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GROAD RACE World Championship Road Race Series: Round 12 tha n half a second with World Champi on Loris Capirossi leading the way, 2.495 seconds behi nd Oerll. Capi rossi' s AGV Pil eri Corse teammate Fausto Gresin i was third with Schuh Zwafinik Racin g's Ra lf Waldmann fou rth on a Honda an d Alessandro Gramigni fifth on the T eam Ita lia Aprilia. The sixth member of the pa ck, Hero Sport Honda 's Noburo V eda, highsided with abou t half a lap to go while trying to pass for fifth. Capirossi leads Gresini, 163-155, on corrected scores, with three races to go. The final race of the day was the sidecars with World Champions Alain Michel and Simon Birchall holding off the persistent Steve Webster and Gavin Simmons to earn their first win of the year. The Egloff brothers were well back in third place. The French-Anglo team of Michell Birchall won by .026-of-a-second after 18 laps on the 3.26-mile course, averaging 95.886 mph. With the tOP two teams in the point standings both suffering two DNFs, the corrected scores are no different from the non-corrected. Webster leads Rolf Biland, a non-finisher in Italy, 151-128. Michel is third with 112 points. m 500cc Grand Prix Wayne Rainey (1) led from the start over championship rival Michael Doohan (3) and the rest of the 500cc pack in Italy. Rainey prevails in San Marino GP By Henny Ray Abrams MUGELLO, ITALY, AUG. 18 orld Champion Wayne Rainey edged closer to maintaining his title with a masterful win in the San Marino Grand Prix, held on the newly refurbished Mugello Autodromo in central Italy. The Marlboro Yamaha rider led all but two of the 24 laps, his boldest move the use of back markers to put some space between himself and his pursuers just past the halfway point. What had been a three-rider lead pack, became Rainey alone with Rothmans Honda's Mich ael Doohan and Lucky Strike Suzuk i's Kevin Schwantz a few seconds back. Schwantz passed Doohan five laps from the end, Doohan slowed by a front end that wouldn 't stick, but the Lucky Strike Suzuki wasn 't up to the task of catching Rainey, the engine suffering when a weld bead came off the ' crank, sticking a ring before embedding itself in the head . "The biggest thing was in the morning warm-up the bike felt the best it had all week," Schwantz said "This afternoon it didn't seem the same." -Rainey completed the 78:mile race in 46-minutes, 8.566-'seconds at an average speed of 101.713 mph. His margin of victory was 2.946 seconds over Schwantz who, in tum, had 3.12 seconds on Doohan. W 14 Well behind Doohan came his teammate Wayne Gardner, who admitted the pace was too hot for him. Fifth went to journeyman Niall Mackenzie on Jean-Philippe Ruggia's spare Sonauto Yamaha. The resilient Scot had been pressed into service to shake up the French team, but, instead, made them look foolish. Adrien Morillas pitted and Ruggia finished lOth. Marlboro Yamaha's John Kocinski struggled to sixth with a broken rear shock that caused excessive wheeIspin and fellow California resident Doug Chandler was ninth with rear tire trouble. Among the non-finishers was Eddie Lawson, racing in front of a host of Cagiva fans. The veteran Californian had been troubled with front end maladies all weekend and pulled out of the race on the 15th lap after nearly crashing four or five times. On corrected scores - with the two worst finishes thrown out - Rainey leads Doohan, 183-175, with three rounds remaining. Originally there were to be two, with the cancellation of the Brazilian GP, but that round was replaced by a World Championship round at Le Mans, to be run on the same day, September 8. Schwantz is third with 164 net points. Also extending his championship lead was 250cc championship leader Luca Cadalora. The slender Italian trailed race leader, and 'championship pursuer, Helmut Bradland his HB Honda, for 17 laps before taking the lead with a late-braking maneuver in tum one. Bradl gave chase for a Iittle over a lap before crashing on the entrance to the esses with less than two laps to go. Repsol Honda's Carlos Cardus inherited a distant second with Aprilia's Loris Reggiani a popular third after a race-long battle in a four-rider pack. HRC's Masahiro Shimizu was fourth, nipping Sampson Sharp Honda 's Wileo Zeelenberg by .004-of-asecond with HB Honda's Doriano Romboni a season-best sixth. The 65.18-mile race took Rothmans Kanemoto Honda 's Cadalora 39minutes, 49.345-seconds to complete, averaging 98.214 mph for the 20 laps. Cardus was 11.573 seconds adrift. The corrected margin Cadalora holds over Bradl is 22,187-165. Cardus, second on uncorrected scores, is third with the two worst thrown out with 154 points. Bakker AGV's Peter Oettl won his first-ever 125cc Grand Prix from start to finish, quickly pulling ahead of a spirited six-rider fight for second Second to sixth was separated by less With the temperature in the low 80s there was some concern about tire wear as the 500s were green-lighted at 1:00 p.m., but if Rainey was concerned he didn't show it. Getting his usual lightning start, the World Championship leader was trailed on the first lap by Gardner, Schwantz and Doohan with Didier de Radigues fifth ahead of a pack made up of Kocinski, Lawson, Sito Pons and Chandler. A number of races within the race quickly formed with Rainey leading Doohan, Gardner out front of Schwantz, de Radigues in front of Kocinski just behind, and Pons leading Chandler, Mackenzie, Juan Garriga and Lawson. By the sixth lap, Rainey was just ahead of Doohan with Schwantz now in front of Gardner. The sixth would be the fastest lap for the two Honda riders and not long after Gardner began to drop off, though Doohan , briefly took the lead for the eighth and ninth laps. Mackenzie was on the move and . passed Kocinski and de Radigues by the halfway-mark to move into fifth, not bad considering he'd nearly run off on the outside of tum one on the start. "I messed up tum one and then got the 'red mist' and started passing the others," he said "My laps times were over a second quicker than in practice. I seemed to have more comer speed than the others." Serge Rosser, who runs the Sonauto team, had asked Mackenzie if he'd like to ride Ruggia's spare in the race. The Frenchman had said it was no good in the morning practice, though Rosset felt it should have been and Mackenzie was proving him right. Behind the Scot, others were having their problems. Campsa Honda's Pons had dropped out on the seventh lap when persistent ligament damage in his right forearm caused him to lose feeling in his hand. Chandler, running in eighth at the midway point, was finding that his tire was just beginning to go off. "It was good up till the 14th or 15th lap," he said. "We ran a soft one because we had no luck getting the harder one to work. We were hoping it would hang in there, but it didn't. It peeled the sides real good and wanted to skate and roll." Lawson dropped out with 10 laps to go, sitting up in the middle of an