Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

the level of near miss deeper into the ccident-zone, And he had more to come. In the closing minutes, bunched down in familiar go-for-it manner, he seized pole. " I didn't go out for that. T here such a cross-wind I thought no one would go faster than this morning. 1 was just trying for a race setup." Sin ce Gardner was one of thos e uffering from po st-Suzuka 8-H our jet lag, this all goes to prove that he's best nder pressure. Not so the dispossessed Schwantz, further more dism ayed that is own predictio n of a hall- second improvement simply hadn 't happen ed. "We've been trying all sorts of things, d nothing works," he tossed off over is shoulder, before taking petu lant fuge in his humming moto rh ome. Rainey was ph legmatic, teammate wson even more so, fourth overall Iter impro vi n g in session th ree. no ther Suzuka sufferer (a lt hough aving won it, the effort had been onhwhile), he is in any case a cha nged an. With no title at stake, his beni gn re-race mood gives fulI reign to his aconic sense of humor, and he has even n seen to smi le at his own jokes. " I'm agged out right now ," he said. "The ew Yamaha chassis is better than the Id one, but the bike's too heavy and e need more speed. It's good to be back n a 500 after the Suzuka bike. It doesn't much faster, thou gh. " A viewpo int sharply con tradicted by ifth-placed NialI Mackenzie, who found is Suzuki a great deal faster than his bortive Eight-H our mount. J et lag was n top of the pressure of racing at home n a circuit he once could virtua lIy calI is own. He was further frustrated by ving been absent from the Suzuki test ys, and bemoaned first -day times most two seconds off the pace. This was nonetheless good eno ugh for ifth on the grid, and though he didn 't prove that position on day two, he id cut almost one-and-a-half seconds n session three, winning first choice of e space A-tearn Michelin tires for the .naI gallops. This am ounted to a good ro nt tire, and o ne sli g h tly-used hwantz reject rear. In th e windy nditions, he was unable to detect uc h difference - a nd yet agai n ichel in 's cont ro versia l policy had wn confusion where until then good rogress had been evident. Doohan was in exactly the same boa t, ut had more serious problems than just e tires . Honda had produced yet other chassis, bu t like all the previou s nes he found it recalcitrant, declining o respond as expected to adjustment, ~d still a reluctant turner. " I got ' a ond-hand A-grade tire, but by then ings were going so badly I rode into e garage before the end of the session . d shut the door." ' Out on the track , meanwhile, Juan arriga was at last sho wing a t least a lim mer of his old 250 fire on his unlop-shod Yamaha, and moved it up nto sixth overall , pu shing Doohan on e own, and revivin g the once-familiar mil e on the Spaniard's face. Christian Sarron co m p leted th e nd row, and aIso jumped off briefly ust by the pits as if for the satisfaction f his critics. Unhurt, hejumpedstraight ck on again to stan an other lap. Then came Mamola, Ruggia, Fogarty nd Haslam on row three. Fogarty had ested the Honda earlier in the week at dwelI Park, and had go t on welI with e bike. On arrival at Donington, the -rnan 500 recruit found that GP500s re abstruse creatures. " It's like a ifferent bike from at Cadwell. I just 'r get it to do what I want." StilI, e was knuckling down and trying hard. ' Row four was led by Barros from ons , making a very tentative comeback ter his Yugoslavian crash. The Spa. was stilI clearly in pain from his chest injuries, and wasn't ab le to tum the bike quickly enough to be anything but a mobile chican e. On Saturday evening, he withdrew from the race. The four privateers were led this time by Marco Papa from Eddie Laycock, an d left to loiter in a world of their own. The actio n would be two laps ahead of them by the end of the race, and yet agai n it looked as though Gardner was in a posi tio n to seriously upset the applecart. 500cc Race T he race staned on time, in cool weather with a gus ty wind. Most of the major sorting out happen ed on the first lap - the first comer, even , and the race proper began at on ce. It was withou t Gardner. " It had been misfiring on the warm-up lap, and we pretended to ourselves tha t it was a fouled plug. Erv cha nged pl ugs on the line, but he kn ew that was n 't th e problem. I go t a good ' start, th en everyone pi led past me - the thing was running on three, as flat as a fart," He pulIed straight into the pits, where they discovered a broken pis ton ring . " I thou ght I could win that one," said the disgruntled Digger. Schwantz messed up his start again, an d found himself about ninth on the ru n in to the first right-hander. "I just wen t, like, get th e #&. @ ou t of my way - real kami kaze, and I got past abo ut four gu ys." Before the end of lap one, he had aIso passed teammate Mackenzie, and was up to third. Lawson led lap o ne, but Rainey slipped smoothly pas t across the line, then Schwantz outbraked the World Champion into the chicane at the end of the back straigh t. By lap two, most of the overtaking was finished. Schwantz and Ra iney repea tedl y broke the lap record, but it only seemed a matter of time before the more agil e Suzuki would find a way past, and the Yamaha rider caug ht the odd glimpse of his rival's front wheel. Then Law son speeded up, setting fastest lap, an d the Lucky Stri ke bike was caugh t in a tigh t Marlboro san dwich as this relentl ess race passed on e-third distan ce. " It wasn't real co mfo rtab le," Schwan tz said later, his mood considerably im proved. "Rai ney was - well he wasn ' t exac tly piddle-paddling around, but he was making mistakes. I was miles faster into the first tum, and also onto tile back straigh t when I got the drive right." . His overtaking man euver took half a lap. " I lined him up into tum one, then stayed with him all through the twisti ng sectio n so I cou ld get into a good po sition