Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1990's

~ ROADRACE World ChampioDship Sup_erb_ik_e_Se_ri_es:_R_ou_D_d _7 ~. ~~ Giancarlo Falappa (9), Raymond Roche (2) and Doug Polen (1) in an all-Ducati battle. Roche cool in Italian heat By Gary Pinehin Photos by J ohan Vandeckerhove MUGELLO,ITALY, JULY 19 n the searing heat of Mugello, with the temperature into the 90s, Raymond Roche played it cool to take two-bitterly fought all-Ducati duels iIi this seventh round of the Diesel Jeans World Superbike Championship. In two hectic I8-lap, 58.66-mile races, Roche showed his privately entered, factory Ducati to be marginally faster than the official Team Police bikes of Doug Polen and Giancarlo Fa1appa right where it mattered - in the final drag race from the last corner to the checkered flag. Roche went into the meeting trailing champi~nship leader Rob Phillis by 33 points and second placeman Doug Polen by 22, bu,t with maximum points on the day, he is third overall - but now only 14 points behind new series leader, Polen. While Polen, the defending World Champion, has the points lead, it was , a frustrating day for him. In the first leg his motor lost its edge midway through the race, then in the second leg, a wrong tire choice meant he could not get the drive off the all-important final turn. For Phillis it was much worse as he slips to second in the standings and is under pressure from Roche. The Team Moving Kawasaki rider saw his points lead disappear when he crashed out of the first leg and could only finish a distant fifth in the second, hampered by tire problems. Falappa's continued form takes him closer to the championship leader. With some typically forceful riding on the Police Ducati, he grabbed a third and second - and is only eight points behind Roche. . Fabrizio Pirovano had a disappointing weekend on the factory BYRD Yamaha. Plagued by suspension troubles in qualifying, they continued into the race and he could only muster fifth in race one after a battle with Yamaha privateer Adrien Morillas. Pirovano crashed out of the second race after a coming together with Virginia Ferrari. Fred Merkel had an even worse time. I 18 For the first time since coming back from injury, Merkel looked on the pace and qualified seventh but was a retirement in both races. In the first leg he was in the leading quartet until his motor blew and clutch failure put him out of the second leg. Rich Arrtaiz kept the Stars and Stripes flying with a brilliant ninth place on the 199I-spec Rumi Honda RC30 in the first leg - by far his best result of the season. He didn't get such a good start in race two and finished 12th. Qualifyirig The Ferrari-owned facility- at Mugello might be in Ducati country, but it was by no means all red on the front row of the grid after three sessions of qualifying in stifling hot sunshine. Predictably, though, it was a Ducati on pole. Frenchman Roche was fastest for the second meeting in succession. He was running Michelin race rubber in the final session with a one-minute, 58.126-second lap. After his hot lap, Roche took a shoulder massage to relieve overworked muscles and quipped: ''I'm too old for this, maybe I should drive cars. It is hard work around here, many changes of direction. " Italian Falappa was second quickest with a 1:58.470, but revealed his time was also set on race rubber and not on Dunlop qualifiers. "We had no time to try the qualifying tires," said Falappa. "It is good to know my best lap was on the same tire I will use in the race. Falappa was the center of attention after an outburst in Friday's Italian national sports daily, Gazzetta Della Sport, in which he claimed he was receiving inferior equipment to Polen during Friday's practice. Falappa denied the story saying, "I told the journalist we had a small problem, but suddenly it is a major problem in the newspaper. " Polen said that as far as he knows, everyone with Dunlop contracts are on -,--- the same tires. He added: "It is up to Falappa to make the choice of how to set up his motorcycle." Polen was fourth on the leaderboard with a 1:58.770, just over a 10th of a second slower than third placed Rob Phillis. The Texan had struggled both days to find the optimum geometry setup to suit the flowing track and when he was finally ready to go for a really quick lap, his team got the sticky qualifying Dunlops on too late and Polen took the checkered about five seconds too early on what would have been his fast lap. Phillis was hauling on the solitary Team Moving Kawasaki. He clocked, his quick lap on an 1865-spec Michelin then pitted for a slightly softer 1866 (the same compound Roche set pole with) and went out for a hot lap, but was thwarted in his 'efforts when the battery went flat. He coasted back to the pits with a dead motor. "Shit, I could have done a 57," he said. "But I'm happy, the bike is really going well and I'm looking forward to tomorrow. The start will be important but I don't think we're going to see a whole load of bikes up front this weekend. Maybe for the first few laps, but this is a real scratcher's circuit and after that you'll see the good guys with the best tires movipg clear." Surprise package on the front row was Frenchman Adrien Morillas on little more than a kitted privately