Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

all that aggressively, was a lap away from a new lap record that would help him catch u p to the lead foursome. The first big change among the lead'ers would come on the 11th of 23 laps. Cap irossi swept by Cadalora only to crash in a downhill right-hander when the front end pushed. "1 was faster through the corners becau se the Yamaha chas sis is excellent, but we're losin g out on th e straigh ts," Capirossi later said. "Lu ca (Cadalora) kept passing me on the start-finish and 1 suppose 1was just trying too hard. 1 was tr ying to close the gap on Mick (Doohan) an d Alex (Criville) a little too early. 1 felt the front tire tuck under a couple of times, then it let go." On th e sa me lap, Dooha n lowered the track record wh en he crossed the line in th e lead and fractio nally la ter Cri vi lle lower ed it ye t again when he came by in second. By now they had a 2.5-second gap on Cadalora, who tried early to stay with them only to find he couldn't match the ir pace. All weekend he'd been trying different se ttings on the Kanemo to H onda, only 'to chuck them all out and try some- , thing completely new on Sunday morning. H e d isco ve red ea rly on that h e' couldn't stay with them and decided to finish, ra th er th an risk a crash in his home Grand Prix. ' " It was extremely d if ficu lt to see Doohan and Cri ville lea ding withou t having the possibility to cat ch them, but 1 had to d o like th at beca use my ma in objec tive is th e cha m pionship and the most im po rtan t thing was to get points," Cadalora said. Left to themselves, Doohan and CriviIle change d po sitions cons tantly and the lead er across the line only rarely led the entire lap. It was the 15th lap th at the lap charts show Doohan in the lead and d oing his fast lap to that point, but on th e 16tl1 Cri vill e dropped the lap record ye t ag ain. No matter the pace, Doo han felt th at he could control h is desti ny . "We ran laps in the 54-second ran ge so whe n he went ah ead I decided to stay beh ind him for a while before maki ng another att empt to take th e lead . Then, every tim e 1 tried to make a br eak he came w ith me, so I think I decid ed to pull back and run in the 55s," Doohan . said. "With two lap s to go, I upped the pace agai n an d this time I ma nage d to open u p a lead that was enough to give me enough at the finish line." Des p it e finishing second, Criville said, "It was a beautiful race. 1 was second, although toward s half an d the end of the race 1 actually thou ght a victory could be possible. But this is a circuit Mick (Doohan) likes and feels comfo rtable racing here. There was also the possibility tha t 1 would have to race on the limit to keep th a t firs t position- w hich would risk the result and the 20 points 1 need. " By the end Cadalora was about seven seconds back w ith Beattie chasing him down. "Maybe we work a little bit too much during the weekend," Cadalora sai d of the radi cal cha nges m ad e to the bike. "Basically afte r th is morning we p ut toge the r what we believe was the best and we go in for the race . I tried very hard tod ay to stay closer to Doohan and Criv ille, but 1 can' t, 1 can' t stay close enoug h. That' s all. They were just a little bit too fas t. At this m oment, Mick is faster and we are looking forw ard to the future ." Bea tt ie, s till reco ve r in g fro m h a y fever problems in pr actice, said tha t he was using an un familiar tire and wai ted a few lap s to push it. "1 was doing some fast laps by the time I'd got into it, but 1 was always playing catch u p," he said. , Tenth on the first lap, Jea n-Michel Bayle took some time to get up to. spee d, bu t, once there, sliced through the field. After the trauma of going to his backup bike following the warmup lap, Bayle held tight until near the halfway mark when he made his move, jumping from 10th to eighth on the 13th lap, then up to seventh on lap 15. Quickly he separated himself from the group he went th rough and moved up on teammate Roberts. That coincided with Roberts' fall from grace, precipitated by a tire going off. "My team did a great job preparing th e bike, but the tire let go rea lly suddenly tod ay an d scared the heck out of me," Roberts said. That he saved it was no mean feat, although it would soon get worse and he would slide to 10th place. Bayle was going the other way, up to fifth, wh ere he'd finish, on lap 18. Right behind him came the Honda threesome, Barros, Okad a, and Itoh , Barros had th e power and used it to stay o ut fro n t excep t for a brief mome nt when Okada slipped by on lap 20. Then Barros took it back an d stayed there. Oka da was still suffering the lingering effects of an illness tha t hospitalized him on Satu rday, and then he ran into tire tro ubles. "After 10 laps 1 had no more rear tire grip, and at the end of the race I thought 1 was going to get sick d ue to ph ysical we akness," said Okad a, who bem oaned the loss of power to the V-four of Barros. " It seemed li ke 50 laps and 1 was exhausted ." Peter Dettl (1) celebrates his victory In the 125cc Italian Grand Prix. It was the German's first victory of the season. Third pole for Doohan R One bike I liked , but I couldn't qu ite do a time on it so I'd like to work on that bike more, but we're running ou t of time. More time would be good, but the bike we decided to use seems qui te good. I d idn 't get to d o too m an y con si stent laps today it seems lik e it' s good . We' ve improved a hell of a lot from our lap times her e last year ." The su rp rise of the front row was the V-twin IP Ap rilia of Dorian o Romboni. The Ap rilia was the fourt h-slowest of the 27-rider field on a track that favors horsepower and was down over 11 mp h on the fastest Hondas, . "For su re I'm a bit su rp