Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

... rid ers chose th e wron g tir es - they went w it h tire s th at offer better grip and fee l. even though th ey were unlikely to last ra ce d istance ," Michelin G P manager Ja cqu e M orelli said. "T he race winner chose a tire tha t co u ld go th e d istance." When all w as said an d done, Criville h ad ex pa n ded hi s p oints lea d to 4 1 p oint s , 23 0-1 89, o v er Okad a , with Rob erts ba ck to third at 179. " I stilI can 't believe thi s r esult," en thused CriviIle , and h e wasn ' t the only one. " I think th at w as one of th e best races of m y ca reer." M arlboro Yamaha ' s C arl os Checa managed to s tay upright through an e ve ntfu l firs t two comers and finished . fourth, barely in fr ont of C riv ille, with RepsoI H ond a ' s Sete Gibernau at the back of the th reesom e in sixth after bli stering a ti re. " I'm angry a t m ys elf because th e tire proble m was my fau lt," Gibernau said. "I have nothing to blame on Michelin. I (Above) The battle for victory went to the very end with .Tadayukl Okada just beating Max Biaggi and Regis Lacon l for his thi rd win of the seaso n. (Bel ow) Alex Criville (3), Sete Gibern au (15) and Alex Barros (5) do battle. Cri ville ended up finishing fifth with Gibernau sixth. Barros chunked a tire. Goey's return to GP racin T wo weeks after not showing up for the final AMA race at Pikes Peak, Antho ny Gobert stuffed hims elf into a set of red Vance & Hines Ducati leathers, climbed onto the MuZ Weber SOD, and took to the track in his native Australia - first in a test at a scratcher' s track in Broadford , then for real at the Australian GP at Phillip Island . The GP would be the first of his two rid es on the MuZ, with the possibility that he'd also do the final tw o rounds in South America. "Early in the year I never expected to be riding a 500 so soon," said Gobert, who was rep lacing th e fired Lu ca Cada lora . "I thought I was going to have to wait maybe even a couple more years. It's been good to get an opportunity:' Having not been on a 500cc GP bike for over 2 1/2 vea rs, there was an adjustment period, a lot of which had to do with tires. "T he biggest pa rt for me at the moment is the Michelin tires," Gobert said in a press conference at the end of Friday's qua lifying sess ion. "I've been on Dunlop" prett y much my whole caree r. The Michelin tire is really hard to come to grips with mainly because you don't get anywhere near the feel you get with Dunlops. "A Ducati on Dunlop tires is a little bit like riding a couch around, really," he continued. "It's really, really rider friendly . You can get to a point and you can just stomp on the gas. With a SOD, even if you get to quarter-thr ottl e, it wants to nearly highside you. You've just got to nurse the throttle everywhere around here . I'm starting to keep more com er speed and bu ild up. That's the main thing with the SOD. With the Michelin , they grip so much more than the Dun lop, but when they break away they're really violent. And the SOD, being a shorter wheelbase and everything, as soon as you get the thing sideways and it bites, there 's not really much underneath you to keep you going forward . The thing just tanks laps you or spits you off." Originally the team thought sixth place would be wher e he should finish, but the target keeps moving . "Earlier on they had pretty high expectations, as I did," he said . "Realistically, I've been away from it for a while, the tires changed, and the bikes change and even the circuit here, with a new resurfacing, is like a tota lly different race track. It's a lot to learn over a short period, and we're doing the best that we can at the mom ent. I am really riding cautious . I don' t want to ge t caught out and get an injury at this point because it would ruin everything:' Asked what it would take for Gobert to stay on the team , team owner Rolf Biland replied, "I would say both sides have to be happy. Not on results only:' Which is a good thing, because Gober t found out quickly that sixth was something of a stre tch. "To be honest, earl y on, I mean every one wants to finish on the podium," he said. "I think from being here today and seeing the pace that these guys are doing and realizing that the SOD, even thou gh I had experi ence on it and I came to grip s with it before, because I've been on a Ducati, it' s a total different bike and rid ing st yle. It's kind of ha rd just to jump back on a 500 and ada pt straight away. I find that the hard est thing is on the Ducati I could keep really high corner-speed and be sort of easy getting the power down. But with the 500, it doesn't seem to work. I know I need to rush in more on the front and sort of tum it and driv e off. Those kind of things are really the hard est thing that I've been finding. I know it's going to take time. I'm trying to do it, only I'm trying to learn the tires, trying to get a good setup, tr yin g to learn a line ar ound the race tra ck . I didn 't think it wo uld be any different, bu t the lines are totally different. It's like a who le new place to me. There's a lot more things to take in than I expected . I'm just hoping for a good . a top 10, a strong top 10 would be nice: ' Gobert blamed his absence from the final AMA Superbike race at Pike's Peak on a motocross crash . He said he returned to Aust ralia for treatment and rest, and was able to get back on a motocro ss bike just prior to the GP. Of finishing his two-year stint in the U.S., Gobert said, "I like to think that I just got out of jail. It's kind of like I feel like I just served a sentence. In jail that's all you get to do is think. That's all I've been doi ng over there. I felt like I got a bit of a harsh deal. I feel that now I've really served my time. Hopefully , while I'm on parole at the moment, hopefully I don' t do anyt hing wro ng." Having won five races, Gober t felt racing in the U.S. was too easy. In a question-and -an swer press rel ease the team offe red, Gobert was asked abou t his fitness. "I went through a stage where I tried to see how fat I could be and still win. I won some races where I hardly could do my leathers up." The team has expressed interest in keeping Gobert for next year, bu t he said he's been speaking with the World Superbike teams of Ducati, Honda, and Yamaha . chose th e wrong tir e and of th os e rid ers that m ad e t he same choice as m e, I' m the o nl y o ne to finis h w it hou t a problem." Then th ere was a slig h t ga p to Aussie . h omebo y Gar ry M cCo y, the Red Bull Yam aha WCM rid er . Team Suzu ki ' s N obuatsu Aoki w as ei g h th with rear brake problems fro m th e o u tse t, t w o -tenths in fro n t o f Kanemoto Nettaxi Honda's Jo hn Kocinski, with Roberts 10th. Ap rilia's Valentino Rossi m a y n ot have committed to anyone fo r next year, but this year he's committed to winning th e 250cc World Championship, and he contin ued o n the inexorable march with a n arro w vic to ry a t th e fro n t of a swarming qua rt et in Aus trali a . Rossi was out ea rly in a p ack of four and m os tl y co ntrolled th e pace, d ropping ba ck past mi drace to save his tires before m a kin g a definitive p u sh a t the end . H e ret oo k the lead o n th e 20th of 25 laps, losing it fo r o ne lap, before ta king th e s p o t for good and s peed in g to the line .103 of a second in front of Chester field Yamaha T ech 3'5 Olivier Ja cque. The power of Rossi 's Aprilia was simply too much for Jacque's Yamaha to o verco me. "I close the door, I m ake a good lap time and I w in," Ross i sa id . S'The struggle was very, very hard," Jacque said . "As Rossi had sa id, he ha s good top-speed a nd I couldn't take th e l e ad in the r a c e because I kn ew I c o u ld n' t k e ep it a t th e e n d of t he straight." Third in th e fou r-rid er pack was Sh ell Advance 's Tohru Ukawa, with Jacq ue's teammate Shinya akano a close fo urth . Rossi to akano was covered by .796 of a secon d . Rossi co nti nues to extend his ch ampionship lead . With three ra ce s to go, en en en M ~ CD .Q o t> o 7

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