entered 1991 FZR750R OWOl Yamaha. "I can do one, maybe two fast laps but it will not be possible in the race. It is really hard work," said the 34-yearold former 500cc GP rider. Merkel was back in the ballpark for the first time since hurting his ankle in pre-season testing at Monza. Merkel posted seventh fastest time, two tenths slower than sixth-placed Belgian Stephane Mertens, with a 1:59.691 clocked in the first session on Saturday. "I was on the fourth row in Spain, third row in Austria and second row here. I'm climbing that big tree," he said with a grin. "I think I can be up there in the race. The Yamaha is really good off the line and it's not too bad coming off the second row." BYRD Yamaha teammate Pirovano qualified back in II th place, complaining of a badly pattering front end all weekend. He didn't quite break the two minute barrier with a 2:00.65. In front of him, in the 59s, were an impressive Virginia Ferrari on a Team Grottini Ducati, Daniele Amatriain (Marlboro Ducati) and Carl Fogarty, who borrowed Amatriain's spare motor to clock a 1:59.907 after only completing six laps in the previous two sessions.Arnaiz qualified his Rumi Honda on the fourth row of the grid with a 2:00.64. But there were II riders cutting two equal times and Arnaiz was only two tenths slower than his teammate Baldassarre Monti, and the latter had - the latest '92 spec RC30, while Arnaiz was on the 1991 bike. Race one With the temperature soaring into the 90s, Pirovano charged into the lead from the fourth row. Ferrari also got away well in second followed by Polen, Merkel, Monti, Roche, Lindholm, Morillas, Mertens and Falappa. Pirovano only led for one lap before Mertens took up the running, the Yamaha rider already struggling with front end patter in the chicane and the long final turn. The BYRD team had switched to steel discs after qualifying in a bid to increase front end weight, 'and Ohlins had made some suspension changes but he was still losing drive _ off the turns after being forced to back off mid-corner. Pirovano also preferred the steel discs saying that the course didn't require a lot of heavy braking but a lot of feathering of the brakes and the carbons did not offer enough feel. BYRD teammate Merkel was an early retirement, pulling up on the third lap when his engine broke at the end of the start/finish straight. He hobbled back to the pits to the sympathetic cheers of the crowd. Meanwhile, the now familiar superbike battle up front was shaping'up. At one-third distance - six laps Mertens still led with Pirovano clinging on to second place but under extreme pressure from Roche, Polen, Falappa, Phillis and Fogarty. Only 1.2 seconds separated them, then came Morillas, a gap to Ferrari and Lindholm, then another gap to Arnaiz, Amatriain et all. Morillas actually tagged onto the lead group two laps later, a really impressive effort on nothing more than a kitted Yamaha. ' But the race for the lead had a distinctly red look to it. Mertens, Roche, Falappa and Polen were the front runners, all over each other in the turns with Mertens just holding them off by virtue oCsome brave late braking. Lap 10 and Phillis had gone missing. He lost the front end under braking at the top end of the course and slid off, almost taking Polen with him. Polen said, "He was right there in the middle of the corner, scrubbing off speed real quick as he slid. I had nowhere to go and lost a lot of time avoiding him." Phillis said, "Falappa nearly ran me off the track in the chicane so I was trying to make up some ground. I just got in too hot on the brakes. I guess I was still a bit angry from what happened before." Sure enough, next time around Mertens, Roche and Falappa were clear. And Morillas had overtaken Pirovano's factory bike for fifth. Roche took the lead on lap 12 when Mertens' engine died momentarily going into turn one. "This is not the first time this has happened," said Mertens of a possible fuel pick-up problem that he suffered at Hockenheim. Almost a second back came Polen and a little further back MoTillas, still holding off Pirovano. Fogarty was off the back and struggling. "It was okay while I could draft but I didn't have good grip on the front end," said Fogarty. "It was like on marbles in some of the corners, pattering all across the road. It meant I was losing drive out of the corners." Morillas was also in trouble, albeit only briefly. "The rear brake packed up,"he said. "A:nd it took me a little bit of time to work out what happened." A lap later Polen had forged back among the leading trio and we looked set for another great superbike finale. But Roche had other ideas; on the 16th lap he suddenly had a 1.55-second break and next time around it was nearly two seconds after cutting his fastest lap of the race. With one lap to run, Mertens was suddenly off the back and out of touch with Falappa/Polen. Mertens had gear selection problems and twice hit neutral going into the turns and almost crashed one time. It was his first race with the Tellert electronic shifter. Mertens' crew set about disconnecting the system for the second leg. Roche crossed the line to win his third superbike race of the year - but his first since winning the second

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