Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ocinski," he said. " H is bike was so ast. ,. Some way back , Juan Garriga evenually wo n a close battle for sixth. His amaha had also run short of fuel on he last lap, just as he took the place ro m Doug Chandler's Yamaha, but he Iso managed to sustain his impetus ntil it cam e back on song to defeat e American by half a second. De digues cam e next in eighth, less ' han a second down. He had led the oup, but all race long his Suzuki had een down on power because of two park plugs that had partially failed, nd it was all he could do to sta y in ouch. Sito Pons was ninth, after being pparently beat en by Morillas on th e onauto Yamaha. But the Spaniard ung on, and did it all back to th e ren chman in th e closing laps . They ' ere the last rid ers not to be lapped. Laycock was 11th, and Mackenzie 12th - the Scotsman had a tale of woe. H e'd been moving up through the oup disputing sixth in the early tages when he'd run wide onto some irt left after the track had been cleared fter the 250cc race crashes. He lost the ront the n spun out, and then had a u ge battle with marshalls as he struggled to push the Sonauto Yamaha ut of the sand trap, fearing he might e disq ual ified if they helped him. He ejoined a lap down, and struggled nward. uggia reti red with engine problems Doohan, Schwantz, Rainey and John Kocinski were this close for most of the race before Doohan and Schwantz pulled away. Kocinski earns fir st500c(Dole Dosition J ohn Kocinski's first 500cc GP pole posi tion - by almost a full second - follows a slump in fortunes du ring whi ch he com pla ined lon g and hard about the way the Yamah a chassis was hard to tu rn, and tha t nei ther the factory nor his team were coming up with the goods he was asking for to cha nge it. The th ird Yamaha chassis arrived in time for Le Mans , an d it was night and day. Wayne Rain ey didn't like the front weight bias, bu t Koci nski loved it and dom ina ted every timed pr actice session. Understandably enough, he was n ow as full of pra ise for his team'sdedicated suppo rt as he had previously been critical, but the truth was plain . to see out on the trac k, where he was able to throw the bike int o the corners a nd exploi t hi s high corner-speed style without runnin g into trouble further ro u nd the bend. "Things ar e really startin g to corne round at the en d of the season now I' m getti ng the stuff I need," Kocin ski .said. . • .' Doohan's second starting spot was hard-won. At IRTA tests earlier in the week he had scared h im self and lots of others with a front-whe el slide th at painted a l00-meter blac k line at the scary six th-gear first corner. H e fell off on the first day of practice, with the front tuc king under at the pair of slow corners before the pi t stra ight; then had another frigh t at the first corn er in the final session, taking to th e escape road at close to top speed, and havin g to blip the throttle . to alert dozy marshalls to get out of h is way. . Not reassurin g - especially as it was the contin ua tion of the same problem that has bedevill ed his last few races: a lack of commitment to grip from his front Michelins. This remained true in spite of a big batch of new tires from the semi -retired French firm. " I found a rea r in the final session that seems good," Michael Doohan said. "They've brought a lot of new fronts , but a lo t of them are an older profile that I don 't like. In the end, I went back to an old type." All eyes were on Rai ney, on targe t to tie up the ch ampionship here , and he kep t on repea ting to himself and everyone else: "It's just another race - I'll be tryi ng to win, as usual. " Privately, he admitted: "I'd prefer it if there was no qual ifying, and we could just get out there and race." Rainey tried an d dis liked the new chassis, but thought he might use it anyway because it was better under brakes "and there's a lot of hard braking here." Then he changed hi s mind in the last session, after he was forced to return to his familiar chass is by som e engi ne trouble. "The old chassis is better out of the corner, and I tend to ride with th e throttle," he said. Gimme tha t old-time religion ... Wayne Gardner moved up to the front row in the fina l session, quietl y getting on with his private battle to regain top form. H e attribu ted his lack of complaints abo u t the Michel ins to a differ ent riding style; and was testing brakes, finding that a larger carbon disc ."didn't seem to get hot enough, an d was a lit tle too inconsistent for my liking. I wamin?re brakes, bu t I can't seem to find the m. " Brakes were also exercisipg