German GP: TSR race notes

TSR Race
World Championship Grand Prix Rd. 9
125cc #50 Andrea "Ballero" Ballerini

Cinzano Motorrad GP Deutschland

Position: DNF

Did Not Finish. Our second non-finish of the season and the cause was due to a broken gear shifter linkage.

After looking hard at the machine set-up last night we made some changes for today and in the morning warm-up session things looked promising as Andrea improved his lap time by half a second over yesterday's best in qualifying. We still had a small problem with the wear of the front tyre but made the gamble of using harder compound for the race.

Andrea made a reasonable start and made progress on the first lap ending in 22nd place. He was together with Cecchinello who made a poor start from his 5th position on the grid. Hoping that Andrea would follow him through the pack was delayed by Nohles as Andrea could make a pass stick until two laps later and by then Cecchinello had pulled too much of a gap.

Already by lap 4 Andrea had again posted a personal best lap. He then was caught with Nohles as he attacked back but the pair of them was slowly gaining on the group in front. But just as we came to half distance Andrea failed to appear and then entered the pits seconds later with the broken gearshift. The connection bolt had snapped in two pieces and was impossible to change gear and the race was over.

A bad finish to a bad weekend. After losing Friday to the poor engine performance and making chassis settings to suit only to have to start again when we found the missing performance on Saturday. Also, Andrea did not feel comfortable with circuit, which did not help.

-tsr-