Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

and it was running a little rich," Crevier said later. "It was loading up and I just stalled it on the line. I got on the gas and it stalled." Canadian Linnley Clarke, Californian's Tommy Lynch and Lee Shierts all crashed out of the race on the op ening lap; Shierts end ed up ma king repairs, out would only compete a total of seven laps. Russell wasn't wasting any time in blitzing his way through the field and had worked his way up to 24th by the end of the second lap, some 20 seconds behind the leaders. At this point, Lawson had taken over the lead wi th Corser in to w, ju st ahead of Polen , Pico tte, James, Quarterley and Mer kel. Those seven had alread y opened up a gap on Sm ith, Stevens, Edwards, Jacks, Magee and C ycl e World ma g a zin e ' s Don Canet. Yanagawa was the first of the factory ri ders to exi t the 200, his Su zu ki GSXR750 developing an oil leak on the second lap . Polen led again o n laps three and four, w it h Corser taking ov er for the first time on lap five. Russell was up to 10th on the fifth lap , and trailed Corser by 17.83 seconds. Meanwhile, DuHamel had the Harley up into the top 30 after starting on the 17th row, and would ultimately get the VRlooo close to the top 20 before the bike expired on the 20th lap . On the eighth lap , Corser had ope ned up a slight gap on Lawson and Polen with Picotte and Jam es starting to lose tou ch with th e lead ers. Then cam e Merkel and Qua rterley who had a small lead over - believe it or not - Russell , who was turning lap tim es in the 1:52 range. The Luck y Strik e Suzuki of Donald Jacks was the ne xt fact ory bi ke to encounter proble ms as his GS XR750 sta rted spew ing oil, forcing the luckless Floridian out of the race on lap 12. Lawson pulled back to within striking distance of Corser and took the lead on the 15th lap. That lead was sho rtlived, though, as the 22-year-old Au stralian qu ickly repassed th e fou r-time World Champion. The 15th lap also saw Russell make an unscheduled pit stop after encountering tire problems wh ile exiting the chicane. " It started vibrating in the rear exiting the chicane," Russell said lat er . "I pulled it in immediately. That put us off schedule." Russell dropped back to eighth after the tire change, bu t he would ba ttle back. Stevens, meanwhile, suffered through a 30-some-second p it s to p , dropping him from 10th to 14th. Lawson pitted on the 21s t lap, taking on both a front and rear tire after chunking his front tire . Corser came in on the 22nd lap , but still came out of the pits with an Ll -second lead over Russell. James and Polen came next with a gap back to Picotte. Merkel led Lawson with Quarterley, Smith and Magee rounding out the top 10. Picotte's hopes fo r victo ry we re dashed on the 24th lap when he coasted to a stop in the dog-leg, his ch ain no lon ger on th e sp rocke t. "I kn ew that's what happened," Picotte said later. "My first impression was that the chain had come off, but 1 didn't see it on the pa vement." Picotte stopped the Ducati, put the chain back on the sprocket and headed back to the pits. He end ed up losing a lap to the leaders, though he later disputed this. Team owner/crew chief Eraldo Ferracci explained the chain problem: "It just stretched and came off," the likeable Italian said. "We did a (Right) Australian Troy Corser showed that he's a force to be reckoned with. The Ducatl pilot led until the red flag and then had to chase down Russell in the second part of the race, coming up some two seconds short at the fin ish. (Below) Eddie Lawson pits en route to his third place finish on the factory Yamaha. li ke s of Lawson and Polen a se cond chance. Though he was a lap down, Picotte was still lined up at the front of th e grid , causing more than a few to po nd er the grid positioning. Polen was again the fast starter, leading Russell, Quarterley, James, Mer kel, Lawson, Corser, Smith, Crevier, Takahiro Sohwa and Picotte (a lap down) into the International Horseshoe for the first time. Russell d idn ' t waste any time in charging past Polen on the brakes into the chican e, and he instantly opened up a lead on the pursuing pack. Corser moved into second on the 32nd lap, closing all the way up to Russell 's rear wheel. James and Polen also moved up to challenge the leading duo, with a gap back to Picotte and Lawson. On the 34th lap, Merkel sp un the Muzzy Kawasaki out in the middle of the International r-forsesh oe, forcing h is teammate Crevie- to take evasive action. The Can ad ian really ha d no where to go, but lo t of testing with th e n ew s p o nsor (D.LD) and never had a problem. Things are different when you get to the race. They really drop the clutch: ' By this point, Russell had sta rted eating into Corser's lead: 10.6 second s on lap 26, 9.6 on lap 27; 7.7 seconds on lap 29 and 5.3 seconds on la p 31. All hell broke loose on the 31st lap when Bernhard Schick crashed ho rrifically on the , fron t s trai ghtaway , instan tly b rin ging out the red flag . Fortunat ely, th e German escaped wi th only minor injuries; a laceration to his left knee, abrasions on his hands and back and a broken bone 'in his right hand. Dunlop tire technician Jim Allen said th at a rim failure had ca use d Schick's front tire to los e ai r and come apart, leading to the German's accident. AMA Grand N a ti o n al Champion Ricky Graham was behind Schick when the accident occ u rr ed . "It w as like a s tick of d yn amite went off," sai d Graham, who sol diered on, despite the effects of the flu, to finish a respectable 15th. . With emergency crews working on the front straight, teams went to work on th e motorcycles, with most ge tting fresh rubber for what would amount to a 27-lap run to the checkered flag. Roughly 20 minutes later, the race was restarted, putting Russe ll on equal ground with Corser, and also giving the Roger, overan u do t ~ ou've seen them used incar racing. Now the r,.,w id es p r ead use of~o-way radios has , made it to AMA road racing, witli the top U'S, Superbike Series teams all purchasing the systems for use in the 1994 season. One of those is Team Mirage, with rider Dale Quarterley now in direct communication with his pit crew during both qua1ifying and racing. The New Englander says the radios are an asset tha t are long overd ue. "I've been harping on the AMA for three years to do the rad ios," Quarterley said at Day.tona International Speedway. ':They tried it with the endur ance guys. At Atlanta the Two Brothers guys had a tire chunk. The rider would have ma d e another lap , bu t he was able to radio in and let them know he was com ing in. It could ha ve been a safety problem if he'd tried to go another lap . "There's really tw o good things about the radios. The crew can tell you what's going on out on the race track, giving you a sense of being; they can tell you to calm d own... that you're only two-tenths off the leader's lap times. And I think they can help stop accidents. Now I can call in and tell them that I've got a tire going d own and that I' m coming in . In the past, they'd behaving anicecream an d I'd be scream ing. Now they can have everything ready, because I've " already explained what I want : ' . The unit that Team Mirage uses is made by Race Comm in Maine and costs $1600 for a complete setup. "The microphone is molded in the chin piece of the helmet and it uses rolled-up ear plugs. You just sit on the bike and plug in. It bothered me a little bit at first when they talIced in the middle of a tum, but now I just expect them to talk and it's no problem. For the 200, these will be a big benefit:'

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