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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127847
ROAD RACE
W R C AMPIONSH
O LD H
IP
ROA
DRACE SERIES
un; 7: Dutch IT
closing up fast, now on 106; Ukawa has
65 and Capirossi 63.
125cc GRA ND PRIX
(Left ) Telsuya Harada (31)
chases d own Ralf Waldmann (2)
In th eir cl assi c 250cc battle.
Hara da w on th e race . but
Wal dmann now leads th e
champion ship po int standi ngs"
(Bel ow) Earl y leader Garry
McCoy (72) wa s forced oul of
th e 125cc Grand Prix when his
Ap ri lla seized. The w in wenl lo
young ttalian Val enti no Rossi.
One more
for Doohan
P
22
ractice left everybody complaining of a
shortage of ti me. Cond itions had been
mixed, from wet to d ry and everything
in between. But tha t was the same fur all. The
single event that mattered happened when
Alex Criv illecrashed.
.A good pe rfo rmance here wa s of v ital
importance if his fight with Doohan was nut to
be com ple te ly lost. That issue was resolved
with the first crunch of fibergtass and bone.
Doohan \ \ ' <1 5 already on to p, and sta yed
there the next day, too, when the final session
was bisec ted by .1 2O
-mlnute wet spell, and
e ve ryone waited im pa ti en tl y in their pits.
He 'd run in a new engi ne, chosen tires and,
while he was rea sonably happy with his dry
se tu p, there hadn't been enough wet time to
d ecide on tires if it did rain . "I saw some peopi c w ere turning fas t laps at the end, but I
couldn't go any faster by then:' Doohan said .
The fastest of those late cha rgers was Dcriana Rombo ni, thorou ghly enjoying the boo st
of thi s yea r's extra 30ec, w hich put his top
speed right up among the v-fours, on Assert's
sh ort back st raight. At 177.5, he was 3 mph
down on Aoki's v -Iou r, a nd slower also than
Dochan - but ahead of Okada and all the rest.
But the bike looked like a rea l handful. and he
founJ the continual backs-and-forths and upsa nd-downs hard for two reason..: Firstly, they
.
exaggerated the tendency of the disc-val vc r to
hoist its front wheel in the air· the bike goi ng
ligh t at the mid point of ea ch di rection cha nge;
a nd secondly, they had re-awakened pain in
his righ t w rist, from the inju ry that pu t him
out late last year.
H e wa s just over th ree- ten ths beh ind
Dooha n. Just behind him" by the narrow ma rgin of one-te nth, Ca rlos Chcca took up the role
vaca ted by Criville as chief Honda-in-waitin g.
He was looking once again like a ma tu ring
threat, a fter a hiccup ea rlier in the sea son.
And the last front-row denizen: Iurgen van
de n Goo rbergh, on yet another v- rwtn. Three
cheers a nd more came from the Dut ch crowd,
bravi ng the wi nd and drizzle on the trackside
banks, wh en van den Goo rbcrgh w heeled his
priva teer NSR500V arou nd a single marvelous
fas t la p on sof t qualifying Dunlop» - "co mpletely smooth, with no slid ing . . - tha t pu t him
fourth overa 11 He was a little surp rised, him self.
"Yeste rday I W3!' seven th, and I was hoping it w ou ld rain this afte rnoon so I could
kee p th at p os i tion: ' t he Dutchm an s a id .
. . Instead, it was drv, and I'm fourth."
Two twin!' on 'the front ro w, only one on
the seco nd : Tadvuki Oka da led the row. also
fInding tha t tho trock WitS lrulkin g him fecI his
rt"Cent in juries. At lea st the re wert.~ no mo re
ove r-the- handlebar adventu res this time. Alex
Barros w as close. his times now stretchin g
towa rd tv.·o seconds slow er than Dooh an "s,
a nd even 1.2 secon ds s low er than va n den
The first race of the da y was a typi cal
125-fes t, with 11 bikes contesting th e
lead until the closin g stages. Not amonll
them was Garry McC oy, who led the
first laps before easing back to third to
let the gang get sorted out a bit. His
Marlboro Aprilia responded by seizing
with only six laps left to the finish. '"
thought I could win that one;' he sa id .
