Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

ROAD 'RACE World Superbike Championship Final Round: Phillip Island crashing. It will take me about two months to overcome this frustration." Edwards finally came home third after a lonely race, with Hale a surprise fourth after he had escaped from the group in the last couple of laps. _ "Michelin gave me a rear tire that should do the job," Hale said. "But 1 hadn't been able to test that one during practice. That tire made a big difference. But this result also shows that 1 go very well on circuits where we've tested before. That's why I'd like to have a second chance next year." Kocinski got the best of ills rival Fogarty on the last lap and finally claimed fifth. "We had the steering damper locked "The bird illt my shoulder and the side of my helmet," Edwards said later. "I couldn't see and 1 didn't know whether my arm was still there. Kevin Magee had told me these stories about people having their shoulders dislocated here. 1 spent the whole race only able to see out of my left eye after 1 finally got the visor tear-off off. 1 did it all on feel, and 1 was happy to hold on to third in those conditions." By the sixth lap, Slight had joined front-runner Gobert, and both riders started a fierce battle for the lead. Edwards was a lonely third for most of the race willIe a magnificent battle raged berund rum among Goddard, Fogarty, Kocinski, Hale, Chili and Yoshikawa. Most of the attention in this battle was focused on Fogarty vs. Kocinski as they also struggled for third in the championsillp. The six riders switched places in almost every corner, with Cillii finally dropping back a bit due to a wrong tire choice, and John Reynolds joining in on ills Suzuki. Up front, things had also started to become quHe hectic wi th Slight taking the lead witl! two laps to go. But the Honda rider wouldn't stay there and after a big slide in the Siberia Corner he finally had to settle for second be1Und Gobert. "As in the first race, 1 wanted to get to the front and make a break right from • the start," Gobert said. "After three or four laps, 1 stopped puslUng in order to save my tires. I've noticed this year that Michelin has been better on several circuits. Tills was one of them. "Aaron (SHght) had so much more grip. 1 tried to compensate for that by keeping up a illgher corner speed. But Aaron ruined !Us tire in the Siberia Corner. Two laps before the end he had a big slide, with smoke coming off the tire. 1 was in ills draft and got past rum. That mistake made my job a bit easier. 1 couldn't have done it as easily another way as the top speed of the Honda is illgher than of the Kawasaki. The slide was all 1 needed to get past rum." Slight, who kept second in the title chase, said: "My plan was to follow Anthony around and make my move sometime in the last fivelaps. 1 thought 1 was doing the smart thing, but my tires were well worn by the time 1 was ready to challenge I'm very disappointed about the way the title run has gone. To win the championsillp I had to win races, but obviously it's not possible for me to win enough races. I rode the bike to its limits, but Anthony was just going wild. 1 couldn't go faster without rum. out in an attempt to find a solution for the stability problem," Kocinski explained. "I struggled the whole time around. With all the things that went wrong and 1 still beat those people, it makes you wonder what those people were doing out there. The battle with Fogarty didn't bother me too much. 1 had too much on my mind already. Nobody would have ridden that bike better in those conditions. 1 did my job and that's it./I Fogarty finally lost third place in the championsillp, crossing the line in sixth position. "I basically had no grip," the former World Champion said. "It was just like the feeling 1 got from the tires at Don- (Above) Gobert wheelles to victory In his final World Superblke race. (Right) Gobert (4) leads down the hili In race two wltl1 Slight (3) and Edwards (45) giving chase. Edwards, fair and s uare H onda and Yamaha were the only teams that had encountered dry weather conditions in their private practice sessions a week before the event· and it showed. Carl Fogarty, Aaron Slight and Colin Edwards D led the way dUring the two qualifying sessions, but they couldn't prevent Troy Corser from working his way into the top three in the final session. Friday afternoon, Fogarty had been fastest with a lap time of 1:36.407, still a long way off Anthony Gobert's 1995 pole position of 1:35.58. Lap times only started to go down in the 15 minutes when the track started to dry after a day-long rain and drizzle. Saturday's qualifying session, however, was run in almost-perfect weather