Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

·R OADRACE :'" .. ' Round 6: Italian Grand Prix .W orldC hampionship Road Race Series .: Alberto Pulg (5) fin shed third , topp ing Shlnlch l ltoh (7); Alex Barr os (9) fi nished seventh with Lor is Caplrossl (65) taking ninth. He would finish just over three seconds back. Fourth was decided at the finish line in favor of HB Honda Germany's Ralf Wald ma nn, who mana ged to keep Team HRC's Tadayu ki Okada behind himthe entire race, but not by m uch. The difference at the line was 0.049 seco nd . The fight for sixth also went down to the line and the leader of the pack was Kenny Ro berts Jr. The Yamaha rider was among a pack of four riders that swapped spots back and forth the entire ra ce , Ro be rts waiti ng until the last minute to make his move. O n the last lap he went from ninth to sixth. "I jus t bid ed my time," he said. "I go t (Jean-Philippe) Ruggia on the brakes for tum one, then (No boa tsu) Aoki through the fast downhill left, then (Patrick) van den Goo rbergh a few comers before the finish. 1 had to stu ff them and then pus h them ou t hig h so I could make a break ." , The 125cc class put on their usual spectacular show, but this one was more thrilling than most. Five riders vied for the lead the entire race , allfive leading at one point or the other, the winner only leading the fina l l ap . That' s when Blumex Rheas Racing 's Haruchika Aoki took over the lea d from Team IPA Aprilia's Stefan o Perugini and out-raced him to the line. He took th e wi n in a phot o finish, the margin officially 0.004 second . Third through fifth wer e covered by a little over three tenths of a second, with Team Ditter Plasti c's Masaki Tokudome besting Marlboro Aprilia Eckl ' s Peter Oettl and 'Team Kron a-Aprilia 's Kazuto Sakata. Aoki has won every one of th e fiv e races that he's finished and now holds a commanding lead in the cha mpionship. After six races he is 52 points in front of Perugini, 125 to 73. Sakata is thir d at 60. It took Aoki 41 minutes, 24.470 seconds to win the race at an ave rage speed of 94.452 mph. 22 500cc GRAND PRIX Thou gh he ended up on th e fro n t row, Beattie had bee n testing a number of adjus tmen ts befo re even tually d ecid ing that much of w hat he'd d one ha d n't b e en a n im p r o v emen t over w ha t worked well during recent tests at Brno. Th e Brno su rface is s moo ther than Mu gello a n d th e Su zuki wasn ' t responding to th e bumps. So he went int o the race wi th a bike tha t had served him well all year. Beatti e got the jump at the start, but Doohan was soo n past , wi th Puig, Barros and Capirossi running at the fron t. Doohan and Beattie separated them-s el v es on th e fift h lap, th e Puig /Itoh/Barros trio forming up just behind, then Capirossi leading a swa rm for sixth. O n th e sixth lap Beattie was ou t fro nt, Doohan had d r op p ed ba ck to third after overshooting the second tum, then ra cing to make up .for it . Beattie saw Dooh an go off, but didn't know for sure wheth er he'd saved it until he saw the numbers on his pit board getting smaller. "I co uld ha rdly believ e th at I was seeing him do it again," Beattie said of Doohan's crashes in the last two races, "but I knew a couple of laps later he had obviously got back on when 1 could see the gap shrinking on my pit board." Because of the mistake, Do ohan' s sixth lap was his slow est but by the next la p he was back in the low 1:55s and turned a 1:54.381, the fast est lap of the race, on the next go-around . H is momentum carried him into the lead, Beattie struggli ng to stay hard on his tail . "When he got ahead, it was obvi ous that he could go faste r than me," Beattie sa id , though he was able to stay close until the la st six laps o r so. By then Dooh an had done a stri ng of 54s wi th the occasional 55. Bea ttie's best was on the 15th lap, after which he could n' t get down below a 1:55. . "I w as just lu cky to win th e race," Doohan sa id, before assessing his titl e hopes. "Giving away tw o races in the lead is a tough thing to do. But there are still eight races to go. It's going to be ou r aim to win as many as we can' and put the Suzuki guys under pressure." Behind th e lead ers, P ui g and It oh gradually lost grou nd until th ey w er e only worried about each other. Puig was in fron t at the halfway mark and Itoh w as close, bu t knew he would n' t be able to stay there. "We made a mistake choosing a rear tire that w as too soft. After the first five laps the rear slipped ou t a lot and I had many pr oblems tryin g to co n trol th e bik e," Itoh said . For h is p ar t , Pui g sai d th at he thou ght that for a minute he'd be able to stick with Doohan a nd Beattie, th en th ou ght better of it. "In the last laps I decided to finis h the race in third place," he said . Pu ig and Itoh had pulled clear of the · battl e for fif th by abou t the h alf w ay mark. Criville was in fron t, tho ugh Barros a nd Ab e w er e righ t there a nd the spots ch a nged constantly for the las t five laps. Ab e fou nd that he had more com er speed than the othe r two, but his top speed was d own a little. "I couldn' t pass them when I wanted to," he sai d . Criville's probl em was th at the bik e was jumping out of gear and he was losing a second a lap , he th ought, though it wasn't nearly th at much . And Barros had a problem in the middle of the corner, unab