Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127659
World Championship Road Race Series be burning no-lead Shell fuel, leading the whole fi eld in th is respect if no other. IRTA's test at Jerez showed th at some of the riders drafted to fill out the 500 grid may have had a n od of approval from riders' representative Franco Uncini, but they're way off th e pace at this stage. Where last year there was good midfield dicing among th e privateer riders, it seems there may also be dicing this year in the backfi eld, among the very slow. Expec t lot s of complaints from the fast men, who will be obliged to lap some of these riders three or more times in a race . If all things remain equal, it looks as though Doohan will probably have a relati vely easy run to his first title. The thing about racing; however, is that things usually don 't remain equal - and The Hondas are likely to have the speed, however, and Capirossi is on e whose maturi ty could certainly use some toppping off. If only the former d oub le 125 champion, still only 20, d idn' t have to wo rry about th e other men being on Hondas, too. The Marlboro-Pileri bike will probab ly have the most tro u ble from ·HBbacked countryman Rombo ni , a conspicuously aggressive Honda hero who was a serious title prospect last year until he broke his leg at Assen. Ho nda has jettisoned old-brigade riders - Puig to SODs, Helmut Bradl to retirement. New men on NSRs are : Rail Waldmann, always imp ressive in his 125 career; Spaniard Luis d' Antin; and, rather surprisingly, former motocrosser Adrian Bosshard of Switzerland, who rode a kitted RS Honda last year with- (Abov e) Shlnlchlltoh will race a fuel-Injected Honda NSR500 again In '94. (Left) Dou g Chand ler returns for a sec ond year on th e factory Caglva. (Righ t) Max Blaggl ls back on Apri lias after a season on Hondas. (Far ri ght) Alex Barros will team with Schwantz on the Lucky Strike Suzuki squad. (Far left) John Koc inski hopes to give Cagiva its first 500cc World Championship. (Left ) Loris Reglannl will ride a " super 250" Aprilia in t he 500cc class . (Below) Spanish 500cc class r.oo kle Alberto Pulg will ride a Sito Pons-owned, Ducados-sponsored Honda NSR500. signs are good. Kocinski won a race for them las t year, their first-ever dryweather victory coming at the en d of a year w hen they had reall y s ta rted to look like com petitive race-bike d esigners and builders, rather than pale imitators of the Japanese. Rider Kocinski certainly has a lot to prove as well. He's the other past champion in the pack (250/1990), and this is something of a second coming for him in the 50Dec class. We're all agog to see if he can put a full season together without faltering. Kocinski has put teammate Doug Chan dler rather in the shade, his arrival coinciding wi th a rou gh patch after Chandler's fine third place finish in last year's Eastern Creek race. This makes Chandler another man with plenty to prove. The Aprilia challenge - th e 400cc lightweight V-twin intended to capitalize on the fact that the 250;5 are drawing ever closer to 500cc lap times - may take a little time. Already the program is running late, and the bike will not be ready for the opening three rounds. Instead, w ily ride r Loris Reggiani is gearing up for an assault that will begin in Europe, at the twisting Jerez track; he has announced that he intends to be on the front row of the grid. This may not be far-fetched. The 250s were faster than the SODs at the recent Jerez IRTA tests, and the 250 pole man last year (Tetsuya Harada) would have been on row two of the 500 grid. . Privateers brought the 500cc class numbers up to a total of 32 at the last count. The ones worth worrying about at this stage have Big-Bang motors: the redoubtable Niall Mackenzie and the talented Juan Lopez-Mella on Roc Yama has; an d British second-year men John Reynolds and Sean Emmett o n Harris-Yamahas. The latter will again that's a good thing, too, in ter m s o f keeping interest in the championshi p alive . 25OCc: MORE OF THE SAME Last year's 250cc class brought forth exemplary racing . A n ew breed of young heroes from Italy led the way in slash ing lap times, a nd leaving t he established stars reeling. But it was a young newcomer from Japan who sto le the title, after a year of supremely styl ish consistency on an underdog Yama ha. Tetsuya Harada is back again on a Yamaha, now in French colors, after coming close to moving to Suzuki d uring the winter . Like his rivals Loris Capirossi, Doriano Romboni and Max Biaggi, he is a year older and wiser. At the age of 22 he already displayed frightening maturity - now tha t he's 23, this could prove devastating. out any pa rticu lar distinction. Returnin g for a seco nd sho t are Tadayuki Okada and fellow -Japanese Nobua tsu Aoki, always assuming the latter can get the money togeth er. Wilco Zeelenberg is . also back on an NSR. The Dut chman last rode one in 1991, a year after claiming his sole GP win . Like many, he is starting the year without eno ugh money to complete it, and relying on luck to see him through one way or ano ther. Another sig n of hard times is that Oka da , w hose season las t year was spoiled by injury and who does n't seem to be at the same level as Hara da, Capirossi etc., will have his factory bike prepa red by Erv Kanemoto. With the dearth of sponsorship money, it was the best Japanese-American tuner/manager he could get. With Harada the sole factory Yamaha rider, sta r debutant Kenny Roberts Jr. is understood to have a stock TZ inside his