conditions. Gobert, this time sporting a bright red "devilish haircut," led that final qualifying session for quite some time before being passed by Slight and then Edwards. The Texan finally claimed his second pole position of the season. "Nobody has excuses this time," Edwards said. "At Sentul, the rain spoiled it for some riders in the last half hour of qualifying, but now everybody has been beaten fair and square. The engine we have been using since Sugo allows us to use the horsepower more smoothly, and that helps on a track like this. Tomorrow, I want to win the race. Aaron and Troy might have their own fight on their hands, but I won't worry about that. We still have to choose a race lire depending on the weather tomorrow, but we have tested all the options we have and I know they will go race distance. I did a few low 1:35s on a race tire and 1don't think it will be faster than that tomorrow." Corser moved to second in the closing minutes of the session after losing a lot of time searching for the correct chassis setup. "We've been struggling on several circuits this year with the handling of the bike," the championship leader said. "The front end has been pushing because there's less weight on the front than on last year's bike. Yesterday, we were also caught out a little bit by the weather. The mechanics had chosen a setup for the wet. But today was all right. I don't worry too much about the race tomorrow; my strategy will depend on my start and on.where Aaron is in the beginning of the rn~.H . Archrival Slight and Gobert completed the first row of the grid. "The bike feels a lot better since the suspension changes we made yesterday," Slight said. "The bike feels a lot better but I'm now struggling fqr grip. We've got the better of the bumps and now I'm after more from the tires and I've moved to a 17-inch rear wheel. But the compounds we tried in today's session didn't have the grip we needed." Slight's teammate Fogarty dropped back to ninth position after hav· ing held pole position from Friday's opening qualifying sessions. He owed his result to his being stuck in traffic for most of the session. Gobert, meanwhile, was happy with his result, especially given the fact that he'd been out of action for so long. "Ten weeks off is too much on this level," he said. "My collarbone injury prevented me from doing some seri!,us physical preparation before coming here. I only did some stationary cycling and some motocross, but I shouldn't have done the latter. I think I'm at about 70 percent of my capacity now. The bike has gone through some evolution since I last rode it, but it feels a little bit unstable getting into the corners. I also got held up by some slower riders, otherwise I'm sure to have been able to do some high l:34s." The second row was filled by Muzzy Kawasaki's Simon Crafar, Ducati's John Kocinski, Yamaha's Wataru Yoshikawa and Ducati· mounted Pier-Francesco QUli. Crafar had crashed Friday in a very fast right-hander, injuring his right foot but nevertheless getting into the groove. "It's a matter of finding a good compromise on this track," the ew Zealander explained. "The suspension has to be soft enough to take the bumps in the corner, but also hard enough to keep the bike stable duro ing the hard braking. We've got the bike pretty well set up now." Kocinski blamed his time on a lack of practice time. "We only have had two hours to set the bike up properly and then go and try to make a fast time," he explained. "We were scheduled to have a private practice session a week ago on Sunday, but Virginia Ferrari (the team manager) canceled that." Ferrari admitted that he had canceled a private practice session Sat· urday, but added that he and his team had shown up at the circuit Sunday. Strangely, Kocinski (who had insisted for months on having two days of practice before the final round at Phillip Island) and Ohlins mechanic Mike Watts didn't meet the team that day. In any case, the bike didn't handle as it should after the two free and two qualifying sessions, lacking stability almost everywhere. Peter Goddard was the fastest local with 10th on the grid, following Fogarty but ahead of Neil Hodgson, Piergiorgio Bontempi, Mike Hale and IGrk McCarthy. "The bike with the best engine broke," Hale said. "That's the third engine for me that broke down this weekend. And when I got on my qualifying tires, I got held up in tritffic. It would've been hard work to get a far better time on the spare bike, because we haven't found a proper setup for that one. I'm sure that I'll be able to go one second faster when the mechanics put a good engine in my better-handling bike for the races tomorrow."

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