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Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/127992
Round 2: Japanese Grand Prix WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP ROAD RACE SERIES _ ! By Michael Scott Photos by Gold & Goose MOTEGI, JAPAN, APR. 25 enny Roberts Jr. faced his toughest-ever racing test in the !Ii rain at Motegi on SUlCday. lIii ••• After leading his second GP III from the start, and as the rain redou-' ~ bled, he started to feel the hot breath of • multi-time World Champion Mick ~ Doohan down the back of his neck. Q Countless other riders have wilted under this pressure, and, as the gap closed down by up to a second per lap §! until it was less than three seconds with .... five of the 23 laps to go, it seemed that ~ the 25-year-old Malaysian GP winner ~ might be about to do the same. Not this guy. 18 . - His blue-and-white Suzuki sluing under braking and skipping through the puddles, Roberts upped his pace lap by lap until by the end he had opened it up to 3.8 seconds for a classic second successive win at the first-ever GP at the new Motegi Twin-Ring circuit outside Tokyo, where 61,000 fans braved the awful weather conditions for the inaugural race. "When I saw Mick was coming, I thought, 'Man, what do I do now? Do I wait for him or try and get away?' I don't have much experience of this sort of situation," said the 25-year-old son of a legend, nicknamed "American Express" by his delighted Suzuki team. Doohan was magnanimous in defeat, congratulating Roberts while explaining tha t his same-as-before Honda wasn't up to the challenge of a good rider on a rival bike. "The only thing Honda have changed is the paint - and it's not enough," Doohan said. "It was hard for me to pass to get into second, because I wasn't winning the drag races for once." He'd had to pass the fast-starting Yamahas of Carlos Checa and Norlfumi Abe, with Abe holding on to third though dropping back at the finish on his 1998-spec Antena 3 Yamaha. Checa lost more ground, finishing sixth behind the Repsol Hondas of Alex Criville and Sete Gibernau, who had changed places on the final lap. But the popular Marlboro Yamaha rider again had the satisfaction of finishing ahead of his i1lu~ious teammate Max Biaggi, If it's raining, it must be the Japanese. Grand Prix. The start of the 500cc Grand Prix at Motegi, with Kenny Roberts Jr. (111), Alex Barros (5), Mick Doohan (1) and the rest of the pack heading towards tum one. who was ninth after his "first race in the rain on a 500:' John Kocinski did not finish, with a second successive race crash while lying 11th on the Kanemoto Honda after starting again from the front row. Simon Crafar also crashed out on the Red Bull Yamaha on the first lap, and his teammate Regis Laconi on the second after briefly leading on the run into the first comer. Shinya Nakano made no mistakes on the Chesterfield Yamaha to claim his