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/127665
;·. FlQ~p;:" ~A~·E}. G P season update rand rix (Left) Max Blagg l has proven to be the dominant 250cc rider thus far. (Rig ht) loris Capirossl hasn't won yet, but he's been close . (Below) JeanMichel Bayle · good results have qu ieted doubters. (Below right) Tetsuya Harada has suffered from Injury. (Bott om) Kazuto Sakata (2) leads the 125cc World Championsh ip. 125cc cha mpion, is anxious to add the Blue Riband 500cc crown to his collection. Quietly up there with the big boys is a SOOcc GP second-year man. Shinichi Itoh is fifth in line for th e ti tle, only three points down on Cadalora. Last year, at least some of the Japanese rider's po tential was blurred by his use of the fuel injection-pioneeri ng NSR. This year Honda has go ne back to the d ra w in g board to concentra te on the Mk2 version, and Itoh has a standar d NSR with carbu. retors, one whi ch his team manages to make go very fast indeed. Two rostrums out of three mean he is not to be ove rlooked. Realistically, tho ugh , Cadalora, Itoh and probably Kocinski will be figh tin g for third overall. The main event is likely to be Schwantz and Doohan, with the latter running hi s own crisis tests befor e Jerez to sol ve vexing suspension problems with the HRC Honda, and hoping to re ca p tu re the bull-doz ing fo rm of 1992, when he was the only rider with a Big-Bang engine, and was only beaten by his own broken leg. The bit-part players are lead by Alberto Puig, one of the exciting finds of the seaso n, qualifying well and racing ha rd in his fi rs t 500cc-class season af ter a mainly-250 career. The Spaniar d has a leased works Honda in Ducados colors, and has so far usually been able to put one over his great rival Alex Criville, on an official works HRC Honda in his third year in the class. In between the two, Alex Barros will probably start moving ahead , benefitting from the sa me machine changes to the Suzuki that turned teammate Schwantz's hopes around, while Doug Chandler fans certainly hope he will do the same. Doug has been languishing since the latter part of last year as well as through the start of this one, lacking confidence to thro w the ~ Cagiva into the turns the way his team0\ mate does, and leaving others than him0\ self wondering just where it has all gone ...-I __ r . wrong. ...-I Beattie, the last works rider, is way .,... down the points, after a propensity for ~ first-lap problems (a crash in Aus~ tralia, a start-line collision in Malaysia and a jump-start penalty in Japan) has added to difficulties in adapting from Michelins to Dunlops as wEi Wa s 32 Honda to Yamaha to keep him out of the results. Keep ing the p rivateer fires burning, Niall Mackenzie, his Roc-Yamaha no w equipped with a works-type Big Bang engine, is usually fastest but has been out of luck. There are , furthermore, others with the same close-firing-order motors, and top ma n in the points is former British champion John Reynold s, on a Harris-framed machine. Other ba ngers joining in the strong mid-field battle are Sean Emmett, Jeremy McWilli ams arid Laurent Naveau. But the most sheer excitement so far has been generated by a one-race wonder - the 18-year-old from Tokyo who put the " Wil d " into wild ca r d . Norifume "Norick" Abe set the race on fire at Suzuka, riding withou t fear among the world 's fastest 500cc riders as though this was his 21st, rather than first, GP. For sure he was living dangerously, and it all came to an abrupt and ra ther pred ictable end with three lap s to go to the finish, But when the long-hair went somersaulting out into . the Tum One sand-trap, just remember _ he was battling Doohan and Schwantz for the lead, and if he'd simply d ecided to settle for third rather than continuing to fight for outright victory, he would have stood on the rostrum without difficulty. He's a man who will surely return. In some wa ys, the best story of the year has yet to happen. This is Aprilia's attemp t to ch allenge the V-four din osaurs, whose performance has stagnated somewha t in the past three years, with a "supe r-250" twin making use of the reduced weight lim it (220 pounds compared to 286 pounds) to offset a d eficit of 35 or more horsepower. The theory is that the slim and agile V-twin of 400cc and 130 hp will make up in nimble bralcing, high midcorner speed and good midrange accele ration what it loses on ultimate speed. Ridden by former 250cc star Loris Reggiani, the bike had in tests already set second-row grid position times at Muge1lo; a first confrontation at the notoriously tw isty Jerez circui t in Andalucia would be interesting, to say the least