Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

.ROAD RACE. . World Endu~ Championship Series- . Round 5: Bol d'Or During the third race hour, Sarron/ Moodie/Mahe dropped back due to ignition and carburetion problems. Moineau, still chasing his first Bol d'Or victory after almost 20 years of trying, crashed. Then another seemed to throw his title chances away: After his teammate Mattioli had done some ground work one hour before, Mertens also took a dive, but this time with worse consequences. When the Belgian was still laying down after a few minutes and the ambulance arrived, it was dear that the chances of the championship leaders were now in the hands of their biggest rivals. "I stayed behind a backmarker in the fast Verreries; I did not want to take any risks," Mertens said. "As soon as he moved over in the last section, I passed him and off went the front wheel. I still remember that I thought 1 was dreaming, that this was just not happening while I was preparing to roll to a halt." The wild ride ended with four broken ribs and some internal bruising. The fourth'hour was characterized by what had happened in the third hour: After getting repairs to the brakes and fairing, By Johan Vandekerckhove LE CASfELLET, FRANCE, SEPT. 17 he 59th edition of the Bol d'Or will be one that endurance fans will not easily forget. Most of the eight factory teams entered in the race had their fair share of bad luck and crashes, the battle for third place provided an extremely exciting last half hour of the race and, to top it all off, one of the two new World Champions had to view it all from a television set in a hospital room, after he had crashed in the beginning of the race. The title fight was still wide open when the teams arrived in Le Castellet for the, fifth and the final championship race of the season. At first sight, the private Team Guignabodet riders Stephane Mertens and Jean-Michel Mattioli had a quite comfortable lead of 21 points over Bruno Bonhuil, 23 points over Brian Morrison, Rachel Nicotte, Alex Vieira, Juan-Eric Gomez and Herve Moineau, and 27 points over Eric Mizera, but a win at the Bol is worth 50 points. Apart from that, the classic race remains a very important event for the French importers, who can log up to 25 percent of their year's sales at the Paris motorshow one week after the Bol d'Or - provided they win the race in the south of France. Eight factory bikes had been entered in the Bol d'Or, with factory bikes from Suzuka flown in for Honda (Alex Vieira, Christian Lavieille and Miguel DuHamel) and for the only works Suzuki team (Moineau, Bonhuil and Gomez). In addition to those eight, the Team Guignabodet Honda RC45 had been beefed up with a double exhaust, and a stiffened frame from HRC. And manager Guig.nabadet had received some extra setup advice from the Japanese during his trip to the Suzuka Eight Hours at the end of July. No support had been available from Honda France, as they were hoping for their bike (Vieira) to clinch the title in this final confrontation. As could be expected, the eight factory bikes and the "semi-official" Guignabodet Honda dominated free and official practice, with the Ducati of Stephane Chambon and superbike spe- T It) 0\ 0\ ..... ~' I-< Q) 'B u o 36 (Above)AMA Supert)/ke Chemplon8h1p leader Miguel DuHamel (7) led the 801 d'Or early. with the DuC8tl of Steph_ Chambon (19J trailing. (Right) By the end of the race, however, It wes the Terry Rymer-led Kawesakl France team that captured the win. cialists Mauro Lucchiari and Andreas Meklau taking pole position. They were followed by the first Honda factory team of Vieira, Lavieille and DuHamel. Third position went to Terry Rymer, Jean-Louis Battistini and Jehan d'Orgeix. Mertens took his Honda to eighth position on the grid. Seventy-four teams were allowed to take the start. RACE Right from the start, it was obvious that even the factory teams were in a big hurry. With the traditional traffic jam filling the race track early on, DuHamel led the pack after 15 minutes, followed very dosely by Rymer, icotte/Morrison/Costes, Chamboh, Morillas and Mertens. early five minutes later, a first shockwave went through the paddock: The leading Honda was spotted cruising around the track, with DuHamel nervously trying to fix something behind the fairing. The French Canadian had suspected electronic problems in the engine-management system, and had switched the thing off for a few seconds, hoping that it would reset - but in the process he erased the default code. Obviously, the mechanics couldn't find the cause of the trouble at the first pit stop. Another stop was to follow before the camshaft sensor and the electronic management unit were replaced. One more stop just before the end of the first hour, during which the injection system was replaced, finally solved the problem but threw the team back to 70th. That didn't make things much easier for World Championship leaders Mattioli and Mertens. As the Honda mechanics were figuring out what had gone wrong on Vieira's bike, Mattioli crashed at the end of the long Mistral straight, damaging the bike badly enough to have to push it back to the pits. The walk took him some 20 minutes, and the repair and replacement work (fairing, tank, air filter and electrical wiring) took another 10 minutes. They dropped from fourth to 69th, just in fron t of the factory Honda After an hour, the top five were as follows: Morillas was leading icotte, Rymer, Chambon and Dominique Sarron. During the second hour, most of the top runners remained in their seats, even though some were confronted with sorn~ serious technical problems. Cazade/Briguet/Mizera had problems with the rear brake and rear suspension, and Nicotte / Morrison / Costes lost time changing a footpeg. Some minutes later the crashing resumed with Lindholm and Graziano going down, but both were able to continue battle after they had dusted off their leathers and had the gravel deaned out of their fairings in the pits. Moineau's Suzuki was able to continue. At the same time, an exhausted Graziano delivered the heavily damaged Ducati to the pits, where an extra 15 minutes were lost. And ignition and carburetion problems continued to haunt Sarron's Yamaha As the sun went down over the south of France, peace appeared to have returned to the track. After six hours of racing, Rymer was leading with a threelap lead over Nicotte's Honda, Morillas' Honda, the private Honda of Guyot/Damide/Lussiana and Chambon's Ducati. Moineau was 34th, Sarron 37th and Vieira was trying to battle back to the front from 53rd position. At that time, the Ducatis were starting to struggle: the best two of the three bikes from the French importer ran into electrical problems. At close to 9:30 p.m., things heated up at Kawasaki, when the leading machine stormed into the pit lane sounding very unhealthy. Fortunately, a new exhaust cured the problem. Despite this unexpected stop, Rymer/Battistini/d'Orgeix managed to keep the lead. Some hours after midnight, trouble struck in the official Honda camp. First, Vieira crashed, suffering a compound fracture of the elbow. For the team that had dimbed from 67th to 24th, this was the end of the ride. Not more than 20 minutes later, the

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