Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

By lap three, the trio had ope ned up a second on fourth place, currentl y held by Bayle, with Capi rossi already having fallen . Doohan was still wat ching and waitin g, then at the start of the fifth lap he moved smoo thly past under braking a t the end of the stra igh t to make sure Criville d idn't get too far away. No w the two wo rks men upped the pace, bot h breakin g the track record . Barros cou ld n' t ma tch th em , running into the gravel and faIling at low speed, remo un ti ng way ou t of co n tention among the privateers . At the sa me time, Doohan wen t to ,the front for the first time. "My primary .co ncern was to ge t away so that Alex .(Criville) and I could have a race on ou r own. I knew he wo u ld come w ith me ' whatever I did ." On lap 12, he moved on to the second s tage o f h is tactics. "I slo we d on th e m ain s t ra igh t to le t Ale x past. H e seeme d hesitant. At one stage I thought we wer e both goin g to come to a stands til t." But Crivill e took the ba it , and fou nd him self in the unenviable position of leading with the faster rider right on his back wheel. "I thought if I kept sho w ing him a w hee l and kep t the pressure on, it might force him into a mistake." It took only two more laps . Criville left his bra king too late for the firs t co rner, a s h ar p rig ht-hander, and ran wide on the en try . Doohan slipped easily th rough on the . inside and got his head down to see if he co uld es cape. It worked perfectly . The gap starte d growing at once as his choice of a harder tire paid off. C ri vill e s tarte d los ing grou n d a t once . " I had chose n a slig ht ly softer front ti re," he expla ined, " and that's why I ran wide. Mick was going so fast that I thought I might crash if I tried to chase him ." At the finish, the gap was 11.5 seconds, and the point made perfectly. Behind them, there were no tactics jus t good old-fashioned elbow-bashing ra ci n g . W it h Ba y le losing th e fro n t . wh eel and sliding ou t of third after five lap s, cruelly di sappointed , Russell had inhe ri ted th e posit ion - he was only a few feet behind him anyw ay. Checa was . on h is rear, but onl y laste d un til lap seven before he crashed. But Okada was also th ere, and was soon pushing Russell hard, the V-twi n's advan tage coming stronger as the race wore on and the V-four punished its tires more. As the y started the 18th lap, Okad a pounced , rid ing aroun d Russell on the ou tside at the tight first two comers. The Su zuki man screwed it on d own the Mi stral s t ra ig h t to ge t back a h ead; meanwhile both Ab e a nd Pui g were closing up from behind as the two riders in front o f th em slo we d eac h o the r slightly. Criville on top_ I t was clear from the first day that the tw o wor ks Hondas we re in a class of their own here. It became even clearer on d ay two, when one possib le challenger, Beattie, crashed out of the race, and the fast Yamahas of day one failed to keep pace with the general improvement. It rem ain ed only to sort out the order - Doohan or Criville. In both timed sessio ns, it was the defe nd ing champion on top for mo st of the tim e; and in both of them CriviIle gave it everything in the closing minutes to nose narrowly ahea d. Dooh an had one lap to try and reclaim the high ground, bu t it was not enough; and there could be no foregone conclusio n. For the past two races, Doohan has had Criville's measure, but the Spaniard has been improving steadily all year long, and nobody could be su re of anything. "I am under no illusions," said Criville. "My bike was almost perfect tod ay, and I was faster still this morning when the track was cooler. But Mick will be going for a win tomorrow." _ , The new relaxed Doohan just smiled . "We' ll hav e to wait and see. He was able to go faster than I did today." 'Bu t the streng th of his overall package combined with his ex p erience a nd reco rd m ea n t he rem ained race favorite nonethel ess. He was tes ting a new airbox he re, di stingu ished by lowe r ai r intakes o n the fa iri ng, whic h impr o ved midrange power, and there were no weak links in the chain. The rest of th e field were packed up close, with times sta rting some half a second behind the two top Hondas, and third to 15th place within the same second. And in the final session a surprise third place went to Romb oni's V-twin Aprilia. Even he was surprised, after saying the day before : "This track has a short lap with two long straights. It's no place for a V-twln." On day two, his bike was still a full 12 mph slower down the straight, but the continuous'corners that make up the rest of the lap meant he could catch i~ll up again. "If I can get in a V-four's slipstream at the start of the straights, I can almos t stay w ith them, and may be get past at the end of the lap," he said, much more optimistic than in Mugel10. "The start straight is fairly long here, so it will be difficult at the beginning of the race. But the overall gearing is lower than in Italy, so it will not be so difficult," he said. This was his fourth consecutive front-row start. The last position went to Puig, his first time on the front row since his ruinous crash at the French GP at Le Mans a year ago , and a major achievement for a man still learning to ride with a useless left leg . "I d on ' t think I can do tha t sort of time for the whole race," he said. "It is still very difficult for