Wayne Gardner
WAYNE GARDNER
RACE WATCH
DAVID EDWARDS
An up-and-comer from Down Under. And maybe the next world champion.
ALAN CATHCART
A HOLLYWOOD SCREENWRITER couldn’t have come up with a better script. On a hot, steamy night at Japan’s famous Suzuka racing circuit, 250,000 fans had been driven to a fever pitch of excitement by the drama unfolding before them on the track. In front of millions of TV sets all over the country, viewers cheered the riders on as the 8-Hour endurance race drew toward its conclusion. The contest had been a battle between a new favorite and an old one aboard two contrasting machines from Japan’s leading factories.
Just 30 minutes from the checkered flag, the leading bike, an FZ750 Yamaha, quit running. Its retirement meant that Japan’s motorcycle-racing idol, Kenny Roberts, the King, wouldn’t win his comeback race after all. Instead, victory in that country’s most prestigious two-wheel event would go to the man who threatens to replace King Kenny in the affections of the Japanese motorcycling public, and perhaps even match his trio of world titles: 26-year-old Australian rider Wayne Gardner.
For Gardner-san, as he is now known in Japan, winning last July’s Suzuka race was the high point so far in a short but meteoric racing career. In less than a decade, he has progressed from minibike motocrossing in Wollongong, a suburb of Sydney, to the coveted role of being a member of Honda’s 500cc GP racing team. And this season, he is contesting the world championship on an NSR500 V-Four as teammate to reigning champion Freddie Spencer.
It’s perhaps an indication of Gardner’s ability that Spencer reportedly is not thrilled about having the gritty and determined Aussie on the same team—so much so, in fact, that sepa-
rate workshop facilities for the two have been constructed at Honda’s European base in Belgium, and each will have entirely separate paddock setups. But if Honda follows through on its promise that Gardner will receive the same equipment and attention as Spencer, Fast Freddie’s apparent fears may be well-founded, for the near-unanimous opinion of GP insiders is that “Digger” Gardner is the man who can break the American stranglehold on top-line GP racing. And 1986 could be the year in which he does it; Gardner has gotten off to the best start possible by winning the GP season opener in Spain.
When Gardner made his international debut in the 1981 Daytona 200—his first ride outside of Australia—and finished 10th on a MoriwakiKawasaki, it didn’t take an exceptional talent scout to realize that he
was a young man with enough ability to go all the way to the top. The Daytona Superbike race that same March was even more of a portent of the future, for in finishing fourth, again on a Kawasaki, Gardner found himself only one place behind a certain Freddie Spencer on a factory Honda—and two places adrift of his mentor in those early days, New Zealand racer Graeme Crosby.
It was “Croz” who, though then contracted to Suzuki, had decided to sponsor the young Gardner’s career by taking him to England for a full season in the hectic world of British four-stroke racing, on a pair of Kawasakis run by the British Moriwaki concession owned by Crosby. “I’d seen Wayne riding back home Down Under and could see he had the same sort of raw talent lots of Aussies have who never make it to Europe,” says Crosby. “He just had a lot more of it than anyone else.”
Daytona was a convenient stop-off en route to that British season. And in the course of that year, Gardner endeared himself to the chauvinistic English fans through his daring riding of the underdog Moriwakis against the powerful factory-backed Honda and Suzuki teams. Since then, he’s been regarded as an adopted Brit, winning the coveted Man of the Year award in 1983. Honda, too, had been impressed by the hard-riding privateer and in 1982 signed him to a limited contract.
Riding a variety of machines, from the CB1100R stocker, to the meaty, 1120cc Superbike and V-Four RS850R TT Formula 1 racer, Gardner won seven major British titles for Honda during the next three years, culminating in victory in the 1984 500cc championship during his first full season on an RS500 GP-style
two-stroke. During that year, he had tried his hand in the GP series by contesting a couple of races, including the Dutch TT at Assen. It was nearly a tragic debut. On the second lap, former world champion Franco Uncini was highsided from his Suzuki right into the path of Gardner’s Honda. As millions of TV viewers saw, Gardner was helpless to avoid hitting the fallen rider.
“It was the worst moment of my life; I thought I'd killed him,” recalls Gardner, who was so distraught over the accident that it took some time before he could be persuaded to race again. He still can’t forget seeing Uncini lying unconscious in the intensive care unit. “If he’d died, I'd have stopped racing for sure. As it was, he got better, but I still can’t forget it entirely.”
Such depth of feeling contrasts sharply with the image of the tough, hard-nosed Aussie that GP commentators like to use when profiling Gardner. That he’s a man of iron is undisputed, however, especially after that pivotal Suzuka race, when, saddled with a Japanese co-rider who was several seconds a lap slower than he was, Gardner had to ride the last two-hour stint himself to stand any chance of catching the Yamaha of Roberts and Tadahiko Taira. In that suffocating heat, in front of the huge crowd and with the additional pressure of carrying the Honda banner singlehandedly on the company's own track against its bitter Yamaha rivals, Gardner’s valiant pursuit of
the FZ earned him a place in Japanese motorcycle lore, as well as in the steel-lined hearts of Honda top management.
