Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

Round 3: Austrian Grand Prix WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 500cc MOTOCROSS SERIES By Alex Hodgkinson SCHWANENSTADT, AUSTRIA, MAY 2 t was Andrea Bartolini who took the win - his first since breaking a femur at Namur last year - at Schwanenstadt on Sunday to end a two-year drought for the Rinaldi Yamaha team, but the home-turf heroes of the Austrian 500cc MX GP were Kurt Nicoll's KTM team. Shayne King not only gave the Austrian four-stroke its' maiden victory in race two, he did so just two hours after being unable to stand up due to back pains from a first-mota crash to register his first win since France in '97. Peter Johansson didn't finish either .race, but before his exit he was seconds per lap faster than everyone else. Louisiana's Trampas Parker moved to fourth in the standings despite a firstmoto nonfinish - and Bartolini was the only one of the series' top nine to complete both motos. Parker's second-mota third came after a charge from autside the top 10 on the two-stroke KTM. Light rain fell daily, bur no real downpours for many weeks meant that the track didn't berm up as usual. I §! ;. ~ i:i :E 34 Instead it became very, very fast, and' very, very bumpy. Hence the casualty rate. Last year's winner, Bernd Eckenbach, was out of the first moto after only three corners. "I collided with someone accelerating out of the turn, went down and (Francisco) Garcia could not miss me," he said. "The bike was wrecked." Up front, Joel Smets had gated second to Yves Demaria, but he only lasted a lap and a half. "We will look to see what broke when we get home, but 1 think it was the rocker arm," Smets said. Alessandro Puzar, a.six-time winner at the track, was right at the back - 37th after a lap. '1 had the gate next to my teammate (Andrea) j3artolini and he came across me as we accelerated from the start," puzar said. "I was still around eighth, but then I stalled the motor on the first lap." Bartolini inherited third when Smets went out, and he then made dramatic midrace passes on Rob Herring and Yves Demaria. "Andrea (Bartolini) got us both the same way: charging up the inside into corners and pushing us off the line," Herring said. "He took Demaria right off the track and that let me back to second." Bartolini was genuinely hanging on at the end. "We were all riding a similar pace in the early laps, but I pushed hard after 20 minutes and got to the front," Bartoloni said. "The last five laps were very hard for me, though. I was very tired, but I wasn't going to give up'the win." ''We have finally started to get the suspension sorted out," Darryl King said after chasing home fellow Husky rider Demaria for fourth. Daryl's brother Shayne was in agony. Pushed downfield by a collision with Jochen Jasinski, he was making tracks until, in his words, "the yellow flag was being held so far off-line, no one could' see it and I came around a turn to finc;! someone lying in the track. I was just getting up and someone else came and hit me square in the back. I couldn't even stand up for half an hour after that." The four-stroke KTMs had wrecked the start for each other as they collided coming out of the gate, and Johansson had been 16th on lap one. "I just cannot believe how fast Peter The Austrian 500cc Grand Prix gets under way with Andrea Bartolini (5) getting the jump on the field in turn one, followed by Yves Demaria (110) and Willie Van Wessel (16). (Johansson) is riding this weekend," admitted team manager Kurt Nicoll. The 33-year-old Swede, just 14 months younger than his boss, was fifth by haIf-distance. "Then the motor started to make very loud noises and oil was spewing out of a ..crack in the clutch casing," he said. "I could have won. I was pulling back three seconds every lap on the leaders." Parker had already vacated that fifth when, according to him, "the clutch basket exploded." Demaria swept to the front again in race two but stalled halfway around the lap. King led on the thumper - built just 20 miles away at Mattighofen - and Johansson was soon past Eckenbach for second as the German struggled to hold on, his shoulder having been tweaked again in his first-moto crash. On lap seven, Johansson took over at the front.

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