Maybe so, but for the remarkable
Rossi. He also led at one point - one of a
large number of riders to do so - but had
dropped to near the back of the group
aft er he sta rted having brake trouble.
"Then they cooled down and started
to wor k again, and I th ough t again 1
must attac k." Rossi said .
He d id lea d the las t thr ee la ps, but
that d oesn 't tell the story: In the last one,
for instance, he'd been pu shed back to
fou rth by the tim e they reached the end
of the ba ck straig ht . He mov ed to seco nd under braking a t tha t p oin t, and
regained the lead at the left-handed Bult
corne r, never to be hea ded again.
The gangly teen-ager lived up to his
showman image, stopping on the track
to pick up a Superman cape emblazo ned
with the legend "Superfum i." This is a
reference to the mock -Japanese name he
sometimes adopts - Rossifumi,
Though the g roup had stretched out
a little o n th e last lap and dropped to
eight rid ers, th ey were still all covered
by just over 1.5 second s. Tomo mi Manako just held off Katzu to Sakata for seco nd, w ith N oboru Veda another tw otenths behind . Then came Youichi Vi's
Yama ha, and th en a sma ll gap to Jorge
Martinez, Masaki Toku dome and Roberto Loca tell i.
Rossi is sta r ti ng to domin ate o n
Goorbcrgh's , making the Dutchman' s performance more impressive ~ for Barros was making good prugrt:Ss himself, fastest in the wet
on Friday morning.
Nobuatsu Aoki wa s an other three-tenths
adrift. Luca Cadalora was the first of the nonHonda v-fours, hall a tenth off the H onda. In
fact, Criville' s time put him between this d ose
pa ir, but his absence freed the last place on
row two for the Red Bull Ya ma ha. Cadalora
had expected more, and had been faster in the
morning, but ran into,problems looking for the
tires in the afternoon.
Assen rather unexpectedly favored the Elf
500s and, for the firs t time, cx~250 man Iurgen
Fuchs was faster tha n hi s more e xpe rienced
tea mmate Juan Borja. "Because," he said, "for
the first time, I've had a full practice session
wit hout some sort of mechanical trouble."
The Suz ukis were next, Daryl Beattie a coupie of tenths quicker tha n Anthony Gobert, the
latter promo ted to row three because of Criville . He took mo re than two second.s off fro m
the first to the seco nd day, an d was impressive
in the we t, placin g fifth in his firs t-ever 500cc
ride on we t tires.
T roy Corser was next, also picking up
slightly; then ca me Ta kuma Aoki, su fferi ng
from the Asscn firs t-timer effect. A lberto Pufg,
apparently slip ping back toward a slump, and
a baffled Norifumi Abe, whose on ly consolation was that he 'd been much highe r in the
morn in g, w he n it did n ' t matter, ending u p
seventh ra ther than his offlci.l 116th.
Aus tra lia n Kir k McCa r th v was the onlv
othe r victim of the track, falli ng in the final
session a nd suffering broken bones and a di.....
located toe.
Assen"s wi de--open spaces ma ke the 2505
loo k (in Wimblt'Clon week) rather like lad ies '
tennis : smooth a nd skillful " but 1(1C"king the
clout of the SOOs. They n'Ulde up for it by being
close, th e first half dozen all bu t w ithin the
same seco nd. With a lap time of more than
two min u tes, tha t's a small margin. Even so, it
was un e xp e C"ted to :-If'€' Ma x Bia gg i a t the
wrong en d of it.
Olivier Jacque moved to the fro nt in the
tina] sess io n " gaining four-tenths on early
leader Loris Capirossi after mechanics got his
eng ine up to speed on Friday morning . He
wa s on pole