But more important, it was his dignity at the moment of victory that endeared him to millions of Japanese television viewers. Instead of the usual champagne-spraying exultations of a brash Westerner, what they saw at the conclusion of the Suzuka race was a man who could only sit exhausted in a corner of his pit while tears streamed down his cheeks at the release of tension and effort. Thus, Wayne Gardner is now a household
name in Japan—which is only fitting, considering he has racked up eight straight victories at Suzuka in recent years.
But that Suzuka race, crucial as it was to Gardner’s standing in the hearts of the Japanese public, wasn’t the sole reason for his factory ride this year. More significant was his superb series of rides in his first two GP seasons on the outpaced three-cylinder Honda, a bike on which he consistently challenged, and sometimes beat, the faster V-Fours. Yet if not for the burning faith in himself that has sustained the determined Gardner
throughout his career, he’d never have gotten so far. “I only agreed to race four-strokes for Honda Britain in ’82 as a way of getting in the back door of a factory team, and going on to do GPs,” admits Gardner. “After two years had gone by and I couldn’t see much progress toward doing the GPs full-time, I did begin to get a bit desperate. That’s why I did the deal with Honda Britain to pay for a few GP rides myself.”
In return for handing back a large slice of his salary from Honda Britain, Gardner was able to obtain the loan of the production RS500 with which he was cake-walking the British 500cc title, so he could ride it in a handful of GPs in 1984. The money for bike and support crew ran to just five races; yet Gardner scored points in every one, including a third place in his final event in Sweden. And that finish, along with his other results, gave him seventh place in the world championship, one point behind Barry Sheene, who, like the other GP regulars, had started all 12 events.
That showing led to a full GP season in 1985, with NS500 factory Tri-
pies and backing from Rothmans and Honda Britain. Three third places, a second in the final GP at Misano, and a determined bid for victory in the French GP at Le Mans when he threatened Spencer’s faster V-Four for several laps before running into tire problems, led to fourth place in the title hunt, and a full V-Four factory ride with Honda for 1986.
Still, that contract came only after he turned down reportedly more-lucrative offers to ride for Kenny Roberts’ Lucky Strike Yamaha team and the Italian Cagiva concern. But it’s a measure of Gardner’s cool, businesslike approach to his career that, finding himself the hot property of season-end GP trading, he opted to stay with Honda, even if it meant less *' money in the short term and, inevitably, a spell in Freddie Spencer’s shadow.
That Spencer appears to have welcomed his new Australian teammate with less than open arms is ironic, because Spencer is Gardner’s rolemodel, on the track and off. “Freddie is the best there is right now. He’s in a class of his own, with maybe half a
dozen of us next in line. Any one of us can win, but first Freddie has to strike a problem. I admire anybody who can be that good on a track with a bike, and yet also be a successful buinessman,” says Gardner, referring to millionaire Spencer’s prowess in real estate and oil dealings.
“The way I see things,” he continues, “I want to ride bikes for another four years until I’m 30, not hurt myself, and try to win the world title, then maybe move into cars and expand my business interests.” The groundwork for this has already been laid with the foundation of Wayne Gardner Enterprises, an Australian company importing a variety of motorcycle-related products. And as for cars-well, he’s had a spell at the wheel of the Rothmans Porsche that won the 1985 World Endurance championship; and judging by the way he drives his street car, a bright red Turbo Porsche, Gardner seems to know how to cope with four wheels as well as two.
But all that’s in the future. What matters right now to Wayne Gardner is 1986 and whether or not he can
win the 500cc world championship. “I’ll certainly be disappointed if I don’t win at least a couple of GP races, and I reckon I’ve got as good a chance as anyone for the title. Freddie isn’t infallible; he makes mistakes like the rest of us, just maybe not as often. He’s only human, after all. He can be beaten, same as anyone.”
Those words seemed prophetic after the Spanish GP, where Spencer dropped out of the race with a severe case of tendonitis. Gardner spent much of the race dicing with Yamaha’s Eddie Lawson, but eventually crossed the finish line with a twosecond lead. It was a promising way to start the season.
As for the rest of the year, Honda’s race bosses swear blind that Gardner will be given equipment equal to the defending world champion’s, even if they don’t believe Gardner is yet the equal of Spencer as a rider. Gardner admits that to himself, as well. But 1986 could well be the year in which he hauls himself up to the man on whose career he’s trying to base his own—or, with a little bit of luck, the year in which he surpasses him. 3
