Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD RACE : ..World Championship Road Race Series ., Round 1: Eastern Creek Raceway (Left) Afte r stalli ng his Lucky Str ike Suzuki at the start, Texan Kevi n Schwa ntz (34) came out on top of Kanemoto Honda's Alex Bar ros (9) In their battle for fifth place. Norlfum i Abe (17) faded to nintti. lead with four laps to go . Both World Champion Max Biaggi, of the Chesterfield Aprilia squad, and former World Champion Tetsuya Harada (Marlboro Team Rainey Yamaha), made a run at the 28-year-old German, but he held fast to record his second career 250cc victory. Harada crossed the line 0.113 secondback in second place with Biaggi 0.033 behind Harada in third. "I think that was the best race of my life," Waldmann said. "I got a brilliant start, but after a while my tires started to go and 1 could see my pit signals telling me the others were catching. 1 let them by and that allowed me to see they were sliding around too. Then, for the last few laps 1 managed to up my pace again." The pace was -enough to stay in front of the others, though Ha rada was making a late push. He 'd overheated his tires while leading and dropped back to third, a move th a t left him amidst a group of backmarkers. It wasn' t until the last lap that he was able to move p ast Biaggi and take second, and then, not by much. Biaggi was third, he, too, having tire troub les, though his were dictated more by the engine combination the team had built for the race. "They (Harada and Waldmann) had more smooth acceleration," Biaggi noticed. "That's why our tire became worse than the others. It has very peaky power. The top speed is not so bad." Wel1 back in fourth was Fortuna Honda Pons' Carles Checa, riding a works bike for the first time in the 250cc class. Checa hooked up with Blumex Rheos Racing's Nobuatsu Aoki on the sixth lap and the two were inseparable, going back and forth righ t up to the final laps. It was on the penultimate lap that Checa moved in front for good. Aoki was fifth in front of a disappointed Doriano Romboni. Romboni had been a solitary fourth for the entire race, never able to make a run at the lead trio, but well in front of the pack behind. Then, with three laps to go, he crashed in the hairpin behind the pits when he overbraked. He was quickly up and rejoined the race just behind the battle for fourth and ended up sixth. Marlboro Team Rainey Yamaha 's Kenny Roberts Jr. finished seventh after reco ve ri n g from a disastrous start: Roberts Jr. stalled on the start line and had to push start to get goirig. He fin ished the first lap in 17th place and slow- ed to maintain my pace around there and see what pace he (Beattie) was running at and go a little quicker than that. 1 was just racing my pit board and trying not to make any mistakes. Basically 1 was 'have a look-see at what the opposition was doing and get through the race with a reasonable margin:" The Yamahas of Abe and Cadalora had started well , but their good fortune wouldn't last. Beattie was on the move and passed both on the third lap to move into second where he settled. "I go t a good start, bu t 1 was behind the two Yamahas and I got a bit excited trying to get past them. Luckily, I was able to get by them easily on the straight, then 1 started looking at Mick up ahead," Beattie said. "It was pretty obvious I wasn't going to catch him, so after that, I just watched my pit board and when 1 saw Alex Criville making a run on me at one point, I was ab le to speed up a bit to keep the . gap:' Abe would fade quickly, his early promise turning to waste as he fell far- (Righ t) Chesterfield Ap'rllia 's 250cc Worl d Champ ion Max Blaggl (1) leads Marlboro Roberts Yamaha' s Tetsu ya Harada (7) and HB Honda' s Ralf Waldmann late In the 250cc race at Eastern Creek. The order was reversed at the fini sh with Waldmann taking his second caree r 250cc GP win. ly picked his way to the front, mo ving into seventh with seven laps to go. As bad as his start was, it was much worse for many others. Seven riders were knocked out of the race in a multi-bike pileup on the firs t lap. Spaniard Luis D' A ntin high-sided and took six other riders, including world championship ru nner-u p Tadayuki Okada, with him. Chesterfield Aprilia's Jean-Michel Bayle also went down, but remounted, only to fall again later, and more definitively, on the same lap . For Okada it was the second crash of the weekend - he'd crashed in qualifying - and it had be en over a year since he'd crashed at all. Waldmann completed the 28-lap, 68.32-mile race in 43 minutes, 52.872 seconds at an average speed of 93.496 mph" The time and average speed were wel1 off Biaggi's record of a year ago . The win moves Waldmann to the top of the championship charts with 25 points, five ahead of Harada, with Biaggi third at 16. The 125cc race, th e first run o n the day, was something of a surprise. Normally the most competitive, this one was a showcase for Blumex Rheos Racing's Haruchika Aoki, who scored his first GP win ever. Taking the lead on the fifth of 26 laps, Aoki quickly pulled away to build up a margin that would be 15.651 seconds at the end. Second was also decided early, World Champion Kazuto Sakata (Team Krona-Aprilia) moving into the spot on the 10th lap and moving away from what was the best race of the class. That would be for third and it went: tooth and nail to the very end and was decided at the line in favor of F.C.C. Technical Sports' Tomomi Manako who crossed the stripe 0.068 seconds in front of Scot-San Patrignano's Emilio Alzamora. Fifth went to Givi Racing's Nobbie Veda. Aoki completed the 26-lap, 63.44-mile race in 42 minutes, 52.040 seconds, at an average speed of 88.714 mph. He takes the lead in the championship by five points, 25 to 20, over Sakata . 500cc GP Al1 of the drama went out of the 500cc race soon after the start. That's when Doohan took the lead, letting the air out of the tires of the rest of the 30rider field . On his first flying lap he was down in the 1:31 range and the third lap was his second-fastest out of 30. The fastest, a 1:31.501, about 0.8 slower than his lap record from 1992, came on the 14th lap, and in between and after he peppered his chart withSl s. Only one other rider was even in the 31s, and then, for just one lap . "For the first few laps I noticed I was pulling away at about eight-tenths of a second a lap," Doohan said, though he didn't know who was in second. "I want- ther and farther back. He was in fifth on the sixt h lap, then back to seventh, an d fina l1y t o n in th. The prob lem, he explained, was tires . "It was a very difficult race for me . I think I had the same problems as Luca, and later in the race it got really bad. The bike was good o therwise. We stayed with the setup we ran yesterday, but we couldn't run the same tires for the race," said Abe . Cadalora made an effort to stay up fron t, but succumbed to the pressure from Criville on the eighth lap . He stayed close for much of the race, dropping back toward the end when his tires were completely off. " Th e front was a real problem," Cadalora said. "It was hard not to crash." Criville felt Cadalora's pressure, but d id n' t fold. No t long after the halfway mark he was able to inch away, though he knew tha t third was the best he would have on this day. The battle for fifth was one of the more closely fought of the race. Lucky Strike Suzuki's Schwantz moved into the spot on the 13th lap after doing away with Alex Barros. But Barros answered back on th e 21st lap, only to see Schwantz come by two laps later. The Texan spent the next five laps looking over his shoulder, Barros constantly in his shadow. But in the last few laps he was able to pull out enough of a cushion to prevent a draft-p ass at th e finish . It

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