Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Sito Pons (3). Jacques Cornu (9) and Toni Mang (1) cross the finish line at the end of the 250cc GP; Pons took the win with Cornu second. who was told to "take the checkered flag," is the riding double for the villain, German Klaus Kroeter, Although he'd been near a pointspaying position, Baldwin fell back when hIS full rain tires deteriorated as the track dried. Spaniard Sito Pons won the crashinterrupted 250cc race aboard the Campsa Honda, compiling a better aggregate time for the split sections of the race. After finishing second to Ducados Yamaha's Juan Garriga in the first three-lap leg, Pons narrowly won the second and took the overall by 1.09 seconds over. Parisienne Honda's Jacques Cornu, who posted finishes of 4-2. Rothmans Honda's World Champion Anton Mangwas third .64 seconds behind Cornu. HB Honda's Reinhold Roth was fourth ahead of HB Venemotos Yamaha's Carlos Lavado and Garriga. With his second win of the year, Pons moves a point ahead of Garriga, 129-12S, with Cornu third at 112. The race was red-flagged on the fourth lap when Hein Gericke's Martin Wimmer lost the rear end and crashed on the most dangerous part of the course; a narrow sixth-gear double left: the same corner that caused the riders to boycott last year. After falling he was unavoidably hit by Aprilia's Loris Reggiani with Wimmer's Yamaha catching fire. Both were taken by helicopter to a nearby hospital where Reggiani was reported to have a broken right ankle and Wimmer broken ribs. Although the accident was on a drying track, it confirmed everyone's worst fears about the possibility of disaster in the section called Blanchimom. Improvements in run off area were made, but the riders felt that more could have been done. Fast qualifier Christian Sarron: " It is certainly the most dangerous track we race on. They moved the guardrail from the first part of the corner and nothing after. To go sixth gear flat out you have to have a good line and a good tire. I'm definitely not trying as hard in this corner as the ' new part of the corner." Sarron was speeding through the double left at over 164 mph and he averaged 105.62 mph when he clocked his pole-setting time in the one fully dry qualifying session. It was Sarron's third consecutive pole position and; once again, he was at a loss to explain it. He did say that when he came in he felt his Gauloises Blondes Yamaha wasn't nearly perfect and asked that the rear sprocket, gearbox ratios, pistons, and cylinders be changed. "Here and Assen I never slid the rear tire," the Frenchman said. "When they say you have to slide to go fast it just isn't true." But in order to get from side-toside on the machine, he had his footrests raised. The ever-cautious Lawson has never been one to put much emphasis on qualifying and Spa was no different. But here, since the weather is so volatile, a dry time can be mostly irrelevant. " I hope it either pisses down rain or is super-dry," the championship leader said. "It's hard to figure out intermediates. You don 't know where you 're at with. them. The rain is more predictable. You can feel the racetrack. "I think we have all the bases covered," he continued. "We've been out in every condition and we've been near the top of the list. I'd like to push hard. The thing that upset me the most about Assen was being II I second to Wayne (Gardner). He backed off at the end of the race and that upset me. I'd still like to win some more races ." Still looking for his first win was third fastest Rainey. Just .32 seconds behind Lawson in the dry, Rainey (2:29.64, 103.53 mph) wasn't happy about the lack of dry practice time. ," It means we don't know what tires we're going to use yet," he said. "Not enough time in the dry. I did a 30 this afternoon, but it was -sprinkling." He added that he had chose IS-inch wheels because they provide superior traction. His only problem was a front end chatter that they were trying to counter with the Ohlins upside-down forks . "We moved the chatter from the middle of the turn to the exit. I can live with that more than going in. Going in it chatters you off your line." Asked what tire combination he would chose for the race , Rainey replied, " We might as well go with what everybody else has on. " Kevin Schwantz, fourth fastest , one-hundredth of a second behind Rainey in the dry , felt that the track layout neutralized some of the power advantage the other makes enjoy. "You can get it wound up and keep it wound up, " the Texan said. "Lots of fast , sweeping corners. Nothing too slow. The Suzuki's always had good handling and it's closer than it's been on top end, but it 's not as fast as the Yamaha or Honda." Still, he felt he might be willing to take a chance at the end that Lawson wouldn't take because of his lead in the championship. And like all the riders, Schwantz said that even though the federation "made a few changes on the track, it's still not the safestplace around. There's not enough run-off for as fast as that corner is. If you fall you'll clear 90 percent of the gravel and go straight off the hill." The harshest critic of the track was World Champion Gardner. After setting the fifth-fastest time in both the wet and dry, the Australian explained the key to going fast. "Christian (Sarron) makes it up going down the hill," leading to Blanchimont. " Fro m the top to the bottom of the hill you have to be brave on the front; brake, push the front tire, and hope you don't fall off. If you do, you're not goin~ to get up and walk away. I treat this track with a lot of respect. They improved it, but they need major changes and should consider the riders' lives more than money in their pocket." When asked why there wasn't a riders' strike, Gardner answered. " Ask (rider's rep Mike) Trimby." What Trimby said is this: "The track was re-hornologated two or three years ago. There will be no new homologation until 1990. The fundamental thing is that it is such a civil engineering exercise to fill in the valley." Trimby explained that the run-off course was plotted with speed graphs provided by FIM road racing commission -chief Luigi Brenni. "Nothing will change until 1990. Then we will look for entirely different solutions.' These were interpreted by most as meaning a new chicane. "The important thing is that if you crash there you don 't die," Trimby added. "Last year there was no space there. " That was little consolation to some riders, such as ninth-fastest Niall Mackenzie on the HB Honda. "There's only one line through there flat out," the Scotsman said. "All you 23

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