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Eddie Lawson beat Wayne Gardner by 15 seconds to win his third GP of 1988. Lawson now leads Gardner in the point standings by 15 points. World Championship Road Race Series: Round 5 . It's Lawson again in Italian GP By Michael Scott File photos by Henny Ray Abrams IMOLA, ITALY, MAY 22 Marlboro Yamaha's Eddie Lawson won the Italian GP at Imola, leading from start to " finish in immaculate style in a race that saw wildly fluctuating fortunes behind him. But one message ' emerged clearly f rom t h e fi kl e C icane-strewn IC . hi . ยท D mo F er.ran. CIrCUIt. :. W a'yne Gardner IS back on hIS revised Rothmans Honda, and though his second place was.1 5 seconds down, Lawson can f~1 his hot breath down the back of ~IS ~eck.. Lucky Strike s Wayne Ramey was a distant third, and Kevin Schwantz on the Pepsi Suzuki a solitary fourth, but the race had been much closer before a series of crashes spread the field out. ' The GP della Natione returned to Imola for the first time since 1983, after the track was refused hornologation for safety reasons. A pictu, resque 3.124-mile circuit on hilly ground, Imola substitutes chicanes for run-off area and the addition of a fifth chicane' rendered the track supposedly safe. Even so, it was lucky there were no serious injuries, The worst crash came after the finish. Ninth place finisher Raymond Roche had coasted across the line, his Cagiva out of engine. In IOth, Tadahiko Taira crossed the line looking over his shoulder. He ploughed into Roche, breaking the . Frenchman's ankle and a bone in his own handS' 'k' K . M Luc k y tn e s evm agee f' 10ished fifth, after a second-guess on tires went wrong; while both Didier de Radigues on the second Marlboro Yamaha and Gauloise Yamaha's Christian Sarron were eliminated in dramatic high-side crashes, the , . , for~er while challengmg Gardner to regam second. . . In the 250cc class, Doml~lque S~rron t~ok another start-to-finish wm on his .Rothmans, Honda, challenged ynul .the c1osmg. stages by champiOn,shlp lead.er SI~O Pons. Juan Garnga was third, with Masahiro Shimizu fourth, , . It was another race mfluenced by crashes... or rather ~:me crash, Spaniard Alberto Puig, riding the injured Carlos Cardus ' works H~nda, plou,ghed into the first chicane way too fast on the first lap, and took six other riders down with him. Among them was hot-shot American John Kocinski, making his European debuton a new carbonfiber Lucky Strike Yamaha TZ. Only one of the seven returned to finish - Donnie McLeod on the 7- Up EMC, who rode a heroic race to l l th, . The 125s 'and 80s also raced at Imola, giving Jorge Martinez his first chance to score a double victory on " his Spanish Derbi, He took it. With uncharacteristic rain squalls sweeping the Imola circuit, practice at first became a task of setting up , bikes for the wet while trying to stay wheels down, This latter requirement was elusive: even Eddie Lawson tumbled on the very slippery surface, while another faller, PierFrancesco Chili, said that after he got back on his feet, the track was so -slippery that he almost fell over. Lawson's Marlboro Yamaha teammate de Radigues, pumped up to bursting point after testing at Imola . the week before and being fastest in "untimed" practice the day before, actually crashed twice on the first day; Niall Mackenzie was another faller, also Schwantz and Ron Haslam, while Gardner wisely kept out of harm's way by staying in the pits. At this stage, Chili was quickest, with the Suzukis of Schwantz and a' somewhat reconstituted McElnea next - but with the track fully wet in the afternoon, and everyone getting serious in case the race should be wet, everyone went quicker, and it was Schwantz who moved to the top, sensational as ever as he slid and spun the back wheel, quite casual on the apparent edge of disaster. Some blamed the car GP three weeks before for leaving rubber on the exit from the bends, others merely the perplexing and varied surface. Magee, who now moved to second, said: "You have to go off the racing line to get acceleration, and also on the way in to some bends; " while Team Roberts teammate Wayne Rainey added: "Some parts look slippery but aren 't; others look grippy but are as slick as hell." Randy Mamola was back, pronouncing 'h is banged head fully fit and the Cagiva's Pirelli tires "300 percent better than before, but ,still no good." True to his wet reputa- tion, he charged round full slither, looking terrifying as the back skipped out on the fast left after' the pits (one of many places where the guardrail hugs the trackside), but ending up seventh fastest in the wet after three sessions. At this stage, Gardner was sixth; but more changes were coming as the final session was at last dry. It was also extremely hectic, reminiscent of the best days of the 250 class, as a number of riders (including Chili, Mamola, Rainey and de Radigues) took turns to be fastest , and the times tumbled lap by lap, This went on right until the very end when the World 'Cha mp io n managed to snatch his first pole of the year. He slipped straight back to his old habits, saying "I could have gone faster, but there were soine slower riders on my fast lap;" and was clearly delighted with the revised Honda frame and its much-enhanced traction. "HRC misunderstood my requirements at the end of last year," he said, "When we sat down together after Jarama,.it was all cleared up. They sent a revised frame for testing at Rijeka - going back to last year's geometry - and I knew after two laps that it was right. I felt really comfortable... it was like slipping on an old shoe:" , . The simile was perhaps badly' chosen, since he was wearing racing boots for 't he post-practice conference, "the only shoes I 'can get on over my injured foot. " He had broken five bones in his left (gearchange) foot in a testing crash at Rijeka, and was wearing a special lightweight cast. Before the race, he denied any fractures, but afterwards he admitted it. "I didn't want the other riders to know," he said. "And I also didn't want my parents in Australia to find out on TV." Second on the grid was de Radigues, who had stolen a march by sorting out gearing and suspension in the week before 'the race; while the others had insufficient dry practice time to catch up. A bare hundredth down came Sarron,