Kevin Schwantz, th e man Gardner deposed from row one. After leading free training on Friday mornin g, he'd said: "T he Suzu ki is real good under brakes, and there's a lot of it here ." Then some sort of a bedding-in gli tch with a new AP caliper and disc set left him charging in to the first comer squeezing with two fingers and the lever trapping the oth er two against the twist-grip. " I had to let go and take a handful, and they still came back to the bar," Schwantz said later. "L ucki ly, I was still in tim e to take the escape roa d." H e seemed settled in fourth until Gardner ousted him in the dosing minutes, and was also chasing hard to pin down a chatter and patter problem with the front suspension. In the fina l session, the changes to the front suspension actually made it worse, and he was left with mo re experiments to do in morning warm-up. " It's not the same as I had at Brno, and I think it's a suspension problem rather than a tire prob lem," he said. Happily, reverting to his p revious settings on Sunday morning did bring it back under control. Still, times were close from Rainey to Schwantz, and the latter had his own opinion o f Koci nski's single an d sole sub-I:40 time. "Yeah - Dunlop has some tires like that. The next lap they're go ne." There was a small but significant gap to the next group, led by a good margin by the laid-back Doug Chandler, wh o lost some practice time when a new crankshaft in his sole bike started tigh tening up , and he was forced to sit out the first timed session. Then came the battlers in the major support group, with Nia ll Mackenzie ah ead of Didier de Radigues and a lagging Jean Phi lippe Ruggia. Mackenzie was back wi th Sonauto, now usin g the Mk2 chassis and abetter than standard engine, though team politics left him reluctant to describe it in too much detail (in Muge llo he was given a mo tor combination tha t Ru ggia had rejected, and he rode it to a brilliant fourth). Bu t the returned hero had crashed in the.first practice session, breaking bones in his left foot. He was in good company. Eddie Lawson also crashed in the sam e session, at the fast left-hander into the chicane at the end of the back straight. It may have been the wind, or some dust on the track, but either way the Cagiva pilot went tumbling and rolling, partially dislocating his left shoulder and breaking the scapula bone in his left wrist. This latter injury is the more serious, a nd probably means that his season is over. Sito Pons and Adrien Morillas filled the last two places on row three, and Eddie Laycock led row four from the three-cylinder Hondas, Marco Papa ahead of Michael Rudroff and Cees Doorakkezs. Simon Buckmaster's 'a ncie nt Suzuki was the last of 20 qualifiers, with four slow Honda riders ou t of luck. In 250cc practice, Luca Cadalora needed fourth place to secure his first 250cc title. but the Kanemoto-Honda rider is erratic enough for nothing to be certain; and the same can be said of his Michelins. He got a b ig batch of new rubber, and admitted to having tried five new fronts without having yet decided whi ch to use. " We have to wait and see how hot or cold it is on race da y," he said , adding: " I might use a new rear too ." Certainly Cadalora and h is tires seemed to be on a timely upswing, saying: " I can go into the corners much quicker than at Bm o, and with more confidence. I don't think the others will have any advantage there anymore;" and taking over the practice lead in the second session with a time good enough to secure pole, the only 250cc rider to break the 1:45 barrier. Wileo Zeelenberg almost did it too, havin g led practice on day one; moving back into second place in thefirial session with a I:45.017. " I'm feeling com forta ble. We did some wor k on the front suspension which has sol ved some of the problems we had in the last few races," he said. " I only hope my bike sta ys constant thr ou gh the race." Carlos Cardus was third after battl in g the ripples on his Kel Carruth ers-prepped Repsol H on da (" I' m no t sure whether its the bu mps or th e suspension giving trouble."), with times very d ose and from second to ninth places all within the same second. Helmut Bradl and Masahiro Shimi zu comp leted th e fro nt row of the grid, with Loris Reggiani, Pier-Francesco Chili, Martin Wimmer and Jochen . Schmid completing row two for what would obviously be a very dose race. And an important one. not only for Cadalora bu t also for the likes of Cardus, Bradl and Zeelenberg and their peers - wi th a last chance to impress in Europe, in the hope of securi ng one of the strictly limited number of works Hon das for next year. 15

• Cover