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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127854
ROAD RACE WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROAD RACESER IES (Left) Doohan ce lebrates hi s win with Okada (left) and Barro s (right). (Below) Tetsuya Harada (31) battled with Ra il t A\t Pl 0 .... ~lt l .. S Waldman n (2) in the 250cc Grand Prix , with Waldmann w in nin g o n t he last lap. Ma na ko inci dent, and also bra ked too late and ran wid e, letting Ueda through . AXO Hon da rider Roberto Locatelli, bes t survivor of a big grou p, as well as Yoshiaki Kat o h and Mirko Gia nsan ti, ha d managed to get to the line be for e Manako had managed to scramble back o nto his bike and sa ve eighth place. " I kn ew I took a big risk at the last corne r," said Manako, "but so me times you ha ve to do things like that. I wanted to keep my championship chances alive." Rossi still d oes not have th e points ad vantage he need s to win th e champi onship, but it is surely only a matter of one mor e race. He now leads Ued a 245159, and can tie it up at the next round. • ha irp in, Har ad a regai ned the lead wi th a conve ntional pi ece of outbraki ng. Then cam e the last bend - and Wald mann's final at tack pushed Harada just a bit too far . Instead of closing the door around the left-ha nd hairpin, he was instead running wide and fighting the bike over th e bum ps - all while Waldmann slipped clea nly through to claim one of the bes t victories in his caree r. He was un derstandably thrilled. "It is r~v~n gt" for me, beca use Harada did the same thing to me her e last year ," Waldmann said . Ha rada also congratulated him. His erro r at the chicane had mean t he'd had to use his tires too hard in catching up, a nd Waldma n n ha d been just too stro ng, he ad mitted. Ca p irossi bla me d tire prob lem s for no t being able to stay with the pai r, but he had ma naged to rema in well clear of the battling Hond as . Jacqu e was stricken by a mysterious new prob lem ~ rea rw heel chatter, w hich meant he couldn' t use full power - though he did man age to fend off Ukawa to the flag . Bu t Biaggi was in rea l trouble, with his fami liar fron t-w heel cha tter. All the same, he managed to ge t to the front of the gro up by lap 15... only to crash at the Ma cl e ans ri g ht-h an d e r ne xt tim e around, the front tu cking und er be fore the bike we nt d own and he spu n into the gravel. "We' ve been dragging this problem aro u nd wi th u s a ll y ea r," he sa id, ad d ing glumly , "I don 't wa nt to say the championshi p is over for me, bu t the situation is looki ng worse and worse." Ind eed so , as he d ro p ped 22 points behind Ha rada wi th a second costly no- score. There was d rama aplenty behind the leading riders , w here the red oubtabl e Takes hi Tsujimura ma n aged to get ahead of th e problem s to finish six th, top privateer again, ahead of the equally solitary Stefan o Perugini . Lu is 0 ' An tin a nd Haru chika Aoki w ere scra p pi ng behind him until th e Spanish Yama ha ride r was thrown off in a huge high-side wit h five laps left at the last hairpin. This promoted Sebastia n Porto' s A prilia to ninth, his having moved ahead of Suzuki rid er Noriyasu Numata and Franco Battaini's Yamaha. Then came an other close pair, with wild card Scott Smart defeating regular Jose- Luis Ca rdoso for 12th. All the other wild card s also finished, with John McGuinness an d Callum Ramsa y ta kin g the fin a l points in fightin g s ty le . Ku r ti s Roberts was 18th and last. Both Gavira bro the rs, Estaquio and Id alio, crashed, as d id freque nt fa lle r Luca Boscos curo, [amie Rub inson was called in to sto p-and -go after j umping the start, and then T off at the chicane an try in g to get back into the pits. Aft er that, he retired. Biaggi's non-finis h could prove cos tly for his cha mpiunshi p ho pes. Har ada lead s fo r a se co n d race: h e ha s 18 2 poin ts to Wa ldmann's 176. Biaggi ha s 160, Jacque 139, and Uka wa 118. 