Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

9 R~D AAa~ili~~~~~_~_~_e_s~_~_S:Ro_m_d9 _ ~ Georgian Scott Russell ended the day with the championship points lead after turning in an 8-1la1ly at the Sugo Circuit in Japan. SUGO, JAPAN, AUGUST 29 h e Japanese round of the World Superbike Series has always been one of the most dreaded meetings of the year, bu t for Georgian Scott Russell it was a beneficial affair. The Muzzy Kawasaki pilot entered the meeting at Sugo with a slim five-point lead over title-rival Carl Fogarty, but after recording eighth and first-place finishes, Russell left -with 13 more points in his pocket than the Brit. Fogarty won the first leg and took ov er the points lead, but a crash in the second leg sent him and his bent Ducati to the paddock with no points and back into second. With five rounds to go, Russell leads Fogarty, 259.5 to 246.5. The Japanese race comes at the end of a very tiring southeast Asian trip, during which the limited bike and parts arsenal - brought from Europe - is to be handled w ith the utmost of care. Moreover, opposition is quite stiff at the Sugo circuit, with local Japanese rid ers filling out the field aboard sophisticated fac tory- su p p orted material. To make thin gs even worse, Japan is certainly not the' pl ace to be at the en d of Au gust th ere is a constant threat of typhoons and heavy rain in the isles. And finally, life is very expensive, indeed , in the country of the rising yen. Still, Sugo was the race of the la st hope fo r Russell . It was there that Kawasaki ga ve him a new evolution of his Kawasaki engine and the lanky Georgian got away with more than he could have bargained for. After a disappointing eighth position in the first heat, the Team Muzzy rider scored his third win of the year in the second race, preceding none less than three other Kawasakis and one Yamaha. Still, this result was due mostly to an incredible stroke of misfortune for the Duca ti troops, who lost Stephane Mer tens, Fogarty, Mauro Lucchiari and Giancarlo Falappa in the last six laps. This result was, however, a fine booster for the Japanese Kawasaki and Yamaha hon- T 24 chos, who had only received woeful tidings from the European fron t when first Falappa, and later Fogarty had just run around their mighty fou r-cylinders. Kawasaki was quite ple ased to have beaten the entire Europ ean opposition on home soil, and Yamaha sa w their own Fabrizio Pirovano climb back in the point standings. Pirovano is now tied for fourth with Falappa. It is, however, doubtful that the tide has turned. Russell had to leave his special engine in Japan, and the Yamaha engineers were only able to come up with a better gearbox for th e Beppe Russo-tuned YZF of Pirovano. In other words, even the Japanese had not been able to beat Russo in hi s game, as his engines proved to be faster than the factory units. It is (again) all up to him for the rest of the season. Fogarty was one of the mos t unlucky riders after the second hea t. For some tw o hou rs, he had been the new leadi ng man in the championshi p after winning the first leg ; an ob jec tive he had been working toward for the last coup le of months. A crash in the aftern oon race, however, put him ba ck where he was b efore the Malaysian round. He can have a new go at Russell 's position back in Europe. One thing is for sure, the championship is no t over ye t; e ven though it looks like it's boiling down to a duel between the English Ducati rider and the Georgian Kawasak i-representative. Russell's Muzzy Ka wa saki teammate, Aaron Slight, never got a chance to taste the latest deve lopment of the Kawasaki engine and los t precious points to two Japanese Kawas a ki test riders. The Kiw i is now coming under increasing pressure from Pirovano, who made up ground to equa l Falappa on points. Qualifying The pessimists were ri ght on the practice days preceding the Jap an ese round - or at least partially. Typhoon Vernon flooded parts of Tokyo and also visited Sugo on Thursday evening, making the track unridable on Friday for the uri-timed practice sessions due to the mud and water running down the hills and onto the tarmac. Kamikaze-tactics were demonstra ted by the leading Ducati men in Saturday's practice sessions. First of all, Falappa went down after ha ving paid too much attention to his pit signals as he dove into the first comer. A bit later, it was Fogarty who followed his teammate's bad example. "I w as wondering why Carlo kept on crashing while turning slower lap times than myself," the Brit said after he walked awa y uninjured. _ Foga rty was not impressed by his wrong step , bettering his best time in the afternoon with some two seconds. A four th consecutive pole position for the man from Blackburn, and a fourth consecu tive mo ral victory over Russ ell, who also h a d to tol erate the Ja p a n e se Kawasaki factory rider Keiichi Kitagawa in fron t of him. "T his year I have never been so far off pole," said a disappointed Russell. "A nd I just can't go any faster; I am riding at my own and the bike's limits." Things were even worse for his teamma te Sligh t. On Saturday, Slight never go t hi s n ew engine running for more than four laps in a row, struggling constantly with carburetion problems. And th e new engine! Both Russell and Slight had been looking forward to receiving the Japanese engineers' homew ork at Sugo, but instead, they -wete surprised by the speed of another Kawasaki engine - faster ones that were used by Kawasaki's Japanese test riders. "The engines the Japanese have given to us here are perhaps a bit stronger than our own eq uipment," said Russell . "But it is sure no miracle drug against the Ducati domination." Tea m manager Peter Doyle was as surpris ed as his riders . "(Keiichi) _ Kitagawa and (Shoichi) Tsukamoto have engines that are a lot faster on top speed than ours. We would've liked to try these engines ou t, but there was no time for that. I will have to bang my fist on the tab le, because as things look now, we are losing the title ." Still, on Sunday morn ing, Team Muzzy decided to use "their" Japanese engines, as these were a little more powerful than the ones th ey had brought with them from Europe. Still, Kawasaki was extremely well represented at the front row of the grid, w ith only Fogarty on pole as the sole Ducati rider on the front row . With Kitagawa sitting in the second starting slot, Russell third, Slight fourth and Tsukam oto fifth , things looked pretty well for Kawasaki. Mertens, Piergiorgio Bontempi, Pirovano and Fred Merkel occupied the second row. The Kawasaki riders were not the only ones to see some results of the Japanese homework at Sugo. Pirovano got a new engine to tryout, but that tu rn ed out to be a bit slower than his tun er 's Beppe Russo home craft, even th ou gh the Japanese bike was fitted with a gearbox especially developed for the Sugo circuit. Russo had already done some pretty impressive work on the BYRD Yamahas before they left for Asia, doing away with the acceleration pump which had caused Merkel so much trouble in the first races of the year. The Band C kit riders also got some more tricks from th e Japanese. Jeffrey De Vries received all the carburetor eq uipment that goes with the B kit airbox, as the Dutchman works together very closely with Rymer, performing a lot of development work on the track as well as on a d yno in Holland. The extra help even made Swede Christer Lindholm wonder: "Perhaps they should put Sugo as the first race on the calendar; then we get all the Japanese advice before the season really gets under way." Terry Rymer had to be happy with 12th behind Falappa and Lucchiari. The Londoner had hoped to tryout a real factory bike in Sugo, after his own B kit bike broke down in practice. But according to Yamaha, there w ere no more works bikes available to him . Race one On Sunday morning, more than 36,500 sp e ct a to rs saw most of the European riders caught off guard by the unconventional Japanese starting tech nique. They weren't used to the starting lights that turned yellow first befo re the green ligh t is swi tched on. "I had alr eady covered so me six feet and then I had to brake aga in, until the light reall y turned gre en," Sligh t said. Mertens w as one of th e few rid ers hav in g s t u di ed the procedure quite closely in p rev iou s ra ces. Th e Belgian Ducati rider dove into the first comer in the slipstream of local hero Kitagawa, who led the field during the first 15 laps of the 25-lap race. On lap 12, Mertens was passed by Fogarty, who had started the race in fourth. "During the warm-up, I had to run in a new engine, since my best engine had an oil leak yesterday," Mertens said. "Fortunately, everything worked ou t all right from the word go, and I succeeded in following the Japanese Kawasaki during the first half of the race, even though I noticed pretty soon that my tire choice was not th e best I could have made. Then, I was passed by Fogarty, and later on by Tsukamoto." After passing Mertens, Fogarty reeled in and passed Kitagawa for the" lead . He was not able to shake off

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