Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Mick Doohan led Kevin Schwantz, Wayne Rainey and John Kocinski , s they exited the esses on the final lap. a Luca Cada lora (3) snatched the 250cc win from Carlos Cardus (2) when he drafted past the Spaniard on the last lap. Schwantz comes out on top in Japanese thriller By Henny R ay Abrams SUZUKA OTY, JAPAN, MAR. 24 hen Lu cky Strike Suzuki's Kevin Schwantz crossed th e finish lin e th e winn er in ' th e seasonopening Japanese Grand Prix, the debate over the future of the supposedly moribund 500cc class was not only forgotten, it was replaced by a more vehement . debate over whether th ere had ever been a more exciting 500cc race. No one, including the participants, could remember one. . It was, Schwantz said: "T he toughest race of my life." And understandabl y so. There were three different leaders, while a fourth rider rode the quickest lap, and the interval from first to fourth at th e end was .533-of-a-second. Schw antz finished th e 22-lap, 80.1mil e race in 48 minutes, 35.747 seco nds W at an averag e speed of 98.893 mph befor e a cro wd of 91,000 avid fans on a day when the sun shone brightly and temperatures rose to the low 60s. "I'll settl e for second today," Rothmans Honda's Mick Doohan said after con firming his ascendance to the class elite with his performance here. " I think we need to slow'em down," eventual third place finisher and early leader Wayne Rainey of the Marlboro Team Roberts team quipped afterwards. But the most impressive ride was turned in by Rainey's teammate, 250cc World Champion John Kocinski, in his debut as a full-tim er on th e Roberts 500cc team. Kocinski may have won the race had he not been slowed by a foul ed visor on hi s helmet th at limited his vision. " Instead of taking someone out I settled for fourth," the disconsolated rookie said . But he was still abl e to set the fastest lap of the race,. a new lap record of 2:11.197 (99.938 mph ) on the 20th lap. If there were any doubts he could ride a 500, he decisively dispelled them. There were other impressive performances, most notably four-time World Champion Eddie Lawson's. In his debut on the oft -maligned Cagiva, Lawson gave the team its second-best dry track result ever, a sixth. Although he was still about two seconds a lap off the pace, he showed there 's more potential in the Italian effort than previously thought. Lawson said he only had about two hours riding time on the new Cagiva frame and that he made som e mistakes with the chassis setup, a problem compounded by a lack of dry practice time. Lawson had finished j ust behind Rothmans Honda's Wayne Gardner, still not totally healed from off-season wrist surgery and ahead of Juan G arriga on the Ducados Yamaha. Garriga fitted some new exhaust pipes for the race, but he found they lacked suffi cient ground clearance forcing the Spaniard to hang off far more than he would have liked and, on three occassio ns, lifting his rear wheel in the air. U.S. Superbike Champion Doug Chandler finished l l th in his first co m peti tive 500cc World Championship rid e, gaining confidence and bettering his lap times with each lap. Chandler was riding on a plainly painted Yamaha for Team Roberts, having not yet found sponsorship for the season, though backing is reported ly imminent from a Spanish co ncer n. While the 500cc face was clearly the most exciting, the two other races were nearly its equal. The 250cc GP provided a preview of this year 's Wor ld Championship battle with Rothmans Honda's Luca Cadalora taking back the lead on the fina l lap to nip Repsol Honda's Carlos Cardus by .255-of-asecond at the flag . . The Italian Cadalora had gotten off to a bad start, but from the midpoint of the race onward he shadowed the Spaniard, passing him for the first time with just four laps to go in the 20lap race. Cardus quickly took it back, but the aggressive Cadalora forced his way past on the run to the flag to take h is first win for his new Erv Kanemotoowned team. Cadalora won the 78.I -mi le race in 45 ' minutes, 23.048 seconds at an average of 96.266 mph. Dutchman Wileo Zeelenberg put the Samson-Sharp Hon da into third ahead of Goldwin Honda Endurance's Masamitsu Taguchi and Cup of Noodle Honda's Nobuatsu Aoki . Californian Jimmy Filice fin ished 3 1st on a Team Gallina Yamaha in his first ride since being sidelined by a car crash over a year ago . Filice said he'd ridden his number two bike in the race, which proved to be a mistake since the engine wasn't nearly as strong as his number one bike . A loca l rider, Noboru Ueda, won a closely contested 125cc race pulling away from AGV Honda-Pileri Corse's Fausto Gresini at the end for a 2.553second win. World Champion Loris Capirossi was third, about six seconds back. Ueda, who only started racing in 1989, rides out of a shop just a few h undred yards from the Suzuka circuit. He hopes to get backing to compete in the World Championship this year, and his ride here did nothing to hurt his chances. Schwantz had been the fastest in all three official practice sessions, despite having not tested at Suzu ka. Instead he'd been testing a new frame at the Suzuki test facility at Ryuyo in an attempt to get more grip on the front end. The tests had found they'd reached their limit on raising the rear and taking out the front, and had built the new frame to stretch the parameters. He chose the old frame, however, because of a lack of time on the new one and it seemed to payoff. Schwantz bolted into the lead at the start trailed by R a i n ey, Doohan, Kocinski, Lawson, Cagiva's Alex Barros and Gardner. But Rainey took over the lead on the second lap and on the th ird, Doohan moved into second with Schwantz third, Kocinski fourth , and Gardner fifth. The top five ran as a quintet, gradually pulling away fro m Lawson who was finding that, like the others, he needed more track time. "The suspension was too sof t," Lawson said later. "We didn 't get into playing wi th the geometry." The new frame he was using had changed geometry, engine position, swingarm pivot, and head angle. "We've go t to get the motor in the right position so both en ds are sticking. I made a couple of mistakes setting it up. I threw away a second a lap wit h gearbox ratios and suspension settings."

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