Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

than two laps to go and over a sixsecond lead. It would have been a tremendous victory for Derb i, wh o were out of ra cing la st .yea r, and Gianola was in tears wh en he go t off the bike. When Gianola went ou t, in the do ub le left beh in d the p its, Veda wa s a clos e secon d to AGV H onda-Pileri Corse's Fausto Gresini, wh o he passed for th e win o n the last lap. The margi n of victo ry woul d be .987 seconds after the 22-lap, 57.66-mile race th at too k Veda 42 minutes, 23.780 seconds to complete. He averaged 81.61 mph. The 23-year-old j apanese rider has 55 points - after three races - wi th Gresini second at 51 and Gresin i's tea m mate, World Champion Loris Capirossi, third with 50. The British team of Steve Webster and Gavin Simmons won their second straight sidecar GP, taking the lead on the fourth of 22 laps and leaving the fight for second, a fig h t that would be the best competition of the day. . Three teams held the run ner-up spot, but at th e line it was the Swiss Gudel brothers, Paul and Charly, .374 seco nds ahea d of Steve Abbott and Shaun Smith, wh o, in turn, were .2 14 secon ds ahead of the Swiss team of Ro lf Biland and Kurt Wa ltisperg. We bster/Si mmons campaign a Roland Munch -sp o n so red Krauser chair, the Gudels a Krauser backed by B.P., Abbott and Smith an Appleby ' Glade LTD Krauser, and Biland and Waitisperg an ADM-L CR. Webs ter lea ds the ch am pio nship with 40 points to Biland's 26 wi th Gudel and Abbott tied at 25. Going into the 500cc race, everyo ne knew two th ings: They knew tha t Rainey would try to split and the y knew that with the temperature near ing 80 degrees the excessively abrasive Jerez surface would quickly begi n devouring tires. What wasn't kn own was whether Rainey's initial charge could carry him far enough away from the pack to allow him to hang on for the win. But with the race being 29 hard laps on a circuit whose abundant Italian Luca Cadalora (3) was thwarted in his effort to win a fourth straig h t 250cc GP by German Helmut Bradl (4). slow comers demand fierce acceleration, there was some doubt. As expected, Rain ey jumped o ut front from the drop of the flag, but Doohan and Koci ns ki wouldn 't let him get away . By th e third lap you could see Rainey slitheri ng hard ou t of the first tum as Doohan a nd Kocinsk i caught up. Rainey was ab le to stay ahead by brakin g deeper into the comers, bu t as th e air pocket on hi s front tire beca me more problematic, Doohan noticed that he was ab le to brake his Honda deeper. tha n Rain ey and knew it was only a matter of ti me. " I j ust tho ught I'd try to go out and get the lead and see what Doo han had ," Ra iney later explained. " I was push in g the front after the fou rth lap, everybody thought I backed off, but it was o nly because I had to use the front so hard. " Doohan was up on Rainey on the Rainer- captures third straight p--,- ol-=- - e M ar lboro T eam Roberts Yamaha's Wayne Ra iney (right) set a new lap record in qua lifying and was the only rider under one min ute an d 47 seco nds. His ~t was a second session 1:46.88 1 (88.284 mph) which put him on the po le for the GP, though it wasn 't with co m plete confidence tha t he sat there. In fact, he'd taken a low speed tumble in practice while testi ng a new hard-compound japanese Dunlop front tire. "I t's the only Dunlop that 'needs a tire heater," he sai d. " Thro ughout p ractice we've been tearing fronts up. We can't go more than four or five laps on them. The onl y way to go fast here is by pu shi ng the front. The surface here is more abrasive on the from. We found o ut a lot about th e chassis. We have one front with 22 lap s on it. We're going to go another 10 on it in the morning and see if it loo ks good," Ra iney said at the end of practice. " Everybod y knows what I' ll try and do, make a brea k and get away, but who knows whether I' ll be able to do it this time," he added. Next to Rainey was h is teammate Kocinski, only .401-of-a -second behind, despite adm itting that he: "actua lly always hated this place. It's just starting to com e good. Everytime I ride here I get better. Maybe because I didn't understand what it took to go fast." Kocinski had turned laps in the high 48s during the.IRTA test here in March, and his 1:47. 282 was nearly two seconds a lap better. He attributed it to improved bike settings and engine combinations. "I never had to worry about th e engine combination on a 250. We tune these (5OOs) down here so the y don't get away fro m you between comers," he said. His strategy was to "race as fast as whoever's in front of me. It 's hard to make a strategy any more because it could be sho t by the firs t tum ," he said. Third-fastest Doohan explained that Honda was cons ta ntly developing new frames and that he was on their third versio n of the year . " It's the sam e o ne that Wayne (Gardner) is using," thouKh it suits Doohan much better. " I don 't Australian Michael Doohan won the 500cc GP by some nine seconds. _ think Wayne likes to lean the bike over so much. I'm scraping the fair ing and at one stage I scraped the foot pegs so we shortened them. You don't normally . do th at ," Doohan said. The purpose of the new chassis was to make it steer quicker :md to accomplish that they moved the front fur the r out and brought th e back in , Gardner, seventh fastest, said he cou ldn't "put it where he wants to. I'm realistic en ough to realize the bike is no t good enough for me an d I'm lacking confidence at th e moment. " . Lucky Strike's .Schwantz was at the end of the front rowand, like the others, was trying to sort out the front. "We can't find th e bala nce between th e front and back," the 26-year-old Texan said. The team had fitted a ' new suspension link, varying the rate of rear spring compression on Friday, and i t seemed to help. But he admitted that he was still trying to adapt to th e Dunlops whi ch he is using for the first time this season. " It'S a different riding style for Dunlop th at doesn 't suit me as much as Mich elin. So I had to change my' ri ding style and th e chassis," Schwantz said. The Suzuki team has a new chassis to test , but th ey hav en' t found time to do it since their Misano test was rai ned o u t the week before Jerez. The second ro w was made up of Lawson, Garriga , Gardner and Ch andl er. In the fina l session, Lawson 's fastest, the y'd mo ved the rider weight to the front by usin g a smaller gas tank, and moved th e front end 4mm back. They also move d . the back wheel to its mos t rearward position . Lawson had crashed in practice o n Friday, but didn't feel he was slo wed by it. H e al so said that the team was quickly mov ing toward parity with the japanese teams. "Cagiva are working hard and made som e new pipes, reed valves, and cylinder heads for our tests at Misano last week," he said. "They're not gian t steps, but we're getting there. What we've got to get ri ght here is th e suspension, that's what you need to go fast here and we've had a few problems getting the rear shock right. " Like Kocins ki, eighth-fastest Chandler was nearly two seconds faster than his IRTA test and he attributed it to experience. "Each time I ride it I feel better. It's a never-ending battle. Each track is different ," he said. Asked where he felt he was at mastering the motorcycle, he rep lied, " If Wayne (Rainey) and those gu ys are a t 100%, I'm a t about 80%."

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