Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

teammate Kocinski who grabbed the lead right from the start, diving into the first corner on top of the field and followed by Ducati's Neil Hodgson, Russell, Edwards, Crafar and Fogarty. Three of the superbike men were not going to surviye the first lap: Oucatimounted Pier-Francesco Chili, and Suzuki's James Whitham and Peter Goddard aU went down before they even had a chance to get into the groove of things. For Chili and Goddard, the crashes marked the end of their weekend. Chili re-in jured his left shoulder which was damaged in a Saturday-afternoon crash. "After my crash in yesterday's practice, I dislocated my shoulder and would probably not have started if it had not rained," the Italian said. "On a dry track, you need more effort to get the bike where you want it to go." Goddard, meanwhile, suffered a broken collarbone that put him out of the second heat. Up front, Kocinski and Hodgson had already opened up a small gap over the Yamaha duo of Russell and Edwards and the rest of the field. Just when everybody became impressed by Hodgson's performance, the Bri ton went down in the infamous turn 10 - where the track takes riders over a hill prior to a hard-braking area into a right-hand corner. By the end of the race, the gravel pit in turn 10 was turned into a scrap yard for high-tech superbikes. Edwards looked to be on the move as he worked past Russell at the end of the long front straight. After Hodgson's crash, Kocinski already had a comfortable five-second lead over the rest of the pack, but Edwards appeared to be the man who could possibly make a race of it. On the sixth lap, Slight saw his efforts to come back from his poor start reduced to zero when he bit the dust in turn 10. "Starting from pole in the wet is a big problem here," Slight explained. "The finish line just in front of that starting position is so wide and so slippery. That messed up my start completely, and I came back sixth from last after the first lap. I pretty easily went back to 12th and then started my progress until I was sixth, but on the sixth lap it was all over. The oil flag had already been shown the lap before, but I got through all right so I didn't worry too much. The next lap I went down before I knew what was going on." A lap later and Suzuki's Mike Hale was down and out. "The Kawasaki in front of me started losing oil, and I got covered in it," the Texan explained. "I sat up on the straight, touched the brake, and went down immediately. I tried to pick the bike up, but then I noticed that the footpeg was off and that the handlebars were twisted forward. That was .the end for me. It's too bad because I felt really good out there and my lap times were getting better and better. This was only my second superbike race in the wet. I would've liked to stay on board to see how far I would get." In the meantime, the track had started to dry in some places but it didn't help much as an oil-spewing bike was laying a trail of oil all aroW\d the track right on the racing line. Russell was the next victim, the Georgian getting spit off his Yamaha. Fortunately, he was able to get the bike going again. . "I hit the oil coming into the corner then ran wide, got back on line and hit it (Above) Aaron Slight leads Carl Fogarty, Simon Crafar and Colin Edwards II in the dry second leg. The race was a thriller, won by Slight over Edwards and Crafar. F.ogarty ended up fourth. (Right) Scott Russell had a rough day in his World Superbike debut for Yamaha. The Georgian crashed and remounted to finish seventh in the first race and was sixth in the second. again," Russell said. 'The bike failed but started again. I hit my elbOw but it's all right. After that I was really scared of my tires and how they would go." He resumed the battle in ninth place. At about the same time, Yamaha lost its only other chance for a top finish when Edwards also went down. "Someone went around the whole track spewing oil - not just on one corner but on the whole track and on the racing line," Edwards explained. "Before it was okay, just a normal wetweather race, but after lap seven or eight it was totally different - they should have stopped it. I slowed up and my lap times went from 1:51s to 1:57s. I went into that second hairpin way slower than before but I still fell. I pushed the bike the length of a football field but it still wouldn't start." From then on, things eased up a bit. With 19 riders still circulating, nobody was in much of a mood to take chances. At the halfway point, Kocinski was some 18 seconds ahead of a solitary Fogarty, an equally solitary Cnifar and a lonely Akira Yanagawa, on the second factory Kawasaki. The differences between these men would only stretch as the race wore on and they - along with fifth-placed local boy Troy Bayliss were the only riders to finish the entire 22 laps. Behind them, Russell performed very well, taking seventh place from Austrian Andreas Meklau in the final laps. Obviously, Kocinski was very happy with the result, repeating his performance of a year ago but winning the opening round on an unfamiliar bike. "I have never had worse conditions in my racing career," said Kocinski, only four days after celebrating his 29th birthday. "In the begi.nni)1g of the week, we had a lot of problems but my mechanics got it all right for race day. During the wet warmup, I felt confident that I could win in wet conditions." Fogarty's top finish was somewhat of a surprise after his not-too-impressive practice and qualifying performance. "The conditions out there were unbelievable," the former World Champion said. "As the track dried, the tires start- . ed shredding. By that time, my only ambition was to stay upright. At the rate everybody was crashing, I figured that strategy would put me in the top five." Crafar was even a bigger surprise, scoring one of the best results of his career. "I don't know about the other guys, but for me it wasn't too much fun out there," the Kiwi said. "Even before the oil came out, it was slippery as hell. On top of that, I wasn't able to get a good setup for the wet because I crashed in the beginning of the wet warmup in the morning. So the first few laps were quite scary, when I tried to see how· far I could go. I lost a lot of ground at that point and even when I tried to push a little harder, I felt that I was still riding too slow. I was very surprised when I fOlmd myself catching up with the guys in front of me. But with nine laps to go, I settled for third. It was quite a boring race, actually." RACE TWO After most of the riders had licked their wounds and their crews had repaired. the bikes and reverted to dryweather setups, the second race got under way in good conditions. Unlike the first confrontation of the season, most of the top riders would stay upright for this one. Yanagawa, who was pleased with his careful fourth-place ride in the first race, pulled a rocket start out of his pocket and led the pack for the first three laps. The Japanese rider's lead didn't last long, though, as the likes of Slight, Fogarty, Crafar, Hodgson and Edwards were fighting over each inch of tl,e track just behind his green back. Hodgson was once.again one of the first riders to be knocked out as he parked his Ducati on the fifth lap. By that time, Slight had taken over at the front, though it was a position that changed in almost every corner as a group of five - Slight, Edwards, Crafar, Fogarty and Yanagawa - contested the lead for 14 laps. It was then that Yanagawa made an early exit. "Carl Fogarty and I were in a battle when he caught up with a backmarker going into turn one," Yanagawa explained. "Fogarty made a sudden maneuver to get past the slow guy, pulled straight into my line and I had to run wide to avoid him. Unfortunately, I was too far off the line to make the first corner and I ran onto the grass at high .speed and crashed." The Japanese rider later left the Clinica Mobile with his wrist in a cast. For Hale, the end came one lap later. The Suzuki rider had been dose to the top 10 in the beginning of the race, but quickly started to lose ground.

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