Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

(Opposite page) Piergiorglo Bontempl (6) gets the jump on the field In the first leg of the Italian round of World Superblke Series. The hallan Kawasaki rider led until a fauby fuel pump put him out of contention late in the race. (Above) The second leg came down to a battle between Glancarlo Falappa (5) and Scott Russell (1); Falappa won the race, but Russell won the war as he further ex1ended his championship points lead by tallying a 1-2 finish. (Right) Thus far In 1994, Scott Russell has been dominant. His first-leg win In Italy was his fourth of the young season and his points lead now stands at 31 over Aaron Slight. "I had a bad start, but as soon as I got w ith the front-runners, things looked better. I only got in some trouble when I got wide on one of the last laps and w h en Bontempi got past me on the insid e. But I knew that I had a better drive out on the straigh t, so I was just waiting for the last lap to get past him again." Falappa was second and qu ite happy to be back in stride again: "We still suffer from some handling problems in slower corners, but a lastminute change in the setup during the warm-up this morning seemed to cure most of it. Unfortunately, everything was made worse because of my gearbox problems. At one moment, 1 was thrown back from first to seventh position, after getting onto the grass. But I a m happy to ha ve finished where I have." And so was Slight: " Actually, my biggest p ro ble m w as Mertens. H is Ducati accelerates well, and brakes well. But in the m iddle o f th e corners, it almost stands still. It's pretty d ifficult to get around that. But I got h im by surprise on the last lap ." Merten s wa s fourth, Lucch iari fifth , Destefanis sixth and Crafar seven th, once again the second-best Honda on the track. Polen only finished 12th. "A lot of people got in the way during the first laps," the Texan expla ined. "And I preferred to wa it a little bit until everybody had settled down. The full fuel tank made the bike steer rather heavily. The more the race went on , the better the bike steered. In the last lap s, I went more than half a second faster than in the beginning of the race - desp ite the tire wear." . RACE TWO An "old" Ducati 888 h3d given a fine performa nce in th e firs t race and th e same would hold true in race number two. Only this time it was Lucch iari who took over that role from Mertens. The Belgian crash ed on the fourth lap at roughl y 160 mph, with his bike passing Slight (on its side) in one of the slower comers of the track. The incident was blamed on an oiled d own race tra ck, caused by the blown motor of French Ducati rider Gerald Mut eau . "I was not pushin g too hard," the Belgian sa id upon his return to his motorhome, where he peeled off his severe ly d amaged set of leathers. "Today 1 finall y had a good engine and for the firs t tim e since Donington the Bremb o carbon fiber brakes performed well (partially due to the hot temperatures here). In the fi rst hea t, I had proven th a t 1 should not be ruled out for a place among the best; and in the second heat, 1was trying to get onto the rostrum. But then the oil on the track spoiled it all. Actually, the marshalls were waving the yellow flag but at the end of the oil trail. Before I knew w ha t happened, I was sliding on the tarma c. I was very lucky not to have been hit by Bon tempi, whose front wheel followed my head at only a few inches distance for several hundred meters .:" Fell ow cou ntryman Paq uay also wen t do wn for the same reason on the same spot. Meanwhile, Lucchiari led the field for an astonishing 16 laps (out of 25). For so long he withstood the attacks of Pirovano and Russell, but on that lap, Falappa finally got past. He obviously broke the young Italian with the move, for on ly a few comers later Lucchiari also let Russell past. At that point, Lucchiari settled for a third-place finish . The positions d idn't change much after that and Falappa notched up his first victory of the year, in front of the World Champion and Lucchiari . "We got the gearbox problems sorted out and that made all the difference," the Italian said. "I knew that I only had to be careful tha t Scott (Russell) did not overta ke me on the long straight. If that wo rked out all rig h t, I knew I would stay in front. " For Russe ll, second pl ace was jus t fine: "The tires were slid ing a little bit more than in the first race, bu t I kept on thinking that I didn't really need to win this race. I didn't cha nge the setup of the bike; just put new tires on, poured gasoline in it and went out again." Lucchiari made a fine (and un expected) return to the rostrum w ith his "new old " Ducati, finishing third. Fourth went to Slight, who noticed that traction was getting pretty scarce in the se co n d heat, al th o u g h nothing major had been changed in th e chassis setup. Fogarty finished fifth, having once again suffered from gearbox problems. Whitham crashed seven laps before the end, after having collided with Crafar. The New Zealander, though, ended up losing seventh place because of the 15

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