Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round6: German G Prix rand Mick Daohan (4) leads World Champion Kevin Schwantz (1), Alberto Puig (17) and Al ex Barros (6) early in the German 500cc GP. Doohan ended up pulling away to an easy victory. • Doohan By Henny Ray Abrams HOCKENHEIM, GERMANY, JUN. 12 RC's Mick Doohan didn't ask for any help in winning h is third race in a row , but he got it anyway. For the second race in succession, Doohan had a circuit that showed the superior speed of the Honda NSRSOO at its best, and he used it to romp to an easy win in the German forest before a crowd of 30,000. The crowd barely had time to celebrate though, when racing was ended prematurely by a horrific crash in the sidecar race, the final event of the day. "The Honda has obviously got some speed here and that helped me; and the Michelins performed perfectly," Doohan said after winning the German Grand, Prix at the high-speed Hockenheimring. "The rear felt like Fred Flintstone's tire at first, but it felt good later on. After the tire troubles we've had here the last two years, 1 kept imagining 1 was feeling vibration late in the race. 1 just tried to baby the tire and not spin it too much." Doohan, who won the previous Grand Prix at the ultra-fast Salzburgring, attributed his success to a special tire test held here just after the Spanish Grand Prix at Jerez. The test was scheduled because of tire problems encountered by the 500cc rid ers at last yea r' s race. Most of the top teams took part, but the Lucky Strike Suzuki squad chose to stay on at Jerez to test. Doohan, who took the lead on the second of 18 laps , pulled away to win by 13.982 seconds at the end of the 75.969mile rac e. The 28-year-old Au stralian World Championship leader completed the race in 35 minutes, 58.994 seconds at an average speed of 126.675 mph, a new race record. Earl y in the race World Champion H Ke vin Sch w an tz knew there was no hope of hangin g w ith Doohan, so he resign ed himself to the battle for second which he waged with the sud denly fleet Alberto Puig aboard th e Du cad os Honda Pons NSRSOO. The pair swapped second back and forth, with Schwantz finally taking it back on the next-to-thelast lap when he outbraked Puig into the seco nd ch icane and s ped a way . The Texan lowered his lap times for the final two lap s into the two-minute ran ge and was nearly tw o seconds clear of Puig at the finish . "1 knew this would be a hard race, but I hoped in the earl y laps 1 might be able to hang on to Mick's slip stream," Schwa ntz said. "1 could see, at that stage, he was having trouble with his rear tire. Then, when it warmed up some more, there was nothing 1 cou ld do to stop him getting aw ay." What Sch wantz soon realized was that he was having trouble when he tried to brake while peeling off into a corner. It was one of se veral nagging problems that he admitted would have to be addressed if -he wa s to have any hope of retaining his title. As it is, he trails Doohan, 136-108, after six rounds. Third in the champion ship is John Kocinsk i, th e Cagiva rid er who chose not to race in Gennany after breaking the middle finger on his left hand in a brutal pract ice cras h. Kocinski tried rid ing in th e m orning warm-up, but only did one lap before pulling in and calling it a da y . He remains in th ird wi th 79 points, eigh t better tha n Spaniard Alex Criville, who rod e by h im self mo s t of the d ay to a fourth-place finis h after ge tti ng a bad s ta r t, th en rea liz ing he' d chosen the wrong rear tire. The batt le for fifth was like the battle for secon d: Suzuki vs. Hond a, wi th the racing was spectacular. Five riders fought for the lead and the order across the line was neve r the same for two consecu tive laps, ex cept the eigh th and ninth. Cap irossi, who'd been wea kened by the flu during pra ctice, took the lead on th e last lap b y outbrakirig HB Honda's Doriano Romboni into the stadium for the final tim e. Chest er field Ap rilia's Ma x Bia gg i was th ird, but stuffed his way under Romb on i in the pen ultimate corner to take second in the race, first in the point standings, and a grea t deal of