Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

World Championship Road Race Series: Round 1 John Kocinski (19) fought for the entire race distance with eventual winner Tetsuya Harada. into the comers and I kept running into him. Our fairings touched at least twice," Biaggi said. At one point Biaggi hit Capirossi from behind, nearly taking him down in tum two before the Italian teenager saved it. Kocinski was dictating the pace at the front and turned his fastest lap of the race on the 19th. Two laps later Harada would clock his best lap in pursuit of Kocinski. "There are a lot of good followers out there, but not too many good leaders," Kocinski said. The pack began to spread out a bit as Kocinski took the lead, from Capirossi Schwantz startsattack with p_ole_ _ F 8 rom the day that the World Championships ended last year in South Africa, tucky Strike Suzuki's Kevin Schwantz has been chomping at the bit for the new season to start. "It feels like we spent the whole season at Eastern Creek," the 28year-old Texan said the first day of the first Grand Prix weekend. "I spent more time testing than in all the previous winters put together. I ran seven or eight thousand kilometers (4350 to 4970 miles during seven tests on three continents). During the IRTA test; the weekend prior to the Australian Grand !'rbi, it was obvious the work had paid off, Schwantz was consistently the fastest. And when it meant something, during official qualifying, Schwantz was right there, earning the pole position for the season's first race at Eastern Creek with a lap of 1 minute, 31.188 seconds/96.411 mph, well below Michael Doohan's lap record of 1:30.76 around the 2.M2-mile course outside of Sydney. His best lap during Friday's qualifying session was good enough for pole position also - no one bettered it - but he went faster still while testing the setup and tires he'd use in the race. "We'd spent the session looking for a good race setup and trying to choose one out of the three possible Michelin tires that we think will go the race distance best," Schwantz said. "1 didn't need to go for a fast lap, but I noticed that some of the others . had speeded up and I didn't want them to think they had got up momentum for the race that we hadn't been able to manage." . . What has made his job easier this year, and improved his approach to racing in general, is a machine that he feels is the first complete race bike he's ever had from Suzuki. "The bike's better all the way around the track," Schwantz said in comparing this year's and last year's mounts. "It holds a line really well through the comers. The front and back work together instead of again.st each other and it goes down the straight better. Before I'd go into a comer and there'd be no grip front or rear and I had to shut my eyes and throw it in there. "You have to give credit to the team. Suzuki's a lot more committed to racing than they were in the past. This year the bike's a complete package. Last year it was a bike that they threw things on. It's all put together nice and neat and it looks like a 500 GP bike," Schwantz said. The only slight trouble Schwantz had was that he was bothered by a nagging sore throat and cold, though he didn't expect it to hamper his race performance. "1'd like to think we can run low 31s for the race. 1can do low 31.5 for the first half of the race," Schwantz said, adding that he would be using the new Michelin 16 1/2 inch front tire for the race. Sitting on the front row next to Schwantz was defending three-time World Champion Wayne Rainey and the Marlboro Team Roberts Yamaha. Rainey had been out of sorts since he began testing the new Yamaha and things only improved at Eastern Creek during the first qualifying session when he happened on a compromise that knocked a second off of his time. Still, he wasn't happy and wasn't willing to discuss the change that had dramatically improved his time. "It's a reaT fme balance, what we did. When you go fast you still have the same problem. We moved part of the problem up," Rainey said after clocking a time that on the 17th lap. On the next lap Capirossi crashed trying to keep up with Kocinski. "I was chasing Kocinski and having some front tire problems," the 19-yearold Italian said. "Then the front just slid away and I was down." Biaggi, behind Capirossi at the time, lost ground taking evasive action and was quickly out of touch with Kocinski and would soon be passed by Harada. "I had a problem with the back tire and the gearbox was a job to shift between second and third," Biaggi explained. "In the end I had to settle for third place because when Capirossi crashed he came back on the track in front of me and I lost a lot of time making sure I avoided him. By the time I got sorted out, the two leaders were a long way ahead and I realized there was little chance of catching them." As the order behind Kocinski continued to shuffle, he and Harada got into a swapping match that would last till the end of the race. Kocinski led laps 17 through 20, Harada the next two, John two more, then Harada again. Kocinski was back in front for laps 26 and 27, but made a mistake in the first tum, allowing Harada to close. In the final turns Kocinski couldn't get a good enough drive onto the one kilometer long front straight to pull enough ground for the run to the flag. The win was Yamaha's first in a 250cc race since Kocinski won here in 1990 and it was the first by a Japanese rider in the 250cc class since the Japanese