualifying and in the race. Then I will give 100 per cent, as I always do."

Proton Team KR rider Jurgen van den Goorbergh and the independent England-based team are looking forward to the Italian GP with special interest. Held at the fast and flowing circuit of Mugello, a complete contrast to the stop-and-go Le Mans venue for the previous round, the circuit should bring out the best in the lightweight alternative racer. 

"I think we could go better than most people expect," said Chuck Aksland. The team Manager was cautiously but realistically optimistic after a strong race at the French GP, with the bike's first top ten finish of the season, was followed by even more successful testing at Le Mans the next day. 

A further refinement of chassis settings meant that the top Dutch rider was able to improve still further on lap times set during the previous three days. 

It all adds strength to the Proton team's arsenal, as they prepare for a track which will allow Jurgen to exploit the sweet-handling machine's unique strong points to the full. 

"At Mugello, the turns are long and flowing, and run into one another like fast chicanes.  Our bike seems to get through those corners well, and the data we found at the Le Mans test is another step forward in that area. The track has a long straight, so it's important to get out of the previous long downhill corner fast. In the past Jurgen has found ways to do achieve a good corner exit speed at similar places - like Estoril in Portugal. With the work we've done on aerodynamics, speed hasn't really been an issue this year anyway. We're generally up among the fast times, and no more than five or seven km/h slower, where last year it was closer to 15 km/h," continued Aksland. 

Jurgen Van Den Goorbergh is also optimistic - "We tried a couple of new things in the test at Le Mans - firstly solving the fuel problem that made me slower in the early laps, and also a new chassis geometry that seems to be working - I improved lap times by almost half a second consistently, and I'm getting an even better feeling with the bike.   At Mugello we will have to see how well we go down the straight. In the past with the twin-cylinder I could come out of the last corner faster than the V4s, then try to get into their slipstream when they came past as the speed built up. I'll do the same with the three cylinder. The difference is this bike is fast enough to stay in the slipstream where there twin wasn't fast enough.   I like the track a lot, and we've already worked on getting a special set-up for the fast chicanes.  It looks good." 

In the Yamaha camp Biaggi comes to Mugello on a high, after heading the Marlboro Yamaha Team’s first-ever one-two at Le Mans two weeks ago. Team-mate Carlos Checa proved he’s back in a big way by leading the race and coming home second, following a difficult start to his 2001 season. 

"We’ve changed our chassis configuration, so I’m getting better feel from the bike," says Biaggi, who races his 51st 500 GP on Sunday. "And it seems to work at other tracks too. On Friday at Le Mans we ran one bike with the original set-up and the other with our new settings, and the new configuration was immediately better." 

As well as fine tuning chassis set-up during their Mugello tests, Biaggi and his team also changed direction on tyres. In the past Biaggi has switched back and forth between Michelin’s 17in and 16.5in rears, choosing one tyre or the other according to circuit characteristics. The 17 offers easier handling but the 16.5 offers superior race-long traction thanks to a radical profile that puts more rubber on the road at maximum lean for extra grip and cooler running. At Mugello they decided to focus on 16.5s and also switched to a different Michelin front slick. 

"In the past Max sometimes tried 17s but we’ve worked to improve our range of settings with the 16.5, so we can react better if we encounter set-up difficulties," explains Marlboro Yamaha Team director Hiroya Atsumi. "The new front has also helped." 

Last year’s three-way Mugello contest was so intense that Loris Capirossi Honda was the only one to make the finish line without a fall. Both his rivals tumbled as the conflict reached its climax, Biaggi remounting to finish ninth. "That was an incredible race and I expect the same kind of thing this time," says Biaggi. "There’s going to be so much pressure on all three of us. I’ll be trying hard as I can and hoping I can win." 

Checa is fired up again after an early part of the season where everything went wrong for the Spaniard.  Beset by a debilitating virus at round one in Japan, Checa was forced out of round two after crashing his Supermotard training bike in Spain. He returned to action for his home GP three weeks later, still not 100 per cent fit, and suffered another injurious tumble during qualifying. His perseverance finally paid off in France and Checa is out to continue his comeback at Mugello, where he finished a brilliant second last year, taking the World Championship lead on equal points with eventual champ Kenny Roberts for the first time in his career. 

"We had a bad start but we’ve come good again," he says. "I think we’re out of the bad times and we can see the light again. Everything has changed for us and I’m looking forward to Mugello. Le Mans was a great result for the team, I think everyone is much happier now but I still want to keep improving, I know I can ride faster.   I feel much, much stronger that I did after my Jerez accident, but I don’t just feel better physically, I also feel better on the bike. We’ve worked hard on settings and tyre choice and I’m getting more feeling from the machine, and that’s what you need to ride comfortably and fast." 

Garry McCoy is recovering from an operation on his broken scaphoid and is not fit to race this weekend.  

Anthony West will race at Mugello - Read about it here

Mark Willis is confident with the rate of progress on the Pulse bike and is eager to do well at Mugello.

After Mugello the GP circus returns to Spain for the second of four races on the Iberian peninsular. This time it's the Catalan GP at Catalunya, just outside Barcelona. The racing then heads north for the Dutch GP and then the British GP, halfway point in the 2001 World Championship season.