Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

;·ROAD ·RACE Race series .· ., .W hampmilshipRoad orklC Round 9: French Grand Prix La YLuck rides with Doohan By Michael SCott Photos by Gold & Goose LE MANS, FRANCE, JULY 17 ha tever cruel luck took the title away from Michael Doohan in 1992 had the weekendoff at Le .Mans. The Australian HRC Honda rider escaped unhurt from a practice crash, then had three very close scrapes on his way to the checkered flag in the French Grand Prix - but he got away with everything to claim his sixth consecutive victory. Instead it was his now very-distant title rival Kevin Schwantz whose luck stayed bad. Riding bravely for a third race W with his injured left wrist in a plaster cast, the Lucky Strike Suzuki man made an amateurishly over-enthusiastic bid to seize third place in the final comers, and collided with Alex Criville's Honda. Schwantz went tumbling into the gravel, scoring zero points as a further set-back to his tattered title defense, but gaining a rousing cheer from the grandstands as he . walked back to his pil Second, at the first race on the short, tight Bugatti Circuit since 1991, went to John Kocinski as the Cagiva rider regains strength and form after his Hockenheim crash; with Criville surviving his close . encounter with Schwantz to take third. Early race leader Alberto Puig and the Ducados Honda was fourth, with HRC's Shinichi Itoh and Lucky Strike Suzuki's Alex Barros next home. Kocinski's teammate Doug Chandler had been scrapping with Kocinski early in the race - in his second strong outing after a long fallow period - but the Salinas, Califomia, rider's motor blew in a big way after seven laps, and he parked the bike. Daryl Beattie missed the race after sustaining severe foot injuries in the first practice. He hadn't completed even one lap when he fell on new tires and his foot was caught in the drive chain. The injuries required amputation of part of all five toes on his left fool . Doohan's day of near disaster began when he muffed the start, Trying way too hard to recover places at the first chicane, he almost repeated his "human bowling ball" exercise of Donington last year, taking poor Criville with him as he had to release the brakes and run right across the dirt Only two laps later, the fast-starting Frenchman Bernard Garcia crashed his Roc-Yamaha right under Doohan's front wheel, luckily sliding out of his way in time. Then came number three - only 300 meters from home. Now confident of winning after preserving his tires for the last 10 laps or more, he gave the bike an exuberant handful of throttle on the last lefthander - and slid wildly, almost into the pit road. He recovered because his luck seems to have made him invulnerable. . A fair crowd of 40,000 came to the tight and twisty Bugatti Circuit at Le Mans for a weekend festival of racing at the reborn French GP. After scorching heat throughout practice, there was a threat of rain on race day, but it stayed dry, overcast and muggy, soaking thunderstorms waiting instead until after darkness fell. The day was tense, but not incident packed. Hardly anything seemed to happen in a relatively processional 250cc race until the last lap, when Loris Capirossi finally mounted his attack on HB Honda's Doriano Romboni, who had led from the first lap. The Marlboro Honda man prevailed, but Romboni narrowly held on to second, surviving a wild out-of-the-seat slide (in the same comer where Doohan nearly crashed and Schwantz did crash) that slowed Chesterfield Aprilia's Max Biaggi and foiled his planned last-eomer attack. The three Italians had broken away from another scrap which was eventually won by HB Honda's RalfWaldmann from Chesterfield Aprilia's Jean-Michel Bayle and Rheos-Hha Honda's Nobuatsu Aoki. Capirossi smashed the lap record by more than a second - a change from the 500cc class, where both lap times and race averages were slower. Luckless French star Jean-Phillipe Ruggia had been in the thick of it, but a collision with Aoki on the last lap sent the third Chesterfield Aprilia rider off the track. Ruggia rejoined a disgruntled seven th , livid with the Japanese rider's kamikaze tactics . "There's no way that sort of riding is acceptable," he said. "If so, we will have kicking fights out on the track." DC Honda's Wilco Zeelenberg had a similar adventure. Battling almost racelong with Tadayuki Okada's Kanemoto Honda, he also ran off the edge of the tight closing bends, recovering to cla im 10th behind the Japanese rider. Both had been overtaken in the closing stages by World Champion Tetsuya Harada's Yamaha, in a storming ride after nearly pulling out with a engine trouble on the second lap. If his engine had beenrunning smoothly he would doubtless have done even better. The 500cc GP gets started with Alberto Pulg (17) leading Doug Chandler (10) and John Kocinski (11). Frenchman Bernard Garcia, meanWhile, gets tossed off the hlgh slde , right In front of championship leader and eventual race winner, Michael Doohan (4).

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