him his first World Superbike victory in
1993. In the first heat, Slight stayed right
on Russell's tail until the very last corner, in a very realistic attempt to give
the HRC crew something to cheer about;
and in the second heat, Pirovano and
Polen gave the Kawasaki rider a run for
his money - but to no avail. Russell was
simply the best in Hockenheim.
RACE ONE
Hockenheim is all about hooking
one's bike to the front wagon as soon as
the lights turn green . It's extremely fastthe lead riders approach the 186 mph
mark - and you can't afford to lose
touch with the lead group. Falappa,
Pirovano, Slight, Russell and Terry
Rymer showed that they had not forgotten anything about this elementary racing lesson. They were the men who got
returned to the Stadium section first, in
front of some 21,000 spectators, after
their first two-minute lap. Pretty soon,
the riders' ribbon stretched and broke
up, helped, among other things, by the
ominous blue smoke coming out of the
Ducati of fast starter Valerio Destefanis .
By the time the bald in g Italian had
decided to pull into the pits on the fifth
lap, the leading fivesome had been
reduced to a fearless foursome.
Falappa once again dem onstrated his
kamikaze riding style, trying to move
from fourth to first spot in one go just
before one of the chicanes. In the
process, Falappa nearly knocked
Pirovano off his bike.-Falappa went sailing into the gravel pit, and his Ducati
lost all interest in staying upright. A
mere three laps later, Pirovano was
forced off the track, due to a blown
engine. On their return to the pits, both
Italians started waving fists and calling
each other names. Both blamed each
other for the incident which had taken
out Falappa, but most - including Falappa's team manager Virginio Ferarri agreed that things would have gone a
lot smoother if Falappa had not attempt-
The first race came down to Scott Russell (1) vs. Aaron Slight (3). Russell won and th en wen t on to also win the second leg.