GP in 1987. "Kocinski's comer speed was higher than mine so I knew I had to get through the last comer on the last lap faster than usual so I could get a good slipstream, and it worked," Harada said. "I could pull a second on the infield and lose it on the straight," Kocinski said, explaining his dilemma. "We need more engine, basically. Once I got a second on them and I thought it would be okay. But when you're pushing your own wind and you've got two or three guys behind you, it's hard. With the pace I was setting I thought maybe he (Harada) would make a mistake. I thought I might have used up my tires catching up to·those guys because they were getting loose at the end. "I think it's (the '93 season) going to be tough," Kocinski said. "But we're going to make a few adjustments and see. I rode as hard as I could and I knew I had to stay in front and force the pace." Biaggi, like Kocinski, felt he abused his tires early and paid dearly at the end. "At the end, the front tire was still good but the rear one was worn out," Biaggi said. Fourth place was decided on the very last lap, Rothrnans Honda's Okada making his way to the fron t after ga ting poorly. The 26-year-old Japanese rider had moved up to seventh with nine laps to go to get in the middle of the fight for fourth among Aoki, Romboni, and Cardus. He picked off Romboni with three laps to go to move into sixth, then jumped past Cardus and Aoki on the final lap. "At the start I made a mistake when I let the clutch out and aI:rnost stalled the engine. I lost quite a lot of time and it was quite hard work making my way through the field, but I had no real troubles," Okada said. Aoki, fourth the last third of the race, was .216 seconds slower than Schwantz's. Rainey admitted that with a completely new bike and new tires (the team switched to Dunlops for this year) there was more than the usual difficulty finding a sympathetic setup. Comparing his '92 and '93 mounts, Rainey said: "IlasicaIly, the axles are the same and the wheels. That's about it," A new chassis is being built, though it likely won't arrive until the Japanese GP at Suzuka, at the earliest. That it should come to this is something of a surprise since Yamaha engineers visited Rainey in Los Angeles late last year with drawings of the new bike. "They made a concept of what they'd learned in all the years that a GP bike shOUld be," Rainey said. "The finished product is different than that. As far as balance, it's a lot different than it was on paper. We didn't know it until we started riding it. Basically, when you flick it off in the comer it skates and we're trying to get it to steer on itself in the middle of the comer. You have to ride the bike the way it wants to be ridden:' . And since the bike hasn't been right, Rainey believes that he hasn't given the new Dunlops a proper test, though he and teammate tuea CadaIor.a agreed on their race tire choices. What he didn't agree with was Schwantz's assessment of the race pace. "I think that's a good clip," Rainey said."1 think it's going to be 31.7s or 31.8s." Rothmans Honda's newest recruit Daryl Beattie was third fastest, a scant .067 behind Rainey in his horne GP. With fellow Queenslander Mick Doohan still on the mend from various ailments, the mantle of the Rothmans Honda effort had fallen to the 22-year-old Beattie, though he seemed unfazed by the attention. '1'm happy to be in third, but if Mick was better I'd be in fourth," said Beattie, who won last year's All-Japan 500cc championship. "Personally, I'm not happy with my own times. I'd like to be where Kevin is now." And though Beattie was happy to be starting his first full year of GP racing, he was aware of the pressure. "It's something I've been. aiming for for a long time. That's why Tstayed with Honda. I've got the job, now jf I don't get the results I won't keep it," Beattie said. "1'd like to win tomorrow; that's what we're all here for. I'd be happy to go to Malaysia with a top three visit. "I think the biggest thing for me is the start. U I push from the start I should be able to race with them. I think we have the power to stick with them; it's more up to the rider," Beattie said, after a mostly uneventful qualifying session. "We've pretty much finalized our setup. I put a lot of laps together with consistent times in the last session and that's important. I got a good tire this afternoon and that helped the time." The.top four riders all finished on the same second, Cagiva's Doug Chandler filling out the front row after leading much of the second timed quaIiyfing session and pleasantly surp~ at being there. "It's going really well, better than I expected," the 27-year-old Californian said. "You never know how it's going to be until you get with the other bikes. But we're proving pretty competitive and I'm happy with the time JOr the race." The Cagiva marks the fourth different machine Chandler has campaigned the past four years and, except for the jump from Superbikes to SODs, the change hasn't been dramatic. "All the 500s feel relatively the same, though there are some differences. Our chassis is fairly close to the Suzuki's. Cagiva had to stretch it out a bit to make it fit me like the Suzuki and I'm real comfortable on the bike. When 1 first rode the Cagiva it was definitely down on power, mostly on the bottom end on acceleration. Chassis-wise I was really surprised because I didn't think it handled as good as it does. It had a

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