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Round 10: B
ritish Grand Prix
fron t on the 15th lap, m ovin g firs t in
fro nt of Wa ld m a n n, then a ttacki ng
Okada on the 18th lap . He was qu ickly
by and opened up a gap within a lap or
two, confident in his tires .
"Biaggi and I both cho se to use the
harder Dunlop race compound whereas
Wa ldmann and Romboni were on the
softer tire. I wanted to make my move
halfway th rou gh the race and tha t is
exac tl y w ha t I d id, " Cap ir ossi sai d .
"The n, when I saw tha t after overtakin g
Okad a I immediately managed to get a
two-three second cushion beh ind me, I
d ecided not to sit back and relax."
The 18th lap would be the las t full
lap that Biaggi wo uld complete. Fourth
at the time, the Italian was moving up
on the lead ers when he crashed in the
Melbourne Ha irpin, th e vic tim o f an
engine pr oblem.
"Two laps earlier I felt th e engine
tighten a little, then it locked and I wen t
do wn," Biaggi said . The p roblem was
traced to the cylinder liner plating comLucky Strike Suzuki tea m members ,
Including his father J im, give Schwantz
the word via his pit board with only one
lap to run.
cial because it leads down the
front straigh t.
"We tried a lot of different
things today, but the y never
t is an annual mid-summer ritual, the slagging of Donington
made the b ike b etter,"
Park, the 2.5-mile circuit in the British East Midlands that
Cadalora said .
polarizes the best and confounds the rest . No one knows for
With Honda, Suzuki, and
sure wh y the surface is so finicky, though one of the more popYamaha represented on the
ular explanations, planes landing at nearby East Midlands Airfront row it was only fitting
.port, wasn't tro tted out this year. Instead, it was a German
that a Cagiva would fill it out,
Touring Car race held here the previous week, or the.sidecars,
and that would be the
or the numerous supports classes, or the uncharacteristic lack
m ac h ine belongin g to John
of rain, or the equally surprising heat wave. Whatever the reaKoci ns ki. Like Doohan,
son, the 1991 lap record set by Kevin Schwantz wasn' t in danKocinski was troubled by the
ger, though one of the track 's most ou tspoken opponents, HRC
su rface and concerned about
Honda's Mick Doohan (right), took a good run at it.
the consequences of overzeal"We're using really soft compound tires and they're hardly
ousness.
worn," Doohan said after .taking his fifth pole of the season on
"It seems harder to get any
tires that are almost rain compound. "I did a full race d istance tire that slides progressively," Kocinski said. "You push it to the
on the front tire and there's more left in it. The rear is almost the limit and it lets go. That's why you see so many highsides . So
same. If the weather is good tomorrow we'll have no problems far I've stayed up and I'm happy. The bike is not particularly
with the tires, jus t the track surface. It's such a strange surface it suited to this track. We're still tryin g to get a different kind of
doesn't make it enjoyable here ."
power. The Honda has set a standard that has even the other
It may make it equal, though, with the top six riders all on Japanese fact ories gasping fo r air to ge t the sa me kind of
the same second.
power."
With his long-awai ted first World Championship nearly in
There was some truth in wha t Kocinski said . The top speed
hand, Doohan said he would approach the race with caution.
numbers, on a track that doesn't favor it, showed Hondas in the
"Obviously, we don't ha ve to win, but I'll be out to win if top three spots: Doohan in front of Spaniard Alex Puig and
everything feels all right. If-not I'll just be out to keep Kevin Japanese rider Shinichi Itoh. Fourth and fifth fastes t were the
(Schwantz) and the other guys in sight," Doohan added,
Cagivas of Kocinski and Doug Chandler in front of the Suzukis
Schwantz nearly tookhimself out of the race on Saturday ; of Schwantz and his teammate Alex Barros. Down in 10th was
afternoon, highsiding spectacularly on a cold tire at the Old Cadalora's Yamaha.
Hairpin in the closing minutes of Satu rday's qualifying session.
Kocinski took the fourth place spot from his teammate ChanWhen he fiis t fell he thought his season was over, but a after a dler in the final minute of qualifying, but marginally. Chandler
b rie f physical inventory he realized he hadn't done further was going for a fast lap late in the session when he came up on
damage to his broken left wris t.
the Schwan tz crash and that slowed him d own.
"Maybe I had a ti gh ter line than usual because I passed
"There's a bit more in it," Chandler said. "1 d id a 34.2 and it
another rider on the way into the Old Hairpin. When 1 got back felt the same as an .8 or a .9. It's real slick. I reckon this place is
on the gas it just went WHING, went side ways, and threw me as slick as an y place we go . It's real easy to get the thing to sp in
off. It was really sudden," Schwantz said after qualifying .2-of- up . I always seem to struggle here. I think finding the right rear
a-second behind Doohan. The rider tha t he passed, Switzer- is real important because the surface doesn't give you a lot of
land 's Bernard Haenggeli, also fell, an d Schwantz was lucky to confidence. It looks okay and it's clean, but 1 came into the pits
escape Haenggeli's sliding bike. " He came by pretty close," one time because I thought 1 had oil on the tire it came around
Schwantz added.
so fast."
like Doohan, Schwantz was taking the bigger view and he
Like the front row, the second was spread am ong the four
knew that he had to answer Doohan's recen t successes to ha ve makes, Ducados Honda Pons' Alberto Puig sixth fastest in front
even the slimmest hope of retaining his title.
of Lucky Strike Suzuki's Alex Barros and the private Yamaha of
"I'm going to do everything 1 can to win : ' he said. "Some- Slick 50's Niall Mackenzie.
