Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

I ast-lap pas s tha t earn ed him the win in he 125cc Gr and Pri x. OXS Ma tt eoni' s irko Gia nsa nti was his victim, d roping th e It ali a n 0.431 se con d s bac k . hird p lace was where the action was, ith Team Yamaha Kurz Ara l's Youichi i emerging the bes t of a fou r-rider batle . Vi had be en forc ed off the track hen he was hit by the crashing Tornoi Manako. He battled back with less han three laps to go to take third. With seven races to go, Sakata leads 5- ye ar-old Marco Melandri of th e enetton Matt e oni te am, 156-110. eland ri was fourth toda y , not far hind Vi. He takes over sole possession f seco nd plac e, with Team VGT3000's anako slip ping to third in the points fte r cras h in g out of th e lead o n th e inth of 26 laps. He leaves Donington ark with 97 points. 500cc GRAND PR IX Crafar took con trol of this race on the ifth lap and never look ed back. He did ook at his pit board, and he saw a numer wh ich grew lar ger wi th every pass- (Above) Blaggl (6) raced with Sete Glbernau (15) until the Spa niard encountered mechanical p rob lem s t hat dropped him out of the race. Blaggl ended up s ixth and now tra ils Doo han by seven po ints. (Right) Tet suya Harada (31) leads the 250cc Grand Prix wh ile his teammate Val entino Rossi (45) gets h igh -sided from his Ap rlHa early in th e race. ing lap. At one point he was adding half a s ec o n d p er lap to his le ad , which topped out at 12.047 seconds on the 27th of 30 laps. Doohan had tak en some time ge tting around Abe, and the expected . charge was eagerly awaited. It never came, and Crafar was home free, with very little excitem ent excep t for trying to bab y his tires home in the last qu art er of the race. "I was try ing 100 percent at leas t the first two-third s of the race," Crafar sai d . "A n d e ve n th ou gh I saw (fro m) m y board (that) the plus was getting bigger, I couldn't believe it. All I could think was Mick (Doohan) was having trouble getting p ast somebody and t h e n he would come back in a big hurry in the end , so I tried to make the ga p as big as possible bec ause I knew I had a bit of trouble at the end because of the tires so I jus t kept going:' Crafar said running out front by himself was mentally strenuous. "I wa s havin g a little bit of trouble concen trationwise," he said. " It was easie r for me to keep going 100 p e rcent thinki ng I had to. Th e last three (laps) were quite all right because I backed right off. It's easier to have someone pushing you than having a gap like that:' Doohan's race was equally uneventful once he got around Abe . That happened on the sevent h lap. Abe stuck to him for it handful of laps , but gradually lost touch in th e se co nd half. By then Crafar w as too far gone and Doohan knew his tires weren' t up to it. He knew it befo re the race eve n started. "When the sun came ou t, we ga mbled on a d ifferent rear tir e," he sa id . Honda out Yamaha in R ed Bull Ya ma ha WCM 's Simon Crafar ended Honda's 's trin g of 26 consecutive po le pos itions by taking his first ever on a cool after noo n at Doning ton Park. The po le posi tion at Donington Park was the first for Yama ha since lean-Michel Bayle did the deed in the Czech GP in 1996. It was also the first pole po sition for Dunlop tires since Luca Ca dalora put the British brand on po le a t th e European GP at Ca talunya in 1995. Mo st im portantly, it was th e first pol e for Crafar an d th e Red Bull Yamaha WCM team. What no one knew for sure was whether it was the first time a Ne w Zea lander rid ing a Dunlop-shod Yamaha had 1x'Cl1 on the pole. In the end, it didn't matt er . Crafar did the lim e on a qualifying tire w hich the M ichelin riders com plain they don't have. Wh at th ey d o have, and w hat they u se, is the softest-eom pound tire available, so mething Repsol Honda's Mick Doohan tried to fit at the end of the ses sion . Bu t Doo ha n had badly ju dged th e lim e remaining, an d there wasn' t eno ugh for his team to fit a softie at the end of the session - so he had to settle for second behind his fellow antipodean. "Rig ht through pra ctice, it d idn' t go as sm ooth as I would ha ve liked ," the 29-year -

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