at the stan of the back straight. The I used his draft to get by before braking for the chican e." It was a smoo th and assured maneuver likely to precede a steady open ing of the ga p, but it didn 't hap pen ; altho ugh Lawson gradual ly lost ground, Rainey stayed within half-a-second or so, come backmarkers or whatever else might conspire to get between them. Schwan tz's break point came on lap 17. "I got a clear run and a good lap , and the gap went to over a second. Then I knew I had the race won." Indeed so, as welI as the lap record in the bag; and the T exan gradually drew away from the Californian un til on the last lap he was able ·to take it easy to cruise in beh ind the battling Cagivas of Haslam an d Barros, and stilI win by better than two seconds. Rainey refused to admit that he had in the end accepted a safe second. " I was out there to win this on e. The bike worked the best it has all weekend." And maybe so, becau se Schwantz added: " In no way was that easy, and the pressure was on all the time . Itwas harder because of the wind - you 'd get a comer right, and the next time it would Luca Cadalora won the 250cc GP after John Kocinski crashed while leading for the second successive time. Kocinski's crash handed the points lead to Carlos Cardus. be different because the wind wou ld be trying to lift the front wheel." Lawson also confirmed that if Rainey had let up, it hadn 't been by much. " My foot hurt a little, and I'd like to use that for an excuse. I also lost a knee-pad early on , so one knee was getting jerked back when it dragged. I wish I could use tha t for an excuse too - but these gu ys were just too fast. Keeping on the same lap as them is good. " They had outdista nced any pursuit, such as it was, first leaving Mackenzie to a depressing afternoon's work. " I had o n yet ano ther Michelin rear. They hadn't been able to give me on e in warm up, but Kevin really liked it, and all the o ther fast guys were using it. If I wanted to be on terms with them, I had to use it too. " It was a gambIe that had paid off for the Scot in Yugoslavia. Now the opposite was the case. "I got a good start, bu t I took about fo ur laps to settle down. The bike was all over the track, and I wasn 't riding well as a resu lt. The problem was that the A-grade tire had too mu ch grip. It was making the bike sq uat under po wer, and the front go ligh t. If I could only have had 15 minutes to set it up in the morning," He lost touch with the leaders, and felI back into the clutches of Doohan, who had follow ed a sim ila r path towards a simi lar rear tire, but found the bike was working better than it ha d all through practice. "There was no way I could catch the leaders, but I could see Niall was ha ving tro uble, I go t past him easy, and j ust carr ied on.' The Austra lian was 40 seconds adri ft of the leaders, but almost 20 seconds clear of Mackenzie at the fini sh. There was a fine dice behind them in the early stages, the one vacated by Fogarty wh en he fell on lap three. " I did the same as I had done alI through practice, but this time the front wh eel just let go," he explained ruefulIy. This left Sarron, Garriga and Mamola in close compa ny. Then Garriga nipped ahead and seemed set to run away, with Mam ola on Sarron's heels. " I didn't have the pow er to pass the Yam ah as,' said Mamola. " I could on ly outbrake them. So I just ran aro und and waited for the fuel load to get lighter." . H e moved o n la p II , and soon afterwards Garriga was behind Sarron agai n, saying later tha t he'd been caught out by a wrongly coded tire tha t didn't perform as he'd expected; in any case, Mamola easily did as he'd planned, clearly expressi ng a message to Cagiva that they shouldn't retire j ust when he is getting on terms with the slower of the Japanese works bikes. WelI on the boil, he might have done better still, reducin g a 15-second deficit on Mackenzie to a littl e over four with two laps left. Then he chose safety, and wh eelied across the line to score a bestever sixth p lace for the sol e nonJapanese works mach ine. Sarron see m ed to have seve nth wrapped up, then felI back behind Garri ga in the last lap, his Yamaha misfiring. H is teammate Ruggia was ' also closing in the end. He'd had a couple of big slides early on, damaging his screen and hurting his ami. . The hardest ba ttle of the race was for lOth, with the Cagivas of Haslam and Barros swapping to and fro full distance, before Haslam used his considerable experience to lead across the line byhalf a-second. The race was tense if not actua lly exciti ng , and the same could be said for the cha mpio nship battle. Schwantz's fifth victory this year, and his second in succession, pu ts him equa l on wins to Rainey, but he still lags by 27 points with four races left. Even if he win s all the rest (if Gardner lets him), he cannot himself tum the tab les.TNow he needs a mistake from Rainey, and the immaculate Cali fornian hasn 't been making too man y of them this year. 250cc Practice Perha ps it was the wind, perhaps it was the pressure - in an y case, a disproportionately large number of 250 stars crashed in practice, and it was lucky that none of them were eliminated, As it was , Cardus had a painful right hand, elbow and hip , declining medical treatment on the ultra-macho grounds tha t he'd rather not know exactly what was wrong just yet. Buoyed up by hi s Frenc h win , he experime n ted with . carbon brakes, still not popular in the 250cc class; and also had holes cut in his fairing flanks. These were supposed to ease cha nges of direction, but the Spaniard was not convinced. His crash came on Saturday morning, in the same session where he lost pole Position to John Kocinski. The Yamaha rider had tested here the week before (he fell off), and nobody is surprised any more at the speed with which he can learn circuits. He is going through an uncommunicative phase .cali he would say abo ut his French crash 17

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