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RACE WATCH
Doohan okay in Spanish, Italian GPs
The 500cc world roadracing championship aspirations of Michael Doohan got two shots in the arm at the Spanish and Italian Grands Prix, as the Australian rode his Rothmans Honda NSR500 to victory in both races. With these two wins—the second and third of his GP career—added to his runner-up placings in the first three races of the season in Japan. Australia and the U.S., Doohan has moved into the series points lead.
Defending Champion Wayne Rainey characteristically took the early lead in the Spanish race at Jerez on his Team Marlboro Roberts Yamaha YZR500, but he was slowed by a front tire problem and had to settle for third. Rainey's younger teammate, I 990 250ee World Champion John Kocinski. finished 10 seconds behind Doohan to claim second, his best-ever result in a 500cc race.
A week later, at Misano in Italy. Kocinski finished nine seconds behind Doohan to again claim second, while Rainey again had tire problems. pitting early to change the rear and finishing ninth.
Perhaps the most impressive performance in Italy, however, was that of Eddie Lawson. The fourtime 500cc world champ rode his Cagiva V591 to a third-place finish, much to the delight of the partisan crowd. That finish ties the previous best-ever result by a Cagiva—Randy Mamola's third place in the rainsodden 1988 Belgian GP—and is the best result by a Cagiva in a dry race.
U.S. Superbike champ Doug Chandler also did well in Italy on his “privateer" Kenny Roberts-backed Yamaha, his sixth place the finest result of his fledgling, five-race-old GP career.
What of Kevin Schwantz, referred to on these pages not long ago as “The Fastest of Them All?" Though
he hasn't fallen off this season, he's had his share of bad luck. Schwantz retired his Lucky Strike Suzuki RGV500 with a holed piston in Spain, and struggled to a seventhplace finish with tire problems in Italy. He now lies fifth in the standings behind Doohan. Rainey, Kocinski and Lawson.
In the 250cc ranks, German Helmut Bradl earned his first GP win in Spain, ending Italian Luca Cadalora's three-race win streak in the process. Cadalora, who finished second in Spain, returned to top form in Italy, where he nipped Bradl by .009 of a second to take the win. With four victories in five attempts, Cadalora leads the point standings over Bradl and Spaniard Carlos Cardus; all three ride Honda NS R 2 50s.
Polen on top of the world
W ith wins in three of the first four legs, Texan Doug Polen and his Fast By Ferracci Ducati look like the combination to beat in this year's World Superbike Championship.
Polen began the season in fine form with a win in the first leg at England's Donington Park, but his hopes for an overall victory on the
day expired along with his motor in the second leg. This left the door open for Stephane Mertens—now riding a Ducati after two seasons on Hondas—to take the win, a blessing for the Belgian, as he'd crashed out of the earlier race.
In Spain, Polen passed Australian Kawasaki rider Rob Phillis to win leg one by a comfortable margin, and then held off fellow Ducati pilots Mertens and Raymond Roche to win leg two by l .5 seconds.
The odds of the only two men
ever to wear the World Superhike Champion crow n repeating are already looking pretty unlikely, as both Frenchman Roche and American Fred Merkel have had problems. Roche posted fine finishes in the second leg of each round—second in England and third in Spain —hut he has not been as lucky in the first legs. In England, his Ducati expired in a cloud of smoke, and in Spain he was one of the victims of a ninerider first-turn pileup.
Merkel’s season has been even worse. In England, his Team Rumi Honda RC30’s motor failed him twfice, and in Spain he was involved in the same pileup as Roche, and then crashed out of the next race as well, taking British Yamaha rider Terry Rymer with him.
Match Races anything but
lí may have taken them more than 200 years, but the British finally got revenge for their loss to the Americans in the Revolutionary War.
Only this time it was even more painful for the losers.
After a long hiatus, the TransAtlantic Superbike Challenge—formerly known, simply, as the Match Races—has been reincarnated. But unlike the old Match Races, which saw bonafide world championshipcaliber riders racing GF two-strokes, the modern races featured mostly national-level riders on four-stroke Superbikes. There was one exception, however—the Norton Rotary, ridden with charasmatic flair by “Rocket” Ron Haslam. one-time master of the G F push-start.
