Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round 4:Spanish Grand Prix ganged upon Kocinski on the winner's podium, spraying him In the face with champagne. (Below) The 250cc GP gets started with Max Blaggi (4) leading Loris Caplrossl (2), J.P. Ruggla (17) and Dorlano Rombonl (5). The race was won by Ruggla after Blaggl crashed and Caplrossi's Honda DNFd. his own fast lap on the final tour after getting a few breaks with traffic, though Schwantz was quick to defend the riders and the marshals. " They flagged pretty well," Schwantz sai d . "Th e marshals did a good job and the riders did as good a job as they could." Doohan would get the win, the points, and the comfort of knowing that going back to the parts shelf had paid off. "It was difficult to get away from Kevin," Doohan said after recording the 12th 500cc GP win of his career, which moved him past Phil Read and into 13th on the all-time win list. "It was only the traffic five or six laps from the end that alJowed me to get a co u ple o f bik es ahea d of him. He came back at me pretty hard, but I gu ess I just ha d it. "Testing d efinit el y mad e me feel more at home on the bike. It didn't feel rig ht before. We know now what was different. Before, we couldn't ge t an explanation as to why it was different. It didn't feel the same from the prototype to the race bike - like Kevin was saying about the Suzuki." "Kevin was late on the brakes, and I was hoping I wouldn't come up beside him ." Kocinski was plugging away at Barros since he knew they were in danger of losing the leaders. Going into the tum two carousel on the 15th lap, Kocinski moved in for the pass with Barros going low and cutting him off. Kocinski had to take evasive action, losing touch briefly with Barros - but, more importantly, permanently with the leaders. "I almost T-boned h im once," recalled Kocinski. "He brakes so deep in the corner and slows down so much more than the other guys. That's when we lost contact with the leaders. " It would be on the 18th lap, nine from the end, that Kocinski would get around Barros - but by then it was too late. He was only about two seconds behind the leaders, but his engine had d eveloped a misfire which prevented him from making a charge. . "When I got around him, the other two guys had gotten away," Kocinski said . He had a scare when th e misfire began, thinking the bike was running out of gas. So it was up to Schwantz to make a run at Doohan and he did his best, lowering the track record on each of the last three laps until it was half a second below the mark Barros set last year. But Doohan was up to the challenge, setting "The difference was that he could get off a couple of comers better than me, and that was at places where I needed to stay close to try and outbrake him at the next tum," Schwantz said. "This is a track with not so many places to pass. " Kocinski had gotten a scare oil the sighting lap thinking that he had a clutch problem similar to the one he suffered with at Suzuka. But his mechanics looked at it, declared it ready, and sent him off. It might not have been the best state of mind to begin a race in, though Kocinski was generally pleased with how the b ike worked and saw more progress ahead. "It's just a matter of working on the b ike," said Kocinski, who used the mechanical anti-dive system in the race. "The bike is a little more stable with it (the anti-dive) which made it a little better on the brakes. That 's where I was able to get around Barros - on the brakes." Barros had led the race last year until the very end, when he crashed. Early on, he realized that tire problems would prevent him from running with the leaders and that his would be a battle of survival "My problem was the choice of tires. They kept sliding, and after 12 laps I wasn't able to keep in touch," Barros said. Criville was a solitary fifth, with the same true of Puig in sixth. HRC's (Left) Sc:hwantz and Doohan CRAM P Kazuto Sakata in the 12Sec. After taking the lead from World Champion Dirk Raud ies on the third of 23 laps, the Japanese rider pulled away to win by close to seven seconds. Second a nd th ird we re decided by the halfw ay point with Marlboro Aprilia Eck l's Peter Oettl taking second and Sakata's teammate Herri Torrontegu i finishi ng th ird, th e best placing by a Spaniard all weekend. The top three riders we re aboard Aprilias. In winning th e 23-lap, 63.214-mile race in 43 minutes, 5.188 seconds, Sakata averaged 88.011 mph. By winning his second rac e of the year, Sakata was able to expand his margin in the championship to 37 po ints, 9053, over OettJ. Givi Racing's Noboru Veda , fourth today, is third with 47. SOOccGRAND PRIX From the flash of the green light, Barros jumped into