Tougher Than the Rest
Tougher than the Rest
RACE WATCH
Wayne Rainey takes his third~GP championship in a brutal title chase.
Mitch Boehm
WHEN WAYNE RAINEY won his first 500cc World Championship in 1990, he thanked team boss Kenny Roberts—the man Who'd given Rainey his GP start—with a gold Rolex watch.
When he repeated as champ the following year, he showed his gratitude in part by backing Otsuka Electronics Racing, an AMA 250 team designed to vault Roberts' son, Kenny Jr., into roadracing's big time.
This year. after nailing down his third consecutive 500cc GP title, Rainey might consider bestowing his gratitude on a young man from Surfer's Paradise, Australia. Because it was Aussie Michael Doohan's mid season crash and subsequent pro longed recovery that allowed Raineyhimself battling a string of broken bones-to stage a dramatic comeback.
To credit Doohan is to take nothing away from Rainey, who just might be the most talented, determined and consistent 500cc rider in the world today. But the fact remains that if it were not for Doohan's splintered lower right leg, which took him out of a championship he had controlled up to that point, there's a good chance the `92 championship trophy would be sitting in Australia and not Southem, California.
This year's title chase was a rollercoaster ride, a 13-event season marked by ups and downs, the bright est and the blackest sides of grand prix motorcycle racing. It was a sea son filled with ugly crashes, injuries, pain and frustration, but also of new engine technology, better tires and even-quicker bikes. 1992 also wit nessed the rise of new talent, inspired rides by soon-to-be retirees, and, per haps most riveting of all, the determi nation and never-say-die attitudes shown by both Doohan and Rainey.
Indeed, injuries and a "play with pain" attitude were integral parts of the 1992 500cc series. Going into this year's opener at Suzuka, Japan, Rainey admits he was not at the top of his game, due mostly to an end-of season crash at Malaysia in 1991 that snapped his leg at the knee joint.
"I didn't consider myself 100 per cent going in. I was getting there, but then I fell off testing in February and lost a bit of the little finger on my left hand," Rainey said.
The injuries not only kept Rainey from regaining the form that brought him the `90 and `91 titles, they kept him off the revised YZR500 that Yamaha had built in the off season. Without Rainey's input, the bike wasn't nearly as good as it should have been at the grand prix season opener in Suzuka, Japan.
"I wasn't able to put too many prac tice laps together before Suzuka; at the most, maybe five laps at one time. We had a different chassis, and the engine was stronger, with better top speed," Rainey said.
A crash in the wet at Suzuka put Rainey 20 points back right away. He rebounded to score second-place fin ishes in rounds two, three and four, though he was fighting a front end that wouldn't stick and a screw-and pin-filled knee that wouldn't bend. "The bike didn't feel good and I didn't feel good; but finishing second in those races did give me a bit of confidence," he said.
While Rainey struggled, Doohan shrieked to victory in the opening four rounds, the first rider to do that since Giacomo Agostini in 1972. The young Rothmans ace was on fire, winning three of those four opening races by wide margins. But despite Doohan's superb riding, it was obvi ous that his Jerry Burgess-tuned NSR500 was different than previous Hondas. Its exhaust note was flat, like a single-cylinder 500cc motocrosser's.
"I didn't notice the new Honda so much in Japan because it was wet, but I did notice it in Australia, where Doohan was using a lot of throttle early in the corners, getting away from me. It was even more obvious with the other Honda-riding guys, Alex Criville and Daryl Beattie, who didn't have much grand prix experi ence but were going pretty good," Rainey said.
Indeed, the new Honda engine, called a "droner" or "big-bang" motor by those who had heard it, was a radi cal departure. Instead of designing for more top-end power, a traditional Honda direction and one Yamaha had followed in the off season with its YZR, Honda engineers designed the engine to fire two of its cylinders within 80 degrees of the first two, rather than the traditional 180-degree separation. The engine didn’t make more speed, it simply transferred power to the ground more effectively.
The advantage was huge. Honda riders were able to cut quicker laps easier. Cagiva’s Eddie Lawson said this at mid-season: “Doohan is riding well, but the Hondas are really good.”
Suzuki and Cagiva soon followed with their own droner engines, though time constraints forced them to simply
change the firing order of their cur rent engines rather than start from scratch. Yamaha soldiered on with its conventional-firing-order engine.
round five in Italy, Rainey finally scored a victory in round six in Catalunya, Spain. He beat Doohan after an epic, race-long battle, and considers the win perhaps his sweet est victory in GPs. "After all the problems and injuries I had early on, it felt really good," he said. Things were beginning to look up.
