Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Niall Mackenzie (5) leads Pier-Francesco Chili (8) and Wayne Rainey; the trio fin ished f ifth. sixth and seventh. respectively in Assen. In the middle of the front row was Magee , just a tenth of a second behind Lawson on a track that he'd qualified second on last year . " It's just good to get back to a track that has some familiari ty to it," said Magee, who raced only two European GPs last year. " I know which bike I want and which tires . We're going to use ITs and with any luck we can go as fast as we want th e whole race. The advantages with the 17-inch tires outweighs the I8's. The 18's take more time to get it down and get it back up. With the 17 you can drop it in and start turning it straight away. With the 18 you feel like you 're on your side the whole comer. I find it 's a hard thing to get used to, but once you're used to the ITs yo u get comfortable real fast. We have to make the tires and rhythm last the en tire race. " Gardner, fourth fastest at 2:12.08/ 103.892, was one who didn 't think Magee's Dun lops or Sarron would last the entire race. "I think Chris. tian, if he gets a good start, will be out there for . a few laps. When h is tires start to slide his style doesn't .sui t tha t type of riding. Experience will tell. I don' t th ink the Dunlops are up to it here. You can on ly go as fast as the track allows you," he said. Gardner also echoed Lawson's comments about traffic and track safety. . "From the traffic point of view it's dangerous. They come out of the pit lane and go right to the middle of the track. There's go ing to be a big one there one day. If I had a clear run I'd go 11.5, but I don't have th e balls to go that anyway. I think Christian has the biggest ones. " . In a far-ranging discussion , Gardner also lamented Honda's corporate policy and .lack of testing. The results, he said, were obvious. "HRC set themselves a target," Gardner said. " I think they underestimated Yamaha. I think last year Yamaha underestimated Honda. I'm Teally thinking of the next two years. What we need is to beat Yamaha. I have to see myself out safel y. I already broke my foot this year." , Co m p a r i n g the two brands Gardner said that the Yamaha is easier on the power. "It's a more neutral bike. It oversteers on power and understeers out of the corners. You can see that all th e Yamaha guys are going good. I'm not going to risk falling off. If I hav e a headbanging sessio n I can learn from it. I have a front row sea t. It 's hard to keep it in lin e a nd sto p 'it from shak ing. I can't keep it on the same line as Eddie . "All we are is test riders for the company , " Gardner continued . "Once the direction is set they can't change it in time. They need to be prepared to listen more and do more testing. Have better riders back at base. Every year in my career it's gone up. This is my first down year and it hurts a lot ;" Filling out the front row was Lawson's teammate, Belgian Didier de Radigues. Just a tenth of a second behind Gardner, he set his -tirne of 2:12.18 (103.813) in the final session, himself a victim of a crowded track. "It's very difficult to make a good time here because of so many people. But tomorrow we'll see in th e.race, " de Radigues said. Niall Mackenzie was on the second row wi th Rainey next to him along with Chili 'a nd Mamola. Mackenzie really only had th ree sessions to qualify in ,- h avi n g .broken three bones in his left foot - in the first session on T hursday. He was wearing one of Gardner's oversize Gaeme boots, th e logo taped over so as not to offend his Alp inestar sponsors. Although he wal ked with a lim p , he didn't think his foot would be much of a distraction in the race. Unlike his teamma te Magee , Rainey had been on 17s all along, but was less confident. "After the third session I thought it's going to be okay, but it seems like in the final session I forgot everything I learned," Rainey said. "I'm going to try and get a good start and stay with the front guys and see what they 're doing that I'm not doing. I'v e got a feeling that the race will be in the 12's. That's what I'm doing. Nothing seems to be magic. It 's more me than the bike. In Austria it didn't look like I'd get on the box and here it 's the same thing." Someone with little chance of getting on the podium was ninthfastest Mamola. . although he was encouraged by recent signs of progress with both the Cagiva and th e Pirelli tires. The bike showed up at Assen with a new seat and all enclosed bodywork similar to the Ducati Paso, the thought being that sin ce engine improvements seem to be slow in coming, aerodynamics may be the answer. He was als o using th e Ohlinsupside-down fork. " T here's more stability a nd it 's better o n th e