heat from Romboni . "1 d o n ' t wan t to give comments abou t my fight with Biaggi. Everybody who saw thi s on television may make u p his own mind about it, " Romb oni said. When asked on the podium about the incident, Biaggi said : "This is racing - not classical music." Fourth wen t to Honda Rheos Jha Racing's Noboatsu Aoki with Kanemoto Honda's Tadayuki Okada, fifth. After 16 lap s (67.53 miles), first to fifth were covere d by 1.625 seconds w ith Capirossi winning by .2M-of-a-second. The Italian averaged 120.139 mp h and com plet ed the race in 33 minu tes, 53.516seconds. With six races run and eight to go, Bia ggi moves into the cha mpionship lead with 103 po in ts, one bett er than Cap irossi and seven better than Okada. aro Lucky Stri ke 's Alex Barro s ra cin g against H RC H onda 's Sh inichi It oh. Itch's bike was cle a rly th e better, th e Japan ese ace at one p oint humiliating the Brazilian by driving around the outside of him around the Ostkurve, at the top of the 4.22-mile Hockenheim circuit. But Barros was better on the brakes and mo ved into fifth for good with less than three lap s to go, weaving to the finish line to keep Itoh out of his draft and beating him across the stripe by .193-0fa-second. Seven th from the fourth lap on, and all by himself, was Cagiva's Doug Chandler, who got away well at the start, but soon discovered he couldn't keep up with the faster Japa nese fours out of the chicanes. "On the first lap I was sixth, and the thing was running and drafting really well. We were bunched up and once we settled in, they jumped out of the chicane . They'd really leave me," Chandler said. The seventh-place finish matched Chandler's best of the year. Eighth, and first of the non-factory bikes, was Slick 50 Racing 's Nia ll Mackenzie; the Scot using Bartol cylinders on his ROC Yamaha to card his th ird top-10 fini sh in a row . Bernard Garcia was ninth on the ROC Yamaha , on e better than Padgett's Motorcycles' Jeremy Reynolds. It continues to be a grim year for the Marlboro Roberts Yamaha team. Italian Luca Cadalora crashed in the second timed qualifying, lacerating his right hand and putting him out of the race . Au stralian Dar yl Beattie wa s in ninth . pla ce when he ran out of gas on the last lap - not the sort of thing a professional Gra nd Prix team should suffer. Marlbo r o Team Pileri ' s Lo ris Cap irossi won the 250cc Grand Prix for the second race in a row, and once again Romboni trails Okad a by three poirits in fourth. Afte r s ta rt ing the season slo wly, 125cc World Champ ion Dirk Ra ud ies continues to imp rove, scoring his second win of the season, and second win in a row, in very convincing fashion, The diminutive German scored a very popular win for the home crowd, leading every lap after his onl y challenger, Givi Racing's Noboru Ueda, was slowed when th e tip of his shi ft lever fell off. Once Ueda dropped back, on the ninth lap, the HB Team Raudies team owner took off to win by better than 17 seconds. He completed the 15-lap, 63.31mile race in 34 minutes, 44.974 seconds at an average speed of 109.310 mph. Less than one second separated second to fourth, with the spots being decided on the final lap. World Championship leader Kazuto Sakata moved into second, FCC Technical Sports Tomomi Manako (in his Grand Prix debut) took over third, and Peter Oettl dropped to fourth on the Marlboro Aprilia Eckl entry. . Team Sernprucci-Krona's Sakata still holds a commanding lead in the championship, with a 41-point lead on Raudies, 121-80. Oettl is th ird with 79, two more than Ueda ;who ended up today in fifth. What was a sparkling race for second in the sidecar race turned into a horror show with less than three laps to go. On the 150 mph run up to the second chicane, Steve Abbott pulled out of a draft a nd moved to his left, knocking the OKM Racing rig of Klaus Klaffenboek off the track and onto the grass. Klaffenboek 's rig spun halfway around, re-joining the track and sp itting his passenger, Christi an Parzer, into the path of the oncoming chairs . The collision tha t followed destroyed three rigs and sent 40-

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