Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Fifth w as a th ree-wa y battl e th at wen t three wi de right d own to the checkered flag. It was d ecided in Repsol Hon d a 's Alex Crivill e' s favo r, the Spaniard dea ling with a failing gearbox b ut a b le h old ol f Marlboro Robert s Yama ha 's orifu mi Abe by 0.060 seco nd. An oth er ha lf-second ba ck was Kan emot o H ond a' s Alex Barros, th e Brazilian saying after the race tha t he is finall y coming to terms with the Honda. Th e Italians we r e r e p r esen ted in eighth through 10th with Aprilia's Loris Reggiani held u p by a front tire that was too soft, bu t well in front of Marlboro Team Pileri's Loris Capirossi who was suffering with an injured right hand, the resu lt of two practi ce crashes . Tenth pl ace went to th e Cagiva in a one-off ride, World Superbike r egular Pi erFrancesco Chili aboard. Then, in his Grand Prix debut, came Lucky Strike Suzuki's Scott Russell. The Georgian treated the race like a test session, learning every lap, but not going over the limit. "I had a lot left," Russell said afte rward . "I d id 57s consisten tly and that was a good pace for me." Twelfth place went to Marlboro Roberts Yam aha' s Luca Cad alora, who w as believed to be embroiled in a bitter disp u te with team o w ner Kenny Rob erts. According to Cad alora, Roberts ha d told him th a t if he talked to the Italian press he w ou ld be fired a nd there w as some beli ef th at the tea m was loo king for a r ep lacem e n t rider. Star sp ort' s Scott Gray and Padge tts ' Ra cing Team 's Jimmy Fi lice were th e two o t he r American fini sh er s, tak i n g 22 nd a nd 23rd , res pectively. World Champion Max Biaggi w on hi s th ird . 250cc race in a row , though not without some work. Officially he led every lap, but Marlbo ro Team Rainey' s Tetsuya Harad a was in his shadow for much of the race, only losing touch when he had a front end slid e on the 15th of 21 lap s tha t caused him to lose tou ch. Biaggi t u rned up th e heat a n d cl oc ked the fas tes t lap o f th e race th e next time around. The Yamaha was no match on top s peed fo r Bia g gi ' s Chesterfi eld Aprilla and, once he lost the d raft on the fr ont s traigh t, Harad a had no way of m aking a run at th e leader . H e w ould fini sh just over a second back, th ough Biaggi's lead was over three seconds on the penultimate lap - before he decided to show off with some wheelies. It wa s the firs t time that Biaggi ha d w on his hom e Grand Prix an d he said tha t it was "very moving to win in fron t of your hom e crowd. It was a fantastic race for me, now I feel on a real high. "I tried very hard to make th e break and go alone, bu t th e trac k cond itions we ren 't the same as they were yesterday and I had some pr oblems with my susp en sion . I co u ld n' t tu rn the bik e as quickly as I wa nted , so I had to be a little careful in the turns," said Biaggi. Harada said that the pa ce of running with the faster Aprilias had caused him to use up his tires . "Even tually I had this big front end slide and I only saved a crash by pushi ng my knee on the curb. The next lap I saw I'd left a big, big tire m ark there," Harada said. The da y ended with the tw o rivals ti ed o n p oints in the wor ld cham p i- (Left ) Doohan passed Beattie early in the GP. and was able to pull clear for his third win of the year. (Below) In addition to winning the race, Doohan also capturad his sixth pole postion of the year. onship at 118 after six of 14 races. Biaggi has three wins and Harada one. It took Biaggi 41 minutes, 6.275 second s to win the race at an average speed of 99.91 mph. Third went to 38-year-old Aprilla test rid er Mar celino Lu cch i. A Wild Card entry, Lucchi had qualified on the front row and s tuc k w ith Biaggi for se ven laps before gettin g passed by Harad a. (Below) Scott Russe ll competed in his firstever 500cc GP ; he finished 11th despite missing the first day of practice. Doohan's sixth ole I t is at once a perfect and broken record, perfect for Repsol Honda's world champion Mick Doohan and broken for anyone hoping to earn a pole position. For the sixth race in a row, Doohan earned the pole position, this time lowering his own track record and putting nearly a one-second margin on the second-fastest qualifier. Doohan toured the 3.26-mile circuit just outside of Florence in a time of 1:53.524003.355 mph), lowering his mark of 1:53.829. He may have done even better, but 20 minutes of the second session were lost to a light rain, and he didn't go back out until there were about ten minutes to go. His only problem. and it wasn't much of one, was the broken ring finger on his left hand . It affected him in the left-right chicanes and made it a little more difficult to hang onto the NSR Honda, but the team had compensated and he didn't see it being a problem. His greatest concern was simply finishing the race, something he hadn't done in the last two tries . "Obviously, I want to finish the race tomorrow. I'd like to win . but if I can't, I'll do the next best thing which is finish and get points," he said . As for his 29-point deficit to title leader Daryl Beattie, Doohan said: "It doesn't concern me right now. The end of the season is in October." On the last lap of the session Doohan's teammate Shinichi Itoh caught a flyer and jumped up in to second place, his best qua1ifying result of the year. The Japanese rider put it to solving a problem he'd had mid-corner in the slowe r turns. "Tod ay we had the same problem as yesterday, but finally we have found the right solution," he said. ___ Like Dooh an , he, too, was sufferi ng a hand injury, his the result of a pre-season crash whi ch he reinjured at the Japanese GP. The little finger on his left hand was bandaged and, though it was hurt, he said "I have to ride anyway." Third place was the surprise of the grid, form er 500cc rider and current World Superbike racer Pier-Francesco Chili putting the Cagiva on the front row of the grid. The bikes were the ones that Doug Chandler rode last year and, according to Chili, nothing was done to update them. He and Troy Corser had tes ted it prior to Mugello and the results weren't encouraging. There was a front brake vibration and the suspension was off, but they decided to race it anyway. "I don't expect this result, absolutely," Chili said. "It feels like the bike, at this moment, is not 100 percent, but we can't change it a lot for the race." The bikes ran so well, Chili noted, that both of them were taken by the scrutineers to make sure they were up to the legal weight. What wasn't noted, was that Chili had tested at a race track within 14 days of a Grand Prix, a violation of IRTA rules, but no one seemed eager to make a big deal of it. The world championship leader, Lucky Strike Suzuki's Daryl Beattie, was fourth fastest, barely able to improve on his first session time after a night of fiddling with bike settings. "We tried a few different things since Friday. Then the rain came and held things up," Beattie said . The team had tested at Brno after the German GP and had hoped to be able to translate the results to the machine for Mugello. But the surface at Mugello is mu ch bumpier and he wasn't able to completely sort out the front end. With his gaping championship lead, he wasn't going to try anything rash, though he did say it wouldn't affect his race strategy. "Tomorrow I'm approaching th e ra ce, and I approached .practice, the exact same as every race this year. I want to get away to a good start and see how it develops," Beattie said. Scott Russell led off the third row in his first race on the Lucky Strike Suzuki. The Lucky Strike Suzuki team had kept him off the bike on Friday, following a letter from Russell's former employer Rob Muzzy, which was received on Thursday night. With only two sessions to get everything right , Russell was being cautious, though he was hoping for a top-seven finish. The end of the third row was filled by World Championship Motorsports' Neil Hodgson . 21

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