Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

"1 got bitten by a wasp on my shoulder," Fuchs said. "1 was a bit socked for a moment. I nearly crashed and so they got by again. But to be honest, 1 am not sure whether 1 could have held them behind me until the finish anyway." That put Fuchs back to fifth behind Ukawa, with third through fifth separated by less than a second and Lucchi ending up sixth. Rheos Molenaar Racing's oboatsu Aoki was a lonely seventh, then came Cristiano Migliorati on the AXO San Patrignano Honda. 500cc GRAND PRIX The SOOcc race, like its 250cc counterpart, took only a few laps to sort out, also due to tires. Kanemoto Honda's Luca Cadalora chose too hard a rear and it was on the third lap that Checa came by. He led a string for several laps and gradually made the race his own. By lap sev~, his cushion was 1.588 seconds and it continued to grow. There was a growing expectation that something would happen: Either he would make a mistake, like last year, or his more-experienced rivals would reel him in. either happened. Halfway in, Checa had over three seconds in hand and he better than doubled it at the end. "1 don't know what one should say when one wins his first Grand Prix and this happerts at home and in the top class," Checa said. "It's been a tqugh race, whatever anyone may think with the distance that separated me from Doohan, because I've had to concentrate Doohan rolls a seven " F for a lap before running off the track and onto the grass on the outside of the right-handed Campsa Curve. It would be the last bi t of excitement for Biaggi for the rest of the race. . Having chosen a hard Dunlop rear, Biaggi had to bide his time until the tire came in around the fourth lap. That's when he set the new lap record in pursuit of Jacque, who he passed at the end of the front straight starting the sixth. Jacque fought back, retaking the point before losing it for good when his rear wheel slipped when he tried-to mount yet another attack. Ending the sixth lap, Biaggi had a 1.552-second lead and he added a second the next lap and some interval everyone after that. At its peak, the margin was 11.026 seconds, then Biaggi slowed on the final lap and delivered the inevitable victory wheelie after his eighth win of the year. "Jacque showed the Honda is very fast in a straight line, but maybe he's got a few problems in the corners," Biaggi said. ''I'm confident for the last two races, but both Ralf (Waldmann) and I must be careful. If either of us crashes we lose the championship." Unable to keep up with Biaggi, Jacque settled into a secure second and had better than three seconds after seven laps. The gap wouldn't expand much, but it didn't have to. No one was coming at him and he was able to take his third consecutive runner-up finish. "I was very fast from the"start, but it took about five laps before my rear tire was really hot and working well," . Jacque said. "When Max (Biaggi) began to make his attack, it was very difficult to stay with him, so second was the best I could do today. It's good enough. In fact, it's a great result because it has moved me up to fourth in the championship." The battle of the day was for third, Michael Doohan - 1996 500Cc World Champion. The Australian wrapped up his third title with a second-place finish In Spain. and getting there was the problem. Waldmann took over on the third lap and was gradually set upon by a horde of riders, the first of whom was Nastro Azzurro Aprilia's Marcellino Lucchi, riding in place of the injured Roberto Locatelli. The 34-year-old Italian stuck close to Waldmann until about the eighth lap when the German HB rider put about a second on him. The gap didn't change much for a few laps, then the pack, with Lucchi at the front and three others trailing, ran Waldmann down en masse. Then Lucchi's tires began to go off and Ukawa went by on the 14th lap with Lucchi gamely fighting back before losing the spot for good on the next tour and dropping back to sixth on the 17th lap. • "My goal for the race was to finish in front of Waldmann and take some points from him, and it was something 1 should have been able to do," Lucchi said. "Unfortunately, it did not wOJ;k out like that. 1 had a bit of a problem with the tires because we hadn't been able to do all the testing we wanted in practice and the bike was not quite set up properly." Waldmann was not yet safe. Now his teammate Fuchs was coming at him, along with Ukawa, and it was Fuchs who went by on the penultimate lap. Since there are no team orders, Waldmann had to fight back. "I see yellow (the colors of their HB Honda machines) and 1 go half a second faster," Waldmann said before taking third. What he didn't know was that he got some unexpected help. or the seventh time this year, Repsol Honda's Michael DoOhan found himself on the pole position, turning a blisteringly fast record lap with just over three minutes to go. His best of 1:46.201 {91.672 mph was over a second and a half under the standard set by Fortuna Honda Pons' Carlos Checa l~t year. More importantly, it was a tenth better than his teammate Alex Criville, the Spaniard on a mission to win his home Grand Prix. But it wasn't without incident. Doohan ran up the curb toward the end of the