Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD RACE , ' . . . Round 4: Spanish Grand Prix ..World Championship Road Race Series . (left) Tetsuya Harada won his first 250Cc Grand Prix of the season and took over as the World Champions hip points leader. (Below)The race for second was between luis 0' Antin (9), Max Biaggi (1 ) and Oorlano Romboni (4); Biaggi ended up second with O'Antin and Romboni third and fourth, respectively. Pu ig pl ayed it cool, never su ccumbing to the pressure of lead in g the race and never p ressed by Cad alora. At the en d it was better than a five-seco nd mar gin and the crowd sto rmed the .track in pl aces ·to express themselves. Puig look ed like he wo uldn't make it back to the podium at one po int, but he d id, and stood proud ly erec t during the playin g of his home national anthem. "Before I came here, after my di fficult start to the season, I was try ing to think wha t racing meant to me," Puig said. "I was b e gin n ing to wonder if I rea lly wa nted to win, or just finish races ." Ca dalo ra mot ored home in second place w ith almost a nine-second cushion on third . After his problems of the first thr ee races he had to be happy and said that the team "can count this as a new begin nin g to our season"; a beginning bro ught abou t by a tire swi tch. The b a t tl e fo r thi r d was w hi ttled d own fro m four ri ders to two for the final fe w laps, with Abe m ovin g up from six th to fourth on th e 22nd lap , then third two laps later, diving under Cr iville in the first of a pai r of fast right hander s. Criville took it back wit h two laps to go i n the sa me spot, setting up Abe's last-l ap su rge. The Ho nda outraced the Yamaha to the flag, the di fference bein g 0.233-of-a-second . " It was a good race for us consi dering All th e prob lem s we h ad du ring practice," Cr iville said. "In the race it ran m u ch bet ter, but. it took me a little time to ge t into the swing of things and get used to the improvement. The bike was cer tai n ly better today, but it was nev er easy beating Abe ." Abe said that the "b ike was working well bu t it was a really tou gh fight with Criville. I cou ld ge t him at some parts of th e tra ck, bu t th en he' d get me so me w here else. Even tu ally he made it p ast through the fast rights behind the paddock with two laps to go." Next across was Barros, the Brazilian h aving run second in th e ea rl y s tages t hen dro pping b a ck . H e and Loris Capi rossi go t in to a shoving match for . fi ft h pl a ce, which e ventually s en t Ca p irossi off the track a nd , po ssibl y, looking for reve nge . He never got it, settling for the points that come with sixth. "I could have finished much bett er if I had n' t come together with Bar ros ea rlier," Capirossi said of the 23rd-lap offtrack excursion. "I lost my chance of a good resul t there, but then, on the last lap, I could have tak en Barros again to end up fifth at least." After finishing seventh, an d running most of the race all by himself, Beattie was consol ed by the Worl d Cha mpi ons h ip lead af ter a d ay of chasing the front end . " I go t away well," h e sa id, " b u t I knew at once I w ouldn't be able to hold on to a top position. I had to jus t try and stay safe an d go fo r the best fini sh I cou ld get. . "We've had prob lems w it h -fro nt wheel grip since Frid ay," he conti nue d. "And, if a ny th ing, they we re w ors e today. They see med to b eg in even before we left the line." The last of the front line factory bikes was nex t up, Repsol Hond a's Shin ich i ltoh having to battl e past privateer Juan Borja to take the spot with just four laps to go. Itoh was still battling a left hand injury he'd suffered in Japan that mad e it difficult to ho ld on to the bars or use the clu tch. Borja was ninth in front of Cristian o Miglio rati on the Harris Yamaha. I ~I The story of the 250cc GP begin s and ends on the third lap . Tha t's when Marlboro Rainey Yama ha 's Tetsu ya Ha rada took ove r the lead an d began a domination of the highly competitive class tha t is extremely unusual. By the end of the fourth lap he ha d a 1.82-second lead, 2.43 on the next lap, a n d 3.27 a la p latervHe was rid ing smoo thly, stretching h is advantage, and making. the othe rs wo rk ex tra h ard to try to keep him in sight. In the end, they cou ldn 't. . After turning his fast lap on the 10th o f 26 tours, Har ad a kept it co nsi stent w he n Spaniard Lu is D' Antin wed ged his MX Onda Hond a NSR250 into second and Biag gi dropped all th e w ay back to sixth . That's when his recovery would begin. Fifth o n the ne xt lap, the World Cha m pion was in fourth, then third for two laps and then second wi th two laps to go. But th e 31-year-o ld D' Antin w asn' t having any of it and moved Biaggi back to thi rd on th e penultimat e lap with a display of on-the-edge riding that Biaggi mat ched slide for sli de. Tha t he's the Worl d Ch am pion gave Biaggi the nod in the con trol departme n t, but just barely. The last lap began w ith D'Antin in fron t, chee red w ildly home by his comp a tri o ts, an d Biaggi sta lking, fina lly making his move in Michelin, a slow righ t-hander early in the lap. Then Rom- , boni, who' d been righ t there all along, came by in the lefts after Dry Sack, the end of th e back straigh t, b ut D' Ant in fought back in Ange l Nieto, the following curve. From there it was an honest fight to the flag wit h Biaggi ahead of D'Antin and Rornboni, w ith less than 0.18-of-asecon d covering the bu nch. Within the next half-second Wa ld mann and Okada crossed the line, the German rider losing grip in the end and the Japan ese rider n ever comforta ble during the weekend. "O n the last laps m y tires went down a bit," said Wa ldmann, who fell from and pulled ou t about 1.5 seconds a lap in mid-race, be tter than 14 seconds on the 21st lap, before back ing off the fina l handful of laps to win by close to 10. "It's been a long time since I last beat everyone and I'm especially pleased for W ayn e (Rai n ey ) and th e res t of th e team ," Harada said. "T hey did a great job here. The b ike was perfect. I was ab le to break away witho u t too much difficu lty and I jus t kep t my head down, because I didn' t wa nt to risk losing my concentration by easi ng my pa ce." There wa s no risk of that for the pack behind the former Wor ld Champion. As many as seven riders were strung ou t nose-to-tail at one point, with little more than a seco nd covering them. Biaggi an d Waldmann spent much of th e race in secon d un ti l th e 17th lap second on lap 20 to fifth on 27, "I had a few slides so some peop le cou ld pass me." Okad a said that it w as "im possible to find goo d sus pens ion settings this weeken d and it was impossible to do any better in the race. I knew it was go ing to be impossible to wi n, but r thou ght four th place was a possibility," he said. _ Falling off the tail of the lead bunch late in the race was Elf Honda Tech 3's Jean Phi lippe-Ruggia, the Fren chman fading to sevent h after discovering he'd chosen a rear tire th at wa s too soft. Nob u a ts u Ao ki was eigh th, a ll by h imse lf and the same could be said for th e n inth -p lac e fini sh er, Chester field Aprilia ' s Je an -M ich el Bayle. Aprilia 's Roberto Locatelli rounded out the top ten. 0 250cc GRA ND PRIX

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