Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

By Henny Ray Abrams Photos by Gold & Goose LE MANS, FRANCE, JULY 9 his was the Mick Doohan everyone has been expecting to see all year, the one that dominated in Australia and was immediately touted as the runaway championship winner. That story never quite happened, but the 30-year-old Australian world champion began the second half of the year as he started the first half: winning handily in a hot and sticky race that was beset by attrition, some of it coming before the race even began. Doohan started slowly, finishing the opening lap in fourth place before moving up one spot, then another on the fifth of 27. laps. On the sixth he passed Repsol Honda teammate Alex Criville for the lead and began to set sail. Criville was his only irritant, but the Spaniard took himself out of the race with a front-end low-side on tlLe 10th lap, and from there on it was all Doohan playing to the crowd of 50,000 on a sunny day in central France. "At one stage I had a two-second lead with Alex (Criville) behind me. The next lap I saw'seconds and I didn't know if it was 0.5 or if the team messed up," Doohan said. I looked back and' didn't see anyone and I couldn't help wondering if they had all crashed into each other." Alone out front, Doohan set what appeared to be a blistering pace, but was, he admitted, anything but that. Still, he quickly pulled away to win his fifth GP of the year by 21.923 seconds, the widest margin of the year. The win was Doohan's 24th in the 500cc class and moved him into a tie with Wayne Rainey for fifth on the alltime list. Running in second from the 10th lap T ~ e I.t') ~ r-< 0\ r-< >.. E. ~ 6 onward was the rejuvenated Luca Cadalora. The Marlboro Roberts Yamaha rider had been the subject of intense speculation concerning his future with the team, especially after the past Grand Prix where he was demoted to secondrider status. He volunteered to take part in a test prior to France and dropped his demand of using Michelin tires front and rear. At Le Mans he used a Michelin front and Dunlop rear and the combination worked well, though in the later stages of the race he realized the front was slightly too hard. "This weekend we made a good job of getting the bike balance right," he said at the post-race news conference. "It was a tough race, but it was a lot of fun too. I was really enjoying sliding the rear tire. It was moving around nice and controllably. I can't usually do that so maybe today was a special day. I had to try to really hang on to second because Beattie didn't give up." Cadalora was, of course, speaking of Lucky Strike Suzuki's Daryl Beattie, the former world championship leader who lost his l~ad when he broke his left collarbone in a practice crash at the previous GP in Holland. The Australian had it plated and raced from his front-row starting position to a solid third behind Cadalora. Beattie said tpe shoulder wasn't much of a problem, but he had no feeling in three of his fingers and that became a problem late in the race. "It was getting difficult to hang onto the bars, but that's just the way it goes," the Australian said. Fourth place went to Repsol Honda's Shinichi Hoh who eventually made up for a bad start to move through the field as the others around him fell. Criville was the first of the front-runners to fall, then Cadalora's teamma te Norifumi Abe went down after going off the track in the same place the lap before. And Lucky Strike Suzuki's Scott Russell also fell, though he was so far in front of seventh place that he was able to remount and card sixth place, his best GP finish yet. He might have done better except that he was stuck behind Kanemoto Honda's Alex Barros who spent much of the race holding Russell up and frustrating him. '1 wanted him every lap, and I tried all round the track, but he just closed the door on me every time," Russell said. "On the lap I fell off, I slid the front wheel under brakes for the hairpin and that gave him a bit of space. Two corners later, trying to get back, I lost the . front again." Barros adrnited he was slowing Russell down. "He was faster than me," the Brazilian said. "My suspension and tires were not working together. I'm normally very good on the brakes. Here I would tum it and come to a complete stop. If he passed me, I think 1 could not pass him. I was very, very slow." After Russell came the privateers, Team Millar's Jeremy McWilliams leading the charge with fellow Englishman Neil Hodgson eighth on the World Champion Motorsports ROC Yamaha. Toshi Arakaki, who replaced Jimmy Filice on the Padgetts' Yamaha, came ninth, with Belgian Laurent Naveau in lOth place on the ROC Euroteam Yamaha. Of the 28 starters there were 17 finishers, Starsport's Scott Gray taking his best finish with 17th. Doohan completed the 27-lap, 74.33mile race in 46 minutes, 10.991 seconds at an average speed of 96.562 mph. The reigning World Champion came into the race with a one-point lead over Beattie, which he extended to 10 with his fifth win in eight races this year. With six rounds to go, Doohan leads his fellow Queenslander 145 to 135. There is Michael Doohan was completely on form In France, taking the. runaway victory - his fifth of the season - by over 21 seconds. Doohan now leads the championship standings by 10 points over Daryl Beattie. a two-way tie in the standings for third, Cadalora and Fortuna Honda.Pons' Alberto Puig together at 99. But Puig crashed heavily during Saturday qualifying and may be out the rest of the year, and possibly longer (See Briefly). It took his fastest lap of the day, but HB Honda's Ralf Waldmann came out the better in a rough-and-tumble fight with World Champion Max Biaggi in the 250 race. The pair, along with 'Blumex Rheos Racing's Noboatsu Aoki, made an early break from the pack but Aoki crashed out at the midpoint of the 25-lap race. Waldmann was out front then and stayed there until the 23rd lap, when Chesterfield Aprilia's Biaggi was in front for one lap. They raced to the flag, Biaggi making a small error on the final lap and deciding to salvage the secondplace points ra ther than throw them away chasing a possible win. "1 think that this was the best race of my life," Waldmann said after his third win of the season. "I am unbelievably happy. It was a very tough race. 1 knew 1 had to make the pace from the beginning because Biaggi had the slightly faster bike on the straights. But I could make up his advantage by being a bit better on the brakes." "Ralf had the upper hand on braking and that's crucial here," Biaggi agreed, after finishing 0.551 second behind. "1 was trying to use the brakes less and try to gain an advantage by using more corner speed, but it didn't work." The two had raced so closely that Biaggi had sliced completely through

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