how I've got to stop Mick winning here. I can 't afford to give
Puig, like Chandler and many of the others, thought rear tire
even a few points away."
selection would be crucial while Barros had other concerns. The
Marlboro Roberts Yamaha 's Luca Cadalora, the only healthy Brazilian came off on Friday, breaking a bone in his left foot '
member of the Roberts crew, was third fastest, but struggling when he ran over it while trying to control a slide. The foot was
with the slower corners. The Donington Park circuit flows nice- put in a cast and an oversize boot was fitted . He was also
ly from one bend to the next, except for the slower section slowed by broken ribs suffered in last week's French GP.
added behind the pits to lengthen it. That part contains the
"It's difficult to change gear right because I can 't feel exactly
three slowest bits of the track and confounds those setting up
where the pedal is," Barros said . "Because of my condition, 1
for the faster sections. Cadalora, who won here last year, was didn't really expect to be able to go so fast, and now I feel for
among them. If he got it right for the rest of the track he suf- the race I might go quicker and ride with the group qualified
fered in the slow parts, one of which, Goddards Corner, is cru- behind the leaders."
I
ing off. "I felt comfortable until then, the
pace w a sn 't at a ll hot in the early
stages ," he ad ded .
Cap irossi was alone in front and now
Okad a was ahead of Romboni and hold ing him off. Bu t within a few laps the
pack, led by World Champio n Harada,
would start to catch up. Okad a was the
only front-runner using Michelin tires
(the rest use Dunlop ) and he noticed
that he was at something of a disadvantage.
"It was a very hard race and I didn't
think I could beat Romb on i because his
tires seemed better at one stage," Okad a
said .
The race came d own to the final lap,
th e pair sw a p p ing positions several
times until Okada p reva iled at the finish
line by .123-of-a-se con d . Harada had
charged to within about half a second of
Romboni at the end and was confident
he could have been on the po dium if the
race was a lap longer.
"1 saw the riders in front were fighting hard and at that stage I didn' t want
to get in vo lved, " Harada sai d . " I sa t
back and w eig hed- u p the situation
before making my move."
It wasn' t until three laps from th e
end of the race that Harada was able to
move past Waldmann and into fourth.
"Harada got out of the slow corne rs better. I still have probl ems getting enough
drive on the exit of those tight hairpins
ou t there," Waldm ann said.
Un fortunately for Waldmann, that
wou ldn't be the end of his misery. Two
laps from the end he got stuck in traffic
and both Bayle and Ruggia slipped by.
"The bike was g rea t and th e only
problem I had after getting Waldmann '
was traffic," Bayle said. "It slowed me a
little near the end, bu t wasn 't too much
of a wor ry."
"It seemed Jean -Michel could get ou t
of the slower corners be tte r than me,"
Ruggia sai d afte r finishing just beh ind
his teammate . "I could d o a fast lap here
and ther e with my se t-up, but I d on't
think it was ideal for a race-long performance." .
Honda Rheos Iha Racing's Noboatsu
Aoki w as nex t to cross the lin e, the
Japanese rider having dropped ba ck
near the midway point, never to mount
a charge.
Beh ind him cam e a grea t five-rid er
fight for nin th. Rep sol-MX Onda-Pepsi's
Lu is d ' Antin took the s pot t wo la ps
fro m the end, ge tti ng jus t in front of
Mohag April ia's Eskil Suter. Wilco Zeelenberg was 11th on th e DC Racin g
Team Honda, with GIVI Racing 's Carles
Checa 12th, and Marlboro Team
Rainey' s Tosh ihiko Ho nma 13th in his
final race for the team .
I'X
Donlngton Park
Donington Park, England
Results : Ju ly 24
uSee Q UALlFYlNG : 1. Kazu to Saka ta (1:41.027); 2.
Herri To rr ont egui (1:41.335); 3. Ta keshi Tsuji mura
(1:41. 388) ; 4. No bo ru Ueda (1:41.414); 5. Peter Delli
(1:41.427); 6. O liver Pet ru ccian i (1:41.537); 7. Faus to
Cresin i (1:41.880); 8. Stefa no Pcrgunl (1:41.915); 9. Jorge
Marti ne z (1:41.982); 10. H id ey uki Na kajyo (1:42.007); 11.
Neil Hodgso n (1:42055); 12 G iovan i Sca lvini (1:42.168);
13. C h a rlie Giro (1:42. 265); 14. Masa ki Tokud om e
(1:42.390 ); 15. Stefan Pre in (1:42.396); 16. Dirk Raudies
(1:42.4 26) ; 17. G ab riele De b bia (1:42.51 4 ); 18. Em ili
Alzamora (1:42.530~ 19. Haru ehika Aoki (1:42.63 1); 20.
Akira Sa ito (1:42.647); 21. Lucio Cecdanellc (1:42.729);
22 . Lu ig i Akona (1;42.733); 23 . Man fr ed Ge issler
(1:42.740); 24. Loek Bodelier (1:43.180); 25. J. Marurana
(1:43.381); 26. To moko Igata (1:43562); 27. Garry McC oy
(1:43.689); 28. Freder ic Pe ti t (l :43.928); 29. Manfred
Bau ma nn (1:44.240); 30. Y. Ta kahashi (1:44 .247); 31. F.
Bal ding er (44.301); 32 . Han s S paa n (1:44.536) ; 33 . K.
Ma wd sle y (1:44.776); 34. B. Stcy (1:44.922); 35. V. Lopez
(1:45.011); 36. D. Barton (1:45.271).
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