1st Place ... Wayne Rainey
United States Grand Prix
There are over 40,000,000 motorcyclists in the world. One Sunday at Laguna Seca Raceway, these were the TOP 10
1ST Place ... Wayne Rainey
Racing to learn becomes racing to win
THE 1989 UNITED STATES Grand Prix was a race Wayne Rainey wanted. And it was a race he got, although a bizarre cool-off-lap crash that seriously injured his good friend and fellow racer Bubba Shobert turned what should have been a joyous victory into one that was, at best, bittersweet. At the fall of the green flag, Rainey streaked his Team Roberts Lucky Strike Yamaha YZR500 into a lead he would keep throughout all 40 laps of the USGP, despite crossing the finish line on the final lap nearly out of fuel.
Rainey predicted the win, though he carefully hedged his bets. During qualifying, he said, “I’ll be first . . . but in this game, you never know. There are so many good guys, so many good bikes, it’s all real, real close. I’ve got as good a chance as any of them.”
It was a chance augmented by much cool-weather tire testing, which paid off during this foggy, cool
Monterey weekend, and by an onboard computer system that monitored his mount’s behavior during practice and qualifying. The result was a bike that only second-place finisher Kevin Schwantz could keep in sight. “I got a little lead and just kept the hammer down,” said Rainey after the race.
Now in his second season on the grand prix circuit, Rainey assessed his year so far: “This season is right on course. Last year I was learning; this year I’m racing for the lead. Our tires are working good and I feel like I’m riding good. The bike could work a little better—it wants to wobble on transitions and under acceleration it’s moving around—but we’re working with damping and spring rates, and it’s better than what we started with.”
His Yamaha’s behavior was exacerbated by especially vicious acceleration provided by the short gearing the team runs on the hilly, 2.2-mile Laguna Seca track. Commented Rainey, “The bikes are so violent, you go from zero to 225 kilometers ( 140 mph) to zero. This is the slowest average-speed track of all the circuits we run on, but it’s the most demanding.”
Rainey, who finished fourth in this race last year just ahead of Schwantz, said of the pair’s improved racing prowess, “Kevin and I are closer than we were last year. (Wayne) Gardner’s there, Eddie (Lawson) is still getting used to the Honda, and Kevin and I have caught up.”
But catching up hasn’t been easy for Rainey, 28, who lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Downey. Becoming competitive, he said, requires “a good team, good tires, a good motorcycle and the drive to go out there and beat everybody. It takes good concentration, good endurance and good strength. I’ve had to work on those last two real hard. I’ve always had the ability, but I haven’t always had the confidence or the strength. But I’ve ridden 2000 miles on GP bikes so far my first two seasons, and that’s given me the confidence and the str~ngth."
Jon F. Thompson
