Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·,:*:R A A E·. ··':. 0:'" O O·R C . Round 7: Japan .1'':' ' ::World ChampiOnship S uperbike Road Race series By Johan Vandekerckhove SUGO, JAPAN, AUG. 28 us t when you thought the championship had fallen in to a groove, World Champion Scott Russell got things going in Japan and ev erythi n g changed. There was no longer a-Ca rl Fogarty st eamrbller chasing a double victory; Aaron Slight didn't ad d to his recen t run of rostrum finishes; and Rus sell didn't struggle with handling problems. After havin g d es troyed his favo rite bike in his Albacete crash, it seem ed that the Muzz y Kawasaki team was ha ving problems in building Russell a ZXR tha t was as dominant as the first one. The Spanish round had been a d isaster, the Austrian had been slightly better and only at Sentul in Indonesia d id some of the Russell magic start to return. "We've gone back to the settings we used in th e beginning of th e season," w as the s u rprising co m m ent o f t he lank y Georgian after his best race weekend since Hocke nheim in Germany. "It's good to win at Sugo, because the opposition is always extremely tough here." That opposition came - as alwa ys from so m e v ery ha rd-boiled loca l heroes . His normal rivals, however, seemed to struggle on Japanese so il. Fogarty managed alright, notching up a fourth and a second pos ition in the two legs, but championship leader Slight, on the other hand , lost a considerable J 18 amoun t of points - finishing no better than sixth and seventh. The Kiwi is still leading the championshi p, albeit with a lead that has shrunk to only six points. Russell now holds do wn second by himself - a place he had to share with archrival Fogarty after the Sentul race - as Foga rty is now 10 po in ts back on th e American. And the others su ffered even wo rse. Castrol Honda' s Dou g Polen got away with six points in the first race, and then finis hed ou tsid e the top 15 a couple of hours later; Andreas Meklau struggled to ni nth in the first heat and was run over on the sta rting grid in the second heat; an d Simon Crafar, Jamie Whitham . a nd Te r ry Rymer only padded their po in ts tota ls by less than eig ht points over the tw o races. Simply put, it see ms that Sugo has given us our top th ree in the championship as Foga rty now leads four th place man Polen by over 50 points. RAC E ONE Russell took th e lead as soon as the light tu rned green and his position was never to be threatened during the 25-lap race, run under gruellin g tropical temperatures. As far as the race for the lead goes, tha t was it Russell was gone. Behind h is green back, however, things were more hectic. First of all, the 20,000 spectators were treated to their traditional crash festiva l. Keiichi Katagawa was the first to go, w it h th e Kawasaki rider crashing on the second lap before even breaking a sweat. Valerio Des tefanis was the next to go, fol. lowed by Stepha ne Mertens, Shi nya Takeishi and Simon Crafar. "Every thing ha d been going quite well", said Crafar, who had the factory -engine-kitted Rumi Honda inside the top 10. " Bu t in turn fou r, I hit a little bump w ith the fron t sus pension fully compressed . The front tuckedunder and I crashed. The fairin g and my toes were a litt le skinne d, bu t the race was over for me ... " On lap seven, Russell had a lead of a few seconds over Fogarty and Pirovano , who had jus t been joined by Yamaha's Yasutomo Nagai. Norihiko Fujiwara was ho ld in g fif th, fo llowed b y Wataru Yos hikawa, Terr y Rymer and Aaron Sligh t. Takuma Aoki w as th e sec ond Ho nda ride r, in ninth, and he was despe ra tely ho lding off attacks from Australian first -timer An thony Gobert and I Andreas Meklau. After Fujiwara left the I leaderboard due to a cras h, the man in the biggest hurry was Wataru I Yoshikawa, who joined the g roup bat- ·1 tling [or second place with only a few I laps to go. Unfortuna tely, for the lead er in the Japanese Superbike champ ionship, th is las t-min u te cha rge wasn't worth the effort as he had to watch as Pirova no took second, just a whisker in front of Nagai and Fogarty, Fogarty hav ing not only missed a rostrum finish, but also lost some extra points to Russell. "We had changed everything back on Saturday evening," Russell said after his fifth victory of the season. "So tha t we Scott Russell (1) leads Yasutomo Nagai (38) and Carl Fogarty duri ng Worl d Superblke acti on at Sugo in Japan; Russell won both legs. we re back to where we were at the start of the season. It all turned out well; the start was good, and from th en o n, I could do my own thin g." Piro vano was second, and happy to give Duca ti another good re sult. "Of co u rse I am hap py to scor e my best result after Ho cke nheirn," the d iminutive Ita lia n said. " Bu t the w hole race long, I wo ndered where Carl (Fogarty) was. I wo u ld ha ve been glad to offer him m y po sition and give him th ose p reciou s poin ts." Fogarty had been st ruggling with a th rot tl e tha t kept ja m mi n g, and he a lmost pulled in early in the race. He stayed in to uc h, and secu red fourth. Yoshikawa was fift h and Slight look ho me sixth, suffe ring from serio us grip problems. "The bike was sliding everywhere ," Slight said. "So I am quite happy to finish sixth. For the next heat, we will need a harder rear tire." Gobert finished eighth in his maiden World Superbike ra ce, but cla imed to have hop ed for an even better result. Polen was 10th, attributing this result to a serious clu tch problem. "The thing was not fried yet," the Texan explained, "bu t it held me up considerably while braking for the turns."

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