Six 1 5-lap races were held over two successive days, the first at Mallory Park and the second on the short circuit at Brands Hatch. Both of these are what the British refer to as “scratcher's" tracks with sub-lminute lap times, to which the American riders had trouble adapting.
When the racing was over. Muzzy Kawasaki rider Scott Russell emerged as the top American points scorer in seventh place overall. Unknown Brit Ray Stringer was the top rider, having won all three races at Mallory on his Yamaha FZR 1000powered OWO I. I iaslam won two of the races at Brands Hatch and ex-GP star Rob McElnea won the third on his Eoctite Yamaha OWO I.
Commonwealth Honda teammates Miguel DuHamel and Richard Arnaiz. were both eliminated in crashes at Mallory's notorious Devil's Elbow, with DuHamel requiring hospitalization fora bruised kidney and broken w rist and Arnaiz reinjuring the hand he hurt at Daytona.
The remainder of the American squad—Two Brothers Racing's Freddie Spencer, Vance & Hines' Jamie James and Thomas Stevens. Muzzy Kawasaki’s Jacques Guenette, and privateers Michael Barnes, Marcello del Guidice and John Fong—all struggled.
The final, humiliating score was England 625, America 161.
Parker wins, but Carr leads
H arley-Davidson factory rider Scott Parker's wins in rounds three and four of the Camel Pro Series chipped away at. but didn't erase, teammate Chris Carr's lead in the point standings.
With Ascot Park now a vacant lot. the Southern California round found a new home at the fiveeighths-mile “half mile" at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds. Parker arrived in F.A. fifth in points, and he knew what he had to do: win. He did. too. in convincing fashion, running away with the 20-lap main event to w in by a straightaway over the third factory Harley-Davidson rider. Kevin Atherton.
Carr struggled with the wrong setup at Pomona and finished fifth behind Jay Springsteen and Camel
Challenge winner Steve Morehead.
A week later. Parker won again, taking his fifth consecutive win at the famed San Jose Mile. The winnumber 39. moving Parker to within one victory of all-time race-win leader Jay Springsteen’s 40—didn't come easy, though. Parker and Carr
crossed the finish line virtually neck and neck, with Keith l)av and his Honda right between them, a halfwheel behind in third. Two-time Camel Pro Champion Ricky Graham rode a Skip Eaken-tuned Honda to fourth, not quite a bikelength ahead of Atherton.
Parker’s second win in a row moved him to within nine points of' Carr in the series standings.
Ronnie Jones, co-points leader w ith Carr coming into Pomona, couldn’t get his Garvis I fonda RS750 handling right and finished l 2th there. At San Jose, Jones fell on the warm-up lap—taking eventual third-place finisher Day with him — injured one finger and tore the nail off another, and sat out the race. He now lies third in points.
LaRocco, Bradshaw, Stanton all win, but nobody can stop Bayle
W ith three rounds remaining in the l 8-race Camel Supereross Series, all Team Honda's Jean-Michel Bayle has to do to become the first foreign champion since Pierre Karsmakers won in I 974 is finish no worse than I 9th. Once.
That shouldn't be too hard for the
Frenchman, a former 125 and 25()cc world champion, especially considering that he’s already won seven races this year. His most recent win came four races ago, in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he upset local favorite Damon Bradshaw to win in a downpour. Since then, Bayle’s been able to relax a bit, finishing seventh, third and fourth in the next three races.
Team Yamaha's Bradshaw led the race in Charlotte, but crashed and remounted to finish 1 1th. a heartbreaker after the win there last year that saw him lauded in the manner normally reserved for rock stars. Bradshaw made up for it a week later in Dallas, though, where he took his third win of the season after a heated battle with Team Kawasaki's Jeff Ward.
Onlookers said that if Team Suzuki's Mike LaRocco ever got a holeshot. he'd win. Sure enough, in Las Vegas, he did just that, leading start to finish to take his first career supercross victory, and becoming only the fourth rider to win a supercross this year.
Two-time and defending champ Jeff Stanton hurt his shoulder and sat out both halves of the Pontiac doubleheader. And though he skipped the next race at Charlotte, he returned in time for the Dallas
race, just two weeks later. He finished fifth there and in Las Vegas, after falling once in each race, and he then held off Bradshaw to win the next race at the New Jersey Meadowlands. Stanton now holds third place in the standings, just four points behind Bradshaw.