125cc GRAND PRIX Pole-qualifier Youichi Ui, on his silve r Kurz Yama ha , took off to lea d fo r fou r laps befo re ra ttl ing to a s to p fa r away from home . This left Ross i appa rently co mforta bly out and poss ibly se t fur a breaka way , But Manako and Tokud om e were working we ll together and closed u p before lap 10, with Tok udo me taking the lead. The trio ba ttled o n all alo ne , Rossi in terru p ting Tom e-San's spell from laps 14 to 16. Th e n h e wa s .co ns ig n e d to third, an d Manako took h is place to menace his countryman's Aprilia. Toku dom e was left behind slig htly, however, as the final battle commenced o ver tw o breathtaking las t laps. Th ey were already cha nging places over and over again. Manak o led as they started the final lap. Rossi attacked a t tu rn one, but ran wi de o n th e ex it . At the "O ld Hairpin," Man a ko again held him off. Finall y, with two corne rs left, Rossi outbraked him into the Melbourne hairpin. On th e la st co r ner, Ros s i carn e in : tight un der brakes. HI did n't leave even eno ug h room for a bicycle, bu t he ca me th roug h a nyway," Manako sa id later. Bu t Manako was on the bumps and in trouble, an d he ra n wi de a nd then fell off, givin g Rossi his ninth win of th e yea r. To kudome was thus p romoted to a seaso n's-bes t second . It s ho uld ha v~ been Garry McCoy th ird, but for ano ther las t-corn er incid ent . Th e Aus t ra li a n had fo u g h t throu gh from 10th, and seemed to hav e the better of Noboru Ueda. Then he was di stracted by the yellow flags from the One more for Doohan M icha~l Dochan's eighth pole in succession was achieve in typical fashion : by dom inatd ing every session, then waiting until the very end to put on new tires and unde rline his superiority . This time, however, the last-minute ploy didn' t work. Dooha n had a skid on the last comer, with his feet off the pt.'g.. and didn't improve his time. Instead he was. les s s, than a tenth ahea d. uf Checa, who'd been moving up aU through the final sessio n after a crash on Friday . The unusually narrow margin didn' t wo rry him , said Doohan, who took the opportunity to comp lain aga in about people followi ng him . "They a m do ~ fast time behind me - why no t on their own?" Doohan said . The target this time was Alex Barros, who had been so close behind Doohan on the last lap that they nearly collided after the Austra lian 's slide. "Apart from anything else. it's dangerous to be that close. When I slid, I could hear Alex, and if I'd ho e gone down, the last thing 1 want w is for so meone to run straight into me from behind ." Barros did end up third , only the second time a priva te Honda v -rwln has made the front row. "This is a good track for us bec ause to p speed is not so important, and th e Vetwin is very fast in medium-speed and fast corners," Barros said . As a result. however, they would certainl y have a problem in a straight fight with a V-four, because Donington's sp lit-personality lap finishes with a slow chicane and two first-gear hairpins , the worst sort of going for the twins, with their rela tive sh ortage of acceleration. Dcria no Rcmbcni had been chasing Barros, but was knocked off the front row at the last ~as p by a har d-charging Tadayuki Okad a on a V-four, the Japanese rid er directl y following his best lap 'wi th a cra sh on the next one. This left the Aprilia to lead the second row from Nobuatsu Aoki's FCC v- four and Luca Cadalora 's Yamaha , with Kenny Roberts [r. in eighth, his bes t-ev er q ua lifying position a t a track that see ms to suit the V-thrt>ema chines. In fact. it had been teammate Jean-Michel Bayl e who was running faster, threatening a front -row start in the earlier stages and ridin g the- machine so hard it w as sk ipping and jumping under brakes and into the turns. It looked like a recipe for a crash, and he did fall o n Friday . When he- did so again on Sa tu rd ay, it W i! S more ,*,"OU;l;. The Frenchman broke bo nes in his left foot, d islocated his shoulder, and brok e the scaphoid bo ne in his wris t, putting himself out of th e ra ce. Times were close , with th e third ro w of the grid covered by less tha n tw o-tenths of a secand. Alber to Puig led Regis Leconi's V-twin Honda, No rifu mi Abe and Daryl Beattie. the lastnamed in rather better spirits than usual. in spite of his position, since he was just two-ten ths . off the second row. "The- problem here is the way everyone bunches up like cattle, " Beattie said . HIt's hard to get a clear lap in practice. and a-good start will be really important." Juan Borja led row four from the still-injured Takwna Aoki, Jurge n van d en Coo rbcrgh, and Anthony Gobe rt, battling to find the front-wheel grip you need get a good rhythm here. Kirk McCa rthy was battling in his first ride on d wo rks bike. "I didn't know w ha t to expect from a works bike, bu t I expected better than this: ' he said, flummoxed by how different it felt from his usual ROC. He was 21st out of 24 qualifiers . '0