Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

fla t. Tire troubles also sid elined teammate Daryl Beattie, who struggled with front tire woes before pulling in on the lOth lap. Th e best race of the d ay was in the 250cc class, with seven riders contesting th e lead at one po int until mechanica l fail ures and riding errors thinned the field. At the checkered flag, first to fourth were cove red by 1.020 seconds, though th e cl erk of the course mistakenly flagged the race to an end too early, costin g Kanemoto Honda's champ ionship leader Tadayuki Okada third place. .Ches terfield Aprilia's Jean-Philippe Ruggia was the und ispu ted w inner, though it nea rly wasn't so. Having led all but two of the first 20 laps, the 28-yearold Frenchman was passed by Marlboro Pileri's Loris Capirossi with five laps to go. But tw o laps later the 21-year-old Italian suffered a crankshaft failure, handing the lead back to Ruggia, who now found HB Honda's Doriano Romboni in h is sha dow. Ruggia held on, weaving to the finish line to win . Romboni held second, with O kada third and Ralf Wald m ann fourth on the second HB Honda. But the clerk of the course h ad been given a bad lap count and had thrown the checkered flag too ea rly, waving it for three back-ma rke rs wh o crossed the lin e just before the leaders. Since those thr ee had only completed 25 laps, race officials had no choice by to score eve ry- John Koc inski (11) couldn't keep pace with Doohan and Schwantz and was forced to battle with Alex Barros (6). Kocinski and the Caglva managed to hold off Barros and the Suzuki to fin ish th ird. Kocinski Is tied lor second In the point standings with Schwantz. one at the end of the 25th lap. That pu t Waldmann up to th ird and drop ped Okada, w ho 'd passed the German on the last lap ; to fou rth. Team Kanemoto Honda's George Vukma novich protested to the FIM jury, bu t the protest was immediately d isa llow ed even though th e three riders flagged were not in points-p aying p ositions . The team said th ey would file a n ap pea l within the allotted five-day time span and a hearing wo uld be held at a la ter date. The di fference be tw een third an d fourth is three championship points. Okada, after bein g relegated to fourth, F tpole of th irs e wan year for Sch tz W ith 13 turns over its 2.748 miles, the Circuito d e Jerez never a llows the 500cc bikes to stretch their legs. The longest straight is just 600 meters in length, with the best 250cc lap times good eno ugh for the second row of the 500cc grid. The premium is on traction under acceleration and steering, and whoeve r masters the setup will likely find himself on the pole. For the first time this season, Lucky Strike Suzuki's Kevin Schwantz (right) sped to the pole position honors with a new qualifying record of one-minute, 43.944-seconds (95.19 mph), but the top five were covered by half a second and there was little security for the World Champion despite the new ma rk "Everybody sitting at this table is able to win the race," Schwantz said at a p ress conference for the top five qualifiers. Wha t set him slightly apart was his ability to find a clear track late in the secon d qualifying session after putting all of his knowledge into the setup. "I got a good break . Nobody was in my wa y on the fast laps," Schwantz said after snatching the pole back from HRC' s Mick Dooha n with less than 10 minutes to go. "You . need luck and a clear track, so it was a gamble, but it paid off." Word aro und the pa ddock is that Schwantz is on a 1993 chassis, though he wouldn't admit it. "I've got a choice of two different bikes, just like in Japan, and you can make of that what you like," Schwantz said after Friday' s qualifying. Wha tever the case, he'd foun d the right combination for the tortuous Jerez circuit. ''We've been working on stability, especially under braking, which is important here. I' m alwa ys aiming at getting the bike easier to ride, an d for the last two races we've made a lot of progress in that direction." Progress was something that secon d fastest John Kocinski wasn't ma king, his Cagiva having been better during a pre-season test here and the team struggling to replicate those times . - ''W e're still trying to get the saine readings that we had in testing here," Kocinski said. "The bike feels different. The computer says it's different. We can 't seem to get on the right track . That' s why we're up and down. Before when we were here testin g, we were having trouble keeping the front w heel down. No w I'm under the paint and it won 't wheelie. It's really strange." There were more choices to makeduring the morning warm-up, including whether to use the anti-dive system and which rim size to use. "It's real close. We've still got som e things to try and I don't know which tire I'm going to use yet," Kocinski said. Less than a tenth of a second behind Kocinski came Doohan, the Australian briefly the fastest before seeing his time bettered by Schwantz, amid speculation that;he was reverting to older suspension pieces. :: .