rised to be on the front row ," Romboni said. "Because Mugello is quite fat and has a long straight. It' s not so good for the tw ins." But he also knew that doin g a fast lap on a clean track is nothing like figh ting a pack of four s from Corner to corner. "In the race. the situa tion will change a lot. At the start I'll try not to be overtaken by too many gu ys in the first corner, because after that it's not so easy to pass. There' s too much room betwee n corne rs (for the four-cylinders to catch up). For us, Mugello is tougher than Jerez or Suzuka." Repsol Honda's Alex Criville led off the second row, close on Romboni' s time and trying to sort thro ugh his suspension on a track he characterized as "bum py." Knowing tha t he was only six-tenths of a secon d behind pole qu alifier Doohan convinced him he could be the re come epsol Honda' s Mick Dooh an earn ed his third po le position of the five-race-old season by beatin g his own qu alifyin g record on a sunny Saturday afternoon at the Autodromo Internaz ionale del Mugello. Doohan bettered last year's pole time of 1:53.524 with a best of 1:53.260 (103.956 mph) with about 14 minutes to go in Saturday's qualifying sess ion around the 16-turn, 3.257-mile track in Tusca ny . It gave him a cushi on of about fou r-tent hs, but more imp ortantly gave him confid ence that these were times he could do in Sunday' s race. . "We' ve tried some new suspension wh ich we've been working wi th all yea r and it's give n me a bette r feel wi th the front," Doohan said abo ut his Showa uni ts. "And it's maybe a little more consistent. At the start of the weekend we had one wi th new sus pension and one with standard suspension and were up and down. In one session I'd go quicker on the old shocks and in one sessio n I'd go quicker on the new shock. So this afternoon we put both machines wi th the new suspension race time. Next up was Kanemo to Hond a's Luca Cadalora, the Italian sw itchand it felt better and we just picked the best bike out of those two and ing between Ohiins an d Showa fork units. The Showas we re faster at we did a lot oflaps on it." first, then the team mad e an overall package that narrowed the differAfter ru nnin g off the track and nearly crashing here last year, ence, tho ug h the total setup was elusive . Doohan said that in this yea r's races he' s changed his tactics somewhat. "T he bike ru ns wide through the turns when I tr y to go fast ," "I guess I'm getting old and growing a little bit on what I've learned Cadalora said after setting his fast time using the Showa forks . " I'm over the years," Doohan said . " It d oesn't matter how much you win by having to slow dow n to maintain the right line and that's costing me a as long as you win. Last yea r you know I tried to race away at the front lot of time. We'll try somet hing radical for the warmup sess ion because and I cras hed a coup le of times, and it really made me think a bit about [ really need the bike to be easier to ride." lettin g whoever's d ominating the race domin ate the race and then take Seventh-fastest, in the best qualifying effort of his three-race 500cc adva ntage of it whe n I think I can. I did that last race." GP career, was Kenny Roberts [r ., the 22-year-old having run as high as First Itali an an d first Yama ha hon ors wen t to Marlboro Yamaha third in an earlier pr actice session . Marl boro Yamaha Robert s Roberts Rai ney's Loris Ca pirossi, th e d im inutive 23-year-old fro m Bologna Jr. said that he needed to learn m ore about tire wear in the morning abou t four-tenths slower than Dooha n while equaling his best qualify- warmup to decide on a race tire, but was otherwise pleased wi th his ing effort. He may have improved it before runnin g into an engine perfo rmance. p roblem that ended his session pre maturely. "The thin g that I've got to consider is that the guys in front of me "Yesterday I was struggl ing a little because [ was running too fast have got so much experience: he said. "I' m actually glad I'm not up in into th e corners," Capi rossi said . "1changed my style and got that fixed the top three because I know I've got a lot left in me." toda y so 1could improve my corner exit spee d . I'm now riding the bike The second row was filled ou t by Fortuna Hon da Pons' Alberto Puig a bit like it' s a 250." who crashed once in practice before setting his best time. The next three ride rs after Capirossi were covered by less than twoThe third row was Marlboro Yamaha Roberts' Jean-Michel Bayle, tenths of a second with Lucky Strike Suzuki's Daryl Beattie fightin g an Honda Pileri's Alex Barros, Rep sol Honda' s ailing Tadayuki Okad a, ailme nt that put himon h is back between the morn ing and afternoo n and Scott Russell' s stand-i n Terry Rymer (see Briefly...). sessions. Bayl e did hi s best time with 10 minutes left in the session and "This afternoon on the bike I felt quite good whil e I was ou t there Okad a' s time stood from Frida y since the Japanese spent the d ay in the ridin g," Beattie said . "Com pared to how I felt on Friday I feel like I can hosp ital with a viru s. Rym er suffered in the morning pr actice before do a lot more laps because I feel better, bu t I've ~ot some tablets that getting up to speed in the afternoo n. make me feel good for an hou r then I go downhill aga in. I've just been "The bike's still strange to me and I'm not used to the speed," the staying on those as mu ch as I can. While I'm actually riding I feel qu ite tall Lond oner said. :'When I'm rid ing alone I feel a little... not exactly ' lost, but not su re how fast to go. When I'm with the othe r riders I'm good . " At the end of the day this aftern oon we had two different bikes. more relaxed and 1can use them as markers." 9

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