Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

leadi ng ligh ts among the hord es of Ho nda riders . Subs tan ial opposition comes from former mu lti-cha mpion j or ge Martinez's Cobas- Honda; an d a n um ber of top- level men usin g Rotax po wer fined to Apr ilias, Cobas, a nd eve n the exotica lly nam ed Gazzaniga. The Spanish factory Der bi o nce domi na ted the class, bu t wit hdre w their disc-val ve machine early last season af ter the team had lap sed from efficiency in to confusion, much to the disgust of new rider Ezio Giano la, poached from Ho nda. Now Derbi and Gia no la are ba c k wi th a revised machine and a renewe d threat. T hey 'd beu er mean it if they thi nk th ey're goi ng to earn respec t in th is sort of company. . Sidecars - Of monkeys and men T he oddes t and mos t asymmetrica l for m of mo tor racing is also the most fertile field in the G P pa ddo cks for eccen tric tech nical development. Lac king direc t factory support and (Left) Many have picked Australian Mick Doohan to win the 500cc championship this year: (Below) Kocinski moves up to the 500cc class after a sp lendid 250cc campaign. where he and HB Honda rider Helmut Bradl dominated the fast lap times. Bradl is ano ther potential winner who was frequ en tly in front last year, though also frequently overw helmed by race end. With a bit more race-c raft to go with his undoubted spee d, the . German is d ue for a race win or two in the near future. H ond a ' s prev io us ly u n po p u lar RS250 ha s been upgraded, wit h severa l HRC kits in use to increase perfor mance fu rth er. T hese sem i-wor ks mac hines wi ll go to German jochen Schmid and Ital ian Doriano Rombon i, who earned the enviable nickn am e Ram bo du ring his impress ive G P debut season in last year's 125cc class maelstro m. Du tch Euro pean ' champ ion Leon van der Heyden and new Ro thmans signing jean-Piere jeandat fro m France are similarly equipped, with o ther go-faster aids distributed am o ng the in creased number of RS .riders, whi ch incl udes another ex- 125 young lion, Stephen Prein. Honda has also ta ken the u nprecedented step of releasing engines o nly, to Spanish designer and sometimes manufacturer Ant onio Cobas. With the blessing of HRC, he will fit the kiued RS motors into his o wn chas sis, to be ridden by former 125cc World Champion Alex Criville (a simi lar exercise provides a mount for j orge Martinez in the l25cc class). Yamaha's response to th e departure of john Kocinski and Luca Cadalora has been to withdraw the works YZR V-twin , while upgrading th e production TZ from 'parallel twin to V-twin very similar to last year's YZR. This outraged the surviving works riders, Alberto Puig from Spain and Paolo Casoli from Italy, wh o had signed up for Agostini's much-humbled team on the understanding of works equipment; and Yamaha has produced a sort of kiued TZ for this pair, dubbed the TZM (for modified, presumably). Other defenders of Yamaha 's faith in the privateers include for mer double champion and ageless pa dd ock joker Carlos Lavado, and former U.S. GP first-time winner jimmy Fili ce, now recovered from serious Injuries sustained in a roa d acci dent last year. April ia are m o un tin g a stro ng challe nge with th eir fast but hard-toride disc-valv e V-twins, with former 500 Honda rider Pier- Fran cesco Ch ili jo ini ng fello w-It al ian Lo ris Reggian i on factory-backed bikes, and varying degrees of support for the lik es of Andreas Pr eining and Dayton a 250 . winner Harald EckI. But the most interesting bike in the class is the o ne least likely to defeat the H ondas - at least a t the start of the season. Suzuki has returned to th e 250cc class for the first tim e since 1965, with a single-crank V-twin combi ning design elemen ts of both Honda and Yamaha, and ridden in a Lucky Strikebacked team by German cla ss veteran Martin Wimmer. One canno t expe ct too mu ch of an all-new design in its sha ke-do wn year, but Suzuki has a fin e development technician as well as a fast rider in Wimmmer , a nd he was impressed enoug h by his early tests to aim for a top-five cha m pionshi p positio n. Without Kocins ki, the standard of ridi ng will not be as int en se as last year , and the raci ng may be even mo re exci ting (or a t least less one-sided). Am on g th e usua l brawl , Card us and Cadalora will be vyin g for th e right to become crowned kin g of the class. It sho u ld be a good season. 125cc - The kids are alright It wo u ld be a brave man who made predictio ns abo ut the I25cc class, with its bo iling mix of seaso ned veterans and precocious youngsters, mainl y on near-identical Hondas, with a sma ttering of o thers th rown in. Last year , th e class yielded consis tently the most exci ti ng G rand Prix raci ng , and ad vantage went to the vigor of you th, with l7-year-old GP deb utan t Lo ris Ca piross i taki ng a title tha t was fough t to the last inch of the last race. Capirossi is back , so too is th e vanquish ed Dutch man H ans Spaan , fa st -risin g Ge rma n Di rk Rau d ies, former do uble champion Fausto Gresini, and Ita lia n Bru no Ca sanova, the big-money backing, the sidecar crews have to fend for themselves. Recent unusu al (if inconcl usive) experimen ts include water in jections, fuel injections , and G P racing's on ly four -stroke turbo - and there will be more of th e same in 1991, with an all-new fue linjected engine fro m Switzerla nd, the BRM :due to mak e its G P debut. The class has lon g been dom inated by curren t cha mpion Alai n Michel, Briton Steve Webster, Swiss vetera n Rolf Biland and bearded Dutch man Egbert Streuer (and of course their variou s passengers ). Last season 's racing tu rned in by th is quartet was exciting and the cha mpionsh ip battle ten se, while the Swiss Guede l brothers a nd Brito n Steve Abbott were prominen t among jun ior crews gain ing strength. T he season-opener at the U.S. G P will show how wi nter has affected overa ll for m , and whe ther the smalltime heroes of the three-wh eel class ca n beat the factories in making electronic fuel injectio n work effectively o n a raci ng two-s tro ke. 0'1 13

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