But disaster struck two weeks later in Germany. Rainey highsided violently in practice, chipping a bone in his hand, and breaking a toe and an ankle.
“I was chasing Doohan in practice, and coming out of a slow corner, I couldn’t get the tire to spin. When it did spin, the bike went sideways and flicked me over the bars. I saw the crash later on video; it was probably my most spectacular crash,” Rainey said. He started the race, but pulled off after a few laps.
“Nobody said I couldn’t race, so I tried,” said Rainey. “But I was going backwards, so I pulled in.”
Rainey tried to rehab himself in the two weeks between Germany and Assen at a Barcelona clinic, but it was useless. After just three laps of practice at Assen, he pulled in and headed for the airport-and home-in hopes of being fit for the Hungarian GP two weeks later.
"I'd have fallen down if I had tried to go faster. I couldn't hang on, especially through the bumps," explained Rainey.
Prior to Assen, Rainey was third in the point standings, trailing Doohan by 65 points, 130 to 65. Lucky Strike Suzuki's Kevin Schwantz was second, with 77. The prospects of Doohan stacking up yet another 20 points for the Assen win looked good, but Rainey refused to write-off the sea son. "I haven't given up on the cham pionship," he said while packing his bags. "I know Doohan's going to be tough to catch, but if anything hap pens, we might have a shot."
Unfortunately for Doohan, Rainey's words proved eerily prophetic. As a frustrated Rainey winged his way home 40,000 feet above the Atlantic, Doohan crashed heavily in practice, fracturing both bones in his lower right leg and putting the title up for grabs.
"When I checked my faxes at home and they said that Doohan had broken his leg, I couldn't believe it. I didn't know how badly he'd broken it; I fig ured he'd be back soon," said Rainey.
Doohan figured he would rebound quickly, too. He didn't. Complica tions with the healing process slowed his recovery. After the Hungarian GP two weeks later, where Rainey fin ished fifth due to a poor tire choice, he called the bedridden Doohan and joked about his own inability to catch up despite the Australian's absence.
"I told him, `Heck, we can't gain on you and you're laying in the hospital.' He said he'd see me at the next GP in France, so I thought he'd really be there," Rainey said.
But Doohan didn't show. Rainey, aboard Yamaha's version of the droner motor, beat Wayne Gardner by 6 seconds to take the win. "I was pumped," said Rainey afterwards. "Schwantz fell down and didn't get any points, and I moved back into second place for the championship."
Despite the win, Rainey wasn't overly enthusiastic about the new en gine, which had been quickly put to gether in a last-ditch effort to keep up with the Hondas.
"I wasn't that impressed with it, ex cept it seemed easier on the tire and was a little easier to ride. That was enough to convince me to go ahead with it," he said. "Of course, the en gine wasn't designed for that firing order, so we had terrible problems with vibration. We didn't even know if it would finish the race, but hell, we were so far behind we had to do something to try to catch up."
A second-place at the British GP at Donington Park helped. Gardner, who had announced his retirement just two days prior, took the hard-fought win.
"NO one was gonna beat him that day," said Rainey. "I haven't seen him ride a race like that in all the years I've been racing GPs."
Doohan, still convalescing, was again a no-show. The deficit was down to just 22 points with two rounds remaining, 130 to 108.
Major questions remained: Could Doohan return, and if so, would he be fit enough to score points? And could Rainey finish high enough at the final races in Brazil and South Africa to pull off the comeback title drive?
The Brazilian GP provided some clues. Rainey won handily, scoring 20 vital points. Doohan finally got back on the bike and rode as best he could, but the weak leg left him unable to manhandle the Honda; he finished a dismal 12th, out of the points.
With the deficit down to just two points, all Rainey had to do was beat Doohan at South Africa. After all the crashes and all the pain, the title had come down to a single race.
"The pressure was on. A couple times during the race I thought, `Okay, you're in second...if you stay> in second, you're world champ,' but then I thought, `Don't think about that, just concentrate," Rainey said.
Rainey finished third, just behind Gardner and race winner John Kocins ki, his Marlboro Yamaha teammate who grabbed third in the overall sea son tally. Doohan could manage no better than sixth. The point total ended 140 for Rainey, 136 for Doohan, and for the third consecutive year, Rainey was champion of the world.
"I was relieved when it was over," said Rainey, "I couldn't believe we really pulled it off because of all the problems we had. If you would have told me a month or so ago that I'd be world champion, I'd have said you were crazy."
What really made the