me. The advantage here is that almost all of the corners are right-handers, and that is my good side." They were packed up om inously close behind him, promising a desperate dash to the first-gear first com er: Barros leading row two from Checa and Russell, who opted for the new "Bigger Bang" Suzuki engine for its ability to get on the power earlier in the comers. Bayle concluded the row, disappoin ted after having been third-fastest on day one. He had crashed in the morning, damaging his "A" bike, which hard ly helped. . Then came Okada, his V-twi n's po tential blu n ted by traction problems. "I am ge tting too much wheelspin. I can't use the higher corner speed," he said. His row three compa nions in cluded two more troubled Yarnahas, Capirossi slightly faster, now a full second down on pole . The Italian wa s in trouble most of the w eekend . Unhappy with the feel of his b ike, he changed everything on the second day only to find it considerably worse. For the final session he changed e verything back, having made no progress a t a ll through practice. Beattie was next, but out of the race. He'd been sixth on the first day, and preferred the old engine to the unfa miliar new one, "at least until we get some more testing on it." With his new-tires crash on Saturday, it all came to nothing, movin g Roberts u p one place. He too had been quicker on the firs t day, failing to improve after burning up his allocation of front tires too soon . . Borja was 13th, but up to the fourth row of the grid; then came fast French privateer Fred Protat, with Abe languishing in 15th, the Japanese GP winner seeming to have slumped back to his u sual confusion o nce in Europe . "Noricks N orick, " s ai d Roberts, for the umpteenth time. "W e sho u ld keep him locked .aw ay until race day." Itoh was 16th, another wh o is running out of excuses for his poor form now that his injuries are pretty much healed. And nobody knew what to make of Cadalora , near the back all weekend, and dropping as low as 17th by the finish, coming up for two seconds off the pace and under threat from local Elf-mounted wild card William Cas tes (usually a Thunderbike rider) and the rest of the privateers. "The bike's not pulling cleanly," was his terse com ment as he proves yet again that his inconsistency with Yamah a wa s not a problem with Team Roberts, but with himself. . There was nothing unexpected in the name at the top of the 250 st nor in the fact that the gap to the next man was big - around three-quarters of a second. The surprise was that it had taken Max Biaggi until the c1os- Frenchman Olivier Jacque (19) had a popular lead over reigning 250cc champion Max Blaggl early in the race . Jacque was later rear-ended and did no t finish. ing minutes to ge t there, and that he'd fallen off on the way. His rare-no wa days crash came on Friday, and he was at a loss to expla in it. Although on one of the notorious left-handers, it was on the exit from the comer rather than the entry or the middle part, and he did not blame a cold flank to the tire. "I think [ must have hit some dirt or a stone in the track. The front wheel jus t went away," he said. Nor was he confident he could make his usual brea kaway. "With the two straights here it will be easier for peo ple to slipstream me," he said. "My bike is going well and th e new cons truction (d ua l com pound) tires are wo rking well. All the same, it's going to be a long race tomo rrow . . . . Jacque, Waldmann an d Fuchs had all taken a tum at the top of the list befo re him, bu t second came after a remarkable performance from Ruggia, racing close to his home. He crashed in the morning, and again early in the aftern oon's timed session, but was able to get his bike back to the pits and fixed in time for him to go out and pull a flier. It was only his second time on the front row th is year, and the veteran blamed the diff iculties with setting the Honda. "It' s so sensitive, a small ch ange makes a bi g difference. But we have it good for this track." Fuchs was next , the wo rks -bike rookie's best vet, and the first time ahea d of teammate Waldma nn. happy of course," he said. "Bu t I could have bee n faster . I put on a new fron t tire at the end, and obv ious ly something was wrong with it, an d it only caused me trouble." Har ada was at the far end of the front row, and very glum (see news). His problems with throttle snatch meant he simply couldn't do what he wanted with the machine. "This doesn't mean a return to form, .and I don't expect to be fourth in the race;' he said, adding, to th e dismay of Yamaha personnel present: "Until the machine is fixed, I can't work on adapting to the tires, and it is hard to have any motivation." Waldmann led row two, failing to match his morning . time. "It was partl y my problem. I had too much on my mind." (One da y after sponsors HB had an nounced their with drawal from racing.) "If I can just think abou t racing, it w ill be all right." Jacque was next, his own hopes of po le position at home dashed by a crash in the last session. He d islocated a finger, and bravely slotted the joint back in pl ace by himself. "It's pa inful, but I hope I can race all right, " he said . . Then came the Hondas of Ukawa and Aoki,.followed b y a row o f pri vateers: the promising Bo sco scu ro, Petrucciani , Suter (w ith new Aprilia cylinders and an impressive top-speed time) and Sebastian Porco. ''I'm

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