the lead with Kocinski second ahead of Schwantz and Doohan; the Spaniards, Puig and Criville, were in tow . Schwantz took the lead at the end of the second lap, dropping Barros back to second. The Brazilian dropped to third a lap later with Kocinski advancing to keep the leaders in sight after passing Criville and Puig. Doohan took the lead for the first time on the seventh lap, with Schwantz leading Barros, Kocinski, Criville and Puig . The Spaniards would make no further progress as Criville suffered early tire fade, dashing the partisan crowd's hopes for a podium placing. "The truth is that I am very pleased with this fifth position, but I am not absolutely happy because I cannot be on the rostrum like last year," Criville said. "I think that I have done my best race of the year because the quickest guys were not so far (ahead). Just when the bike made two big slides, I lost the contact with them. This means that we are step by step recovering the difference." Schwantz went up the inside of Doohan in tum one on the 13th lap to take over the lead. Doohan, meanwhile, held second in front of Barros and Kocinski. Schwantz's lead would last but a lap, with Doohan taking it back when Schwantz ran wide in a sweeping right-hand tum. "I think he missed a shift and I was able to run inside of him," Doohan said. Shinichi Itoh had been seventh until the midway point when he slid out, uninjured, handing the spot to Mackenzie. The Scot would hold the spot until his tires went off with six laps to go. At that point, Chandler, who'd gambled on a rear tire choice, came by. "I went for one that for sure would go the distance:' Chandler said . "It was the same on the first lap as the last lap. I tipped it into the third comer with those guys and went to the deck. I kind of knew it wasn't going to get any worse. " Mackenzie would hold off Reggiani and th e surprising Aprili a for ei ght h . Though Reggiani wasn't able to match his seventh-place qualifying position, he did finish ahead of a host of four-cylinders, 2SOcc GRAND PRIX Chesterfield Aprilia 's Biaggi led from the start with Marlboro Team Pileri's Capirossi second in front of Chesterfield Aprilia's Ruggia, HB Honda's Romboni, and Kanemoto Honda's Okada. Ruggia moved up to second on the second lap then forged into the lead on the third, bringing Capirossi up from third to second and dropping Biaggi to third in front of Romboni. Okada remained in fifth. By the fifth lap the top five were away from the pack, with Honda Rheos Jha Racing' s Nobuatsu Aoki fending off HB Honda's Waldmann, and with Repsol-MX Onda-Pep si's Luis D' Antin all alone in eighth. Ruggia would pull out a slight edge with the pack taking it back a lap later. By the midpoint of the 26-lap race, the first seven bikes were running nose- to-ta il, with little place swapping. Biaggi was the fastest rider on the track, se tt ing the quickest lap of the race on the 12th tour. The order remained cons istent un til the 17th lap when Biaggi passed Capirossi, and Aoki passed Okada. Capirossi was back in second on the next lap before moving to the lead on the 21st. The 21-year-old Italian was in front on the following lap when Biaggi made a desperate move for the lead that saw the Italian crash in the final tum, a first-gear carousel that leads to the 600-meter front straight. It was Biaggi's first crash of the year - in testing or competition - and it couldn't have come at a worse time. "I braked a little late for the hairpin before the pits, the back end came up and that upset the bike and finally the front tire slid away," said Biaggi, who lost the World Championship lead after his non-finish. "I was trying particularly hard that lap because Capirossi was getting away a bit. I was having a problem with the back end lifting all through the race, so it's something we must work on in the future." Capirossi's time at the front was limited as the crankshaft on his Marlboro Team Pileri Honda NSR250 expired on the 23rd lap - just three from the end. "I really felt I'd have no problem to win," Capirossi said. "I knew when to make my move, then my crankshaft broke. " Ruggia was then thrust to the front with Romboni, Waldmann, and Okada in his draft. Aoki was alone in front of a close quartet that incl ud ed D' Antin, Chesterfield Aprilia's Jean-Michel Bayle, DC Racing Team's Wilco Zeelenberg, and World Champion Tetsuya Harada of the Yamaha Motor France team . Despite rear tire trouble that was killing his drive, Romboni took the lead from Ruggia on the front straight to start the 25th lap, but the Frenchman took it back in tum one and would lead across the line ending the lap. That would be the one that counted, though he was also in first after the checkered flag.

• Cover