le to accelerate hard, and find- ing tha t his accelera tion wasn' t w ha t Criville's was. It came down to the las t lap , Abe riding around the outside in the last loo ping left on the ru n to the flag but Criville out-powered him to the finis h with Barros just behind . Loris Reggiani had been at th e ta il end of this bunch for a while, then lost t ou ch a fte r second-guessi n g h is tire eng ineer on tire choice. "The Dunlop enginee r told me it was the wron g one, but I had it fixed in m y head that th at was the one I wanted to use," Reggi ani said . N ext across th e line wa s Capirossi, the Italian find ing tha t he w as being o vercome by the pain in his injured right hand after five or six laps. "At one point I wanted to stop and call it a day, but when I s aw that there was nobody behind catching me , I decided to conti nue," he said. Ch ili , who'd run off the track, fell back to finish 10th, ahead of Russ ell and Cadalora, th e Italian havin g his u su al tir e troubles. He'd fou nd that the stan d ard Michelin s, w hich had worke d so well in Spain and Germany, di dn't suit the track. Plus, he'd spen t a lot of time switching between Michelin and Dunlop durin g practice an d wasn't mentally rea dy to race. "My brain was the prob lem ," he Cadalora. But Scott Russell, who finished just in fron t of him , said that Cadalora wasn't trying hard . "He looked back and saw me and gassed it up," but not for long, and it didn't hold . 250cc GRAND PRIX The plan was to get away as quickly as pos sible, but Max Biaggi soon found ou t that wasn't happening. "I tried very hard to make the break and go alone but the track conditions weren't the same as they were yes ter day an d I had some problems wit h my suspension. I couldn 't turn the bike as quickly as I wanted, so I had to be careful into the turns," he said. Russell's GP debut O n the fir st d a y of hi s 500 cc GP racing career, Scott Rus sell (right) could do noth in g but sit and wait as the lawyers sorted it all out. Rob Mu zzy, Russell's Mu zzy Kawasaki team owner, had made it clear that he would try to prevent Russell from riding the Suzuki and fo r one d ay, at least , he did. A letter sent by Muz zy to se n io r members o f th e Bro w n & Williamson tobacco com pa ny lat e on Thursday caused th Lucky Strike crew to keep Russell off the bike pending clarificatio n from th eir lega l advisors, Garry Taylor, the Lucky Strike Suzuki team manager, told a television commentator. "We had some issues we h ad t o clarify ad ministra tively," Tayl or said , a d d ing tha t th ey'd been cleare d u p on Frid ay night. "We always expected him to ride, but the green light was the morning," he said on Satu rday eve ning. The decision was made to treat the weekend like a test. "Their expectations aren't that high," Russell said. So Russell finally ma de it out on Satu rday morning and after the free practice sai d the di fference between the RGV-Suzu ki an d his ZX-7R Kawasaki was "bigger than expec ted ." "Things happen so much faster. You have to get up to speed with it. I want to do it now, but I kn ow it's no t the time," Russell said . The first tim e he sat u p to brake at the end of the lon g front straightaway, it "just about blew my arms off the bar. 1 wa sn't holding on hard enough," he said. "It accelerates so much harder and tu rns easier. Something you can ride arou nd on a Superbike, you can' t do on a 500. It doesn't slow down when vo u let off the throttle, it seems to speed up. Ther e's no engine braking. I've go t a lot 'to learn . "This track, for me , felt really awkward on the bike. There's a lot of waiting on the throttle in the comers. I di dn't want to open it too early. I thought I could walk faster ." Ru ssell had tested at -the Brno ci rcuit prior to the GP , but Brn o is a m u ch sm oother circuit than the bumpy Mugello track and be found tha t he wasn't confident with the front end. "The bike's too harsh on the front end. The bike's so light you can feel a lot more. The superbike hides a lot of those problems," Russell said. The team had made some changes to both his and Daryl Beattie's machines for the morning sessions, but found that they weren't an improvement and went back to the, old settings for the aftern oon. Tir es were another question mark in Russell' s mind. He found the Miche lins didn't give as much feedback as the Dunlops he'd previously used. "It's easy to get that wrong and you 're down the road," he said . And, though he'd used them on his Superbike last year, Russell was having trouble with the carbon brakes. Among the front-runners, he was the only one using covers to keep the heat in the disks . With carbon brakes "when you pull the brake lever there's a slight delay, then they come on very hard. They don't fade late in the race. They seemed a bit easier to use on the superbike," he said . Even with the myriad of adjustments he' s had to make, Russell said he expect s to be in the top four within three races . "The bike is capable. I know I'm just putting it together to make it work right. It's a sho rt time , but I want to get w ith the program. Who knows? It could hap pen befo re that," he said . "My end goa l would d efinitely be the World Ch ampion in the 500 class. I believe , that's attainable, if I don 't bite off too much. That just sets yo u back," he said . Russell finished 11th in the race.

• Cover