brakes," said Mamol a. " We still need a little more accelera tio n and we're catchi ng up a litt le on tires. Pirell i has fou r new tires Dominique Sarron (4) and Sito Pons (3 ) battled until the final chicane in the 250cc GP. but both riders crashed when they ran int o each other. here . I'm hoping for rain to make it an imbalance. If it rained it would b e , upsetting for ever ybo d y but myself. The front tire 's good; the rear is just sliding around. We're working on th e co m p o u nd, we have the construction down. We've lowered the compression ratio because we were ea ting pistons. We low ered it in th e second session yesterda y and wh en I went out th ere Eddie went by me like I was waiting for a bus. So we went halfway between wh ere the engines were seizing and where th ere 's no horsepower." On the inside of the third row was Frenchman Patrick Igoa, 10th-fastest on the other Gauloises Blondes Yamaha and next to him was Schwantz who'd missed most of the first two sessions after falling off and breaking toes o n bo th feet in the first session. He recovered in the fourth session to post a 2:14.05, over three seconds off the pace and in pain wit h soft casts on both feet. He could barely wal k an d had to be lifted on and off his Pepsi Suzuki. "It was before the third gear corner coming onto the backstraight," Schwantz said of his crash. " I came back in to make the apex and there's a little drop in the track. It bucked me off of the front. There are tir e marks on my helmet and shoulder. I was real lucky'. " The result was that he was having a hard time getting through the combination left-rights. " I can't go through them like I need to. If yo u mess up on the first one you can 't get into the second one and yo u end up on the grass. Gear-changing is okay. I hit a few neutrals, but that's normal. Hopefully, we'll finish in the top five. When you get o n the brakes real hard it wants to wander. You get in me comer real hard and th e front wants to push. I broke the new set of '88 forks yesterday so we're using the old '88s along with the radial front tire ." Asked if he preferred rain , Schwantz answered, "That'd be okay. A little cold water in th ere (soft casts on his feet) might make it bett er. " He planned on having hard casts put on both feet after th e r ace on Saturday and would race with boots modified to accep t th e soft casts. Filling o u t the third row were Shunji Yatsushiro o n the Ro thmans Honda next to Schwantz' teammat e Rob McElnea and th e Elf H o nda of Ron H aslam . 500cc race The starting light flashed green at precisely 1:30 p.m. and Lawson was away like a shot. Haslam followed briefly before a fogged visor caused him to overshoot the first .turn and rejoin the fray in last position. The tightly-bunched field fol lowed Lawson around on the first lap with Mackenzie running ba ck in 15th position. "I got behind Sarron on the line and Schwantz ran into me, " said Mackenzie. Places shuffled on the first several laps with Lawson's lead increasing so that by the time Gardner moved into second on the fourth lap he was 1.9 seconds behind with both turning in lap times in the 12's. Gardner turned in the fastest lap of the race , a 2:11.28, on the fifth of 20 laps and appeared to be catchi ng ' Lawson whose fift h la p was a 2:II.62. De Rad igues was a lone third with the trio of Magee -Chili-Sarron just further back. After a big ga p came a group led by Mamola with Rainey, McElnea, Schwantz, Igoa, Haslam, MacKenzie and Yatsushiro. Lawson's fastest lap, at 2:11.49, was h is seventh with Gardner's ' seven t h lap some seven-ten ths slower. Mamola pulled in on the seventh lap after running as high as seventh. "The top right piston seized," said. Marnola, confirming what he'd said after practice about the Cagiva team's engine troubles. "It never locked up. I think it holed a piston and just smoked." Mamola was able to return to the pits under power. The order of the top three changed on the eighth lap when de Radigues ran off the track rejoining the race in 14th place. The announcer said that he'd slid the rear, but de Radig ues disagreed. "My front tire was sliding a bit more than in practice and the carburetion wasn 't perfect. Every tim e I'd give it gas it would hesitate an instant before the gas arrived. I was giving it gas to slide the rear and keep the revs up, but the power came too slowly," and when it did he lost th e front end. He remounted quite qui ck ly, brushed the grass off his Yamaha and got back in the race. At the halfway point the defending World Champion was 1.4 seconds behind Lawson and was. clos ing in a hurry. Sarron had taken third wh en de Radigues cras hed wi th Magee movi ng up to fourth. Ra iney held fifth . 11

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