Doohan triumphs

Michael Doohan increased his lead in the 500 world championship to 43 points with his fifth victory of the year on his factory Honda, and brought the overall number of Grand Prix wins for Honda up to 400. From a hesitant start Doohan took the lead at the end of Mistral Straight on the eighth lap and went on to beat Carlos Checa, on a Honda, by just over four seconds.

“The start light went green and then went off and I hesitated because I thought the race might be re-started,” explained the defending champion.There was a brave third place ride from Tadayuki Okada who crashed and injured his right hand and banged his head during the morning warm-up.

He was only given the all clear to ride minutes before the start.

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Castrol-backed Honda riders Max Biaggi and Ralf Waldmann were involved in a titanic 250cc race battle with eventual winner Tetsuya Harada, who gave the Aprilia team a first victory of the season. Harada, who had not been a winner since the Indonesian GP 14 months ago when he was a Yamaha rider went to the front on the 18th lap of 29 and just managed to hold off continued attacks from the Honda riders to win by four hundredths of one second.

Loris Capirossi on a second factory, Arilia was in the first place duel until the 23rd lap when he ran wide and dropped back to fourth.