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The Boesiger / Egli team finished third, some 41 seconds behind Abbott. Darren Dixon, fifth today after recovering from a first-lap crash, maintained their championship lead over Abbott. With only one round to go, Dixon leads 111-92. Boesiger is third at SO, five ahead of Biland. throughout the 2SOcc Grand Prlx. At the finish, however, It wes Blaggl taking the win to further extend his lead in the World Championship over his Yamahamounted rival. been passed. By now the pair was only a little better than a second in front of Waldmann, but the German knew that the pace was getting too hot. "I really tried hard for some times: I think I took more risks than for my Le Mans victory. But I had a few really huge slides and finally I decided the risk of crashing would be too high if I would continue that way," Waldmann said. About that time the leaders were hitting their marks, Biaggi setting the fast lap of the race on the 16th, with Harada about to lower it three laps later, partially out of desperation from a mistake he made three laps from the end. "I had a big slide and that lost me some valuable time. [ had to ride as hard as I could to get back up with Biaggi over the last two laps, but it wasn't quite enough," Harada said. The Marlboro Rainey Yamaha rider closed right up on Biaggi on the final lap, another one for the record books, but was outpowered on the long uphill bends that finish th~ lap. "The bike was good today. Maybe Max was a little surprised we could push him so hard h~re," Harada said. "Harada came back at me really hard on the last lap. He was close, but not quite close enough," Biaggi said. Waldmann ended up a solitary third, well in front of the hectic fight for fourth. It began in the early going with Honda Team Agostini's Doriano Rom- centrate. '1 feel this is the reason I was not able to hold on to fourth place," Okada said. Fourth through 10th were covered by less than 1.3 seconds at the finish, with Romboni following D'Antin and leading Ruggia. The Honda-mounted Frenchman felt he was down on straightaway speed, but was more aggressive in the comers. That's what netted him sixth, he felt. 'fOn the last lap we were all together on the brakes, but Okada was not so good out of the turns so I was able to get him," he said. Kenny Roberts Jr. was eighth, losing his hard-fought seventh two laps from the end. After qualifying 13th, Roberts was 16th at the end of lap one with a long day ahead. Moving forward meant using up the rear tire, and when he caught the battle for fourth it was mostly shot. "The last few laps the bike was really stepping out when I got it on its side, but I could just get it on the throttle and keep it like that. The lack of grip was really killing me in a couple of places," he said.. Behind him came Blumex Rheos Racing's Nobuatsu Aoki, less .than a tenth faster than HB Honda Germany's JurgenFuchs. Fading to 11th with rear-tire troubles. that made his bike unridable was Bayle. 01 (Left) Defending World Champion Kazuto Sakata (1) won his second 125cc GP of the season at Brne. 500ec GRAND PRIX A warm, cloudy yet bright day greeted the 29-rider field that Marlboro Roberts Yamaha's Norifumi Abe immediately put himself in front of. Doohan, Barros, and Cadalora also got away well, but not Lucky Strike Suzuki's Beattie. "I pretty much just blew my start," he later admitted. "I tried to get away good and when the light went green 1 anticipated to go with the light, and the engine bogged and [ couldn't get away with the other guys. I tried as hard as I could on the first lap." He finished the lap in seventh place and began the inexorable march to the front. That's where Abe had his hands full with Doohan, who would pass the young Japanese rider on the third lap. Another tour of the circuit and Abe was back to. third, behind teammate Cadalora, before low-siding two turns before the end of the seventh lap. "I lost the front. It was a straightforward crash," Abe said, attributing the problem to his front tire. 