~: ., "We're pretty much back to the suspension settings we used to run, and thin gs are working all right," Doohan said. "It's easier to run over the bumps a little better and it's easier to tum a little better. We were concentrating on trying to get it working under a full load. It was kicking the back up over the jumps. We try to get some feel over the bumps and it's better on the tires." Of the vaunted horsepower advantage that the Hondas historically employ, Doohan still leads t he championship with 69 points, six better than Chesterfield Aprilia's Max Biaggi, who was a close third before crashing at the end of the 22nd lap. Second-place finisher Romboni is third with 61 points, one better than Ruggta, Ruggia won the 25-lap, 68.71-mile race in 44 minutes, 29.850 seconds at an average speed of 92.649 mph . It was the third win of his career and the third of the season for the Chesterfield Aprilia team, with teammate Biaggi winning the first two rounds. "I didn't want to take any crazy risks to win the race, but I was ready to seize the op portun ity when it was presented to me and I' m delighted with the win," Ruggia said. Like th e Marlb o ro Ro berts 500cc team, the Marlbo ro Rainey 250cc team ha d a forgettable weekend. The team struggled all weekend and it was no different in the race. After qualifying 18th, Jimmy Filice, substi tuting for the injured Kenny Roberts [r., crashed while in 16th place on the 12th lap. He suffered only a minor injury to his right foot and rode back to the pits. The only clear runaway winner of the weekend was Team Semprucci Krona's d id n't feel it helped so much on the twisting circuit in southern Sp ain, tho ugh p rinted . trap speeds showed the Hondas to be qu ite quick "It's all just acceleration here and we don't have much of an advantage," Doohan said, adding that the speed trap times were misleading because the radar gun was placed after some ride rs were already braking. "I think it' ll be a close race; it's usually that way here and it'll come down to tires." The second Suzuki of Alex Barros filled out the fron t row of the grid, the 23-year-old Brazilian, w ho holds the race lap record, trying to repeat the better part of his performance here last year when he led until the final few laps. ''We've ha d a few little p roblems, but I feel almost as confident as I did here last year," Barros said. 'The difference is that everyone seems so much closer together." In an effort to separate himself, Barros was trying Brembo brakes, having switched from AP at the Japanese GP, though he was still un decided after qualifying. The same was true of the tires. 'The important thing is to have tires that are still good for the second half of the race," Barros said . The fastest 500cc rookie contin ues to be Spaniard Albert Puig, the former 250cc rider putting the Ducados Honda Pons NSR in fifth place on the grid. Puig said he could do the occasional quick lap, b ut still wasn' t up to the race pace of the veterans. 'The next step is to do bette r in the races," Pu ig said. Sixth fastest was Cagiv a's Doug Chandler in his best qualifying performance of the young seaso n. The 28-year-old Northern Californian was working through steering prob. lems on a track that made it essential. ''We've been having a hard time pretty much all week getting it to steer," Chandler said. "It's not that it's stee ring badly, you just have to w ait a bit longer than you think you should to get out of the comer. There are no p articular areas that we're losing a whole bunch. It's just a little everywhere." Like Kocinski, Chandler wasn't sure which tire size he'd be using for the race, saying that the final choice might depend on the weather . In its very first race, the Aprilia RSV-400 V-twin qualified seventh under the guidance of veteran Loris Reggiani. Though the 34-year-old Italian wanted to debut the twin earlier, the Jerez circuit was the perfect venue for its premiere du e to its tight and twisty nature. Late in the session he was forced to ma ke his final qualifying run on what he felt was the inferior of his two machines, somethin g he felt cost him a shot at the front row. It's really too bad beca use the secon d bike was better and I really wanted to get the front row," Reggiani said. "I didn't expect the performance, it was kind of a drea m for me, but, you know, when you find yourself in such a situation you never have enough. . For the race it's going to be really hard, because if the other riders overtake me on the straight, they get a margin that is very difficult to fill in the comers, even if they are slower than me." HRC's Alex Criville completed the second row with a time tha t was margina lly slower than the Aprilia after improving the Honda's stee ring geometry and power delivery. Struggling back on the third row were the Marlboro Roberts Yamahas of Luca Cad alora (ninth) and Dary l Beatie (11th) with HRC's Shinichi Itoh sand wiched between them. Cadalora was seemingly disconso late, saying: "As you can see, we've got a few problems . The main thing is tha t we're still searching for the right front tire and I'm not sure ' we'll have any time tomorrow morning. I think we've run out of time." Beattie was more upbeat, having knocked better than two seconds off Friday's time. "It might look like we 're still a long way off, but if we 'd had time to stick in some more tires at the end of the session, I felt I could' ve done a high '44, so the bike's come a long way," he said. : Slick SO's Niall Mackenzie was 12th fastest, his second session cut short when a main bearing failed in a fast right-hand comer. There were 32 qualifiers for the Grand Prix, the fourth of the year.

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