session, though he was quick to downplay the episode. "On the one lap I hit the curb and got a little bit squirrely," Doohan said. "But other than that there wasn't a problem. Being on the motorcycle there wasn't a prOblem, but from a watching point of view it looks a bit different. It actually felt a little bit worse when I was caTrying a full fuel load, and that's when I was running wide and spinning up a bit more. At the end of the session, when we went to go for a start position and we carried less fuel, the bike actually felt quite good. The real last lap was when I ran up on the cum and it spun itself up and it just wound itself up in a straight line, but it wasn't a big moment really." That Doohan was on the verge of his third championship didn't seem to be a concern. If Criville won, Doohan needed only finish second to take the title. "Really, I just want to win races," Doohan said. "Obviously I don't have to win. There are 15 rounds in the championship." . Being on the pole turned out to be small comfort. The top seven riders were on the same second in what has turned into an increasingly competitive SOOcc atmosphere. Criville missed his 6fth pole by about a tenth, but didn't seem too upset since he ran into problems toward the end of qualifying. "The only problem I had today was with the carburetion near the end of the session," said Criville, who lives not faJ' from the track. With a solid second in the championship in his grasp, and his ascendance to the pinnacle of the class, Criville is under some pressure to win his home Grand Prix. '1 know everyone expects me to win tomorrow and I'll do everything Tcan to win, but I'm not a robot," he added. Next to Criville came the white Kanemoto Honda of Luca Cadalora. The Italian was going for a fast lap when he crashed while trying to go around the outside of Criville in the looping right-hand Repsol Curve, his first GP crash this year. The only other time he went down was during winter testing. . ''I'm okay," the Italian said. "I was trying with my last new tire to get on pole again. I w,asn't very close to Alex (Criville). I tried to pass him in that comer and get a clear lap. I tried too hard on the brakes and have a crash. It's not too bad when you don't get hurt." At the far end of the front row was Carlos Checa, the young Spaniard who held the record lap until it was shattered by Doohan. He might have gone better had not a mixup over tires occurred late in timed practice. As it was, he had to settle for a time only seven-hundredths behind Cadalora. "In the last few minutes of the session a minor chaos occurred with the tires because Michelin did not know which one of them would be the most adequate to do just a few fast laps," Checa said. "For that reason, the rider who had the chance to ride with the best without having to overcome slower riders took advantage of this situation. I think that with a bit more luck 1 would have lowered my best time." The first of the Yamahas was Frenchman Jean-Michel Bayle on the Marlboro Yamaha Roberts bike. He came 6fth, just off the front row after learning something about how the tires worked with the temperature down. "It's colder than yesterday and the tires are sliding more suddenly," Bayle said. "That cost us a few minutes and some tires, so I didn't have the best possible tires on the bike at the end." He was still able to stay in front of Pileri Honda's Alex Barros who, despite being sixth fastest, had the consolation of having the fastest motorcycle on top speed. His NSRSOO went by the radar gun at 190.148 mph. Then came Kenny Roberts Jr., who was able to knock half a second off his time in the final session, and Alberto Puig on the second Fortuna Honda Pons bike. Puig was one of the few riders who didn't improve his time and, like his teammate Checa, he was caught out by tires. "The session has been somewhat strange because all of a sudden we had to try a tire composite which we were not familiar with, and this made for a somewhat different Saturday afternoon official testing from what we are normally used to," the Spaniard said. The factory Yamahas of Loris Capirossi (Marlboro Rainey) and Norifumi Abe (Marlboro Roberts) sandwiched the Repsol Honda V-twins of Tadayuki Okada and Shinichi Itoh on the third row, both Honda riders complaining of machine problems and the Yamaha pilots returning to their standard chassis after testing new ones at this race. Lucky Strike Suzuki's Scott Russell qualified 13th, his bike handling as badly as it has all year with no relief in sight. . "1 don't mind a third-row start," he said after qualifying on the fourth row. "Obviously, we're not miles away, but we're having trouble getting the bike to tum and to stop it sliding and spinning up in the middle of the comer. I was faster this morning, but not in the afternoon. That's how it went and it doesn't make me happy." His teammate, Daryl Beattie, was only two slots away on the fourth row, the Australian making his return to racing after 14 weeks off and trying to get up to ·speed. He'd tested at Mugello the previous week, knowin!} full well that testing and racing are two different things. 'Tm the first to admit I'm down on confidence," he said. 7

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