'Though I got on well with the new Dunlop 17-inch front (made in Britain) during yesterday's qUalifying session, we realized that my aggressive riding style meant it wouldn't last the race, so I started with a new 16.5-inch front from Japan." Out front, Doohan was trying to make a break, building up a little over a second lead on Cadalora before the italian retaliated. "It was a long time that we had only the same distance between me and him, and during that time it was very hard," Cadalora said. "But, basically, I cannot catch him to be dose. And then, he started sliding a little bit and losing a little bit of grip and I say, 'Okay, now I have to try to catch him and maybe to pass: But I was never sure to have the possibility to take some distance. I was not completely sure, but I tried because I have to try." Halfway in, the gap was half a second and dropping, and Cadalora began to get bold on the 14th lap. That's when he lapped better than a second faster than Doohan and passed him on the inside of a left-hander. The next lap was faster, then the 16th brought a new lap record which he lowered on the 17th. "I knew from practice that with this tire we did more than 30 laps and it should be no problem for endurance," Cadalora said of his laterace push. Meanwhile, Doohan was struggling to keep up and not doing too good a job of it. Cadalora gained better than a second a lap and, at its peak, the lead was 5.62 seconds. Then Cadalora felt a vibration from the engine and slowed down. "Just vibration from the engine three or four laps from the end make me some hard times, and I thought to put the gear earlier and not insist too much on the revs because I was really afraid that maybe some problem was coming," Cadalora said. Third place was decided on the 10th lap. That's when Daryl Beattie moved by Shinichi ItQh and settled in for the long haul. "At that stage 1 could see Doohan ahead of me, but [ couldn't make any impression on the gap," Beattie said. He was three seconds behind and dropping. boni in front of Chesterfield Aprilia's Jean-Michel Bayle, and Elf Honda/Tech 3 teammates Jean-Philippe Ruggia and Olivier Jacque. The ribbon of riders lost the tail end five laps in, Romboni in front of Ruggia and Bayle, then HRC's Tadayuki Okada moved up after a horrible start to join the fray. He'd taken a hit on his thumb on the first lap and found himself in considerable discomfort for the rest of the race. At the halfway mark the Japanese rider had moved up into fourth, dropping Bayle, but lost the spot a lap later to Romboni, before regaining the spot on the 12th lap. The position would be his, marginally, until the final lap when MX Onda/S.s.P Competition's Luis D'Antin jumped from sixth to fifth, then fourth in the final corner. Okada's fall continued, landing him in seventh place at the finish. He said that the injury to his thumb was making it hard to con- (Below) Max Blaggl (1)andT~a Hal'llda battled "[ didn't feel 1'd overworked my tires in the early laps, but they seemed to go off later in the race. They lost side grip, and if I tried harder, I went slower. At that stage I was only able to keep going and hold my place:' Capirossi knew that he wasn't in any shape to have a run at Beattie. He said he was using a relatively untested tire and it took him a while before he was ahle to pass Barros and Itoh. But by then the leaders had gotten away. "In any case, this is the first race in which I was physically fit and almost able to ride the bike the way I want to," Capirossi said. He wasn't to be threatened by Itoh, not with the rear-tire problems he was having. Criville was also sliding around, though he blamed himself for choosing the wrong tire on his way to his sixthplace finish, under pressure from Reggiani to the end. Reggiani thought he might have outbraked himself in the last corner to let the Spaniard back past. That he was able to race with the powerful Honda was an accomplishment in itself. Eighth place was decided five raps from the end .when Carlos Checa came by Alex Barros. Barros, who'd run as high as third early on, used up his rear tire and couldn't stop the backward slide when his lap times went up into the 2:05 range. Hodgson and Russell were next across; Russell losing out on the last lap to the Briton. 250cc GRAND PRIX Jetting away ~rom the pole position, Max Biaggi took the lead, taking Tetsuya Harada and Ralf Waldmann with him and quickly leaving everyone else behind. Even Waldmann would have a hard time keeping up, fading slightly, then getting a second wind near the mid-point of the race. By then Harada was on a charge after taking over from the Italian on the eighth lap. He'd followed him long enough to spot an opening, and drove through it in an uphill right-hander. Then it was Biaggi's tum to spot the flaw, which he did three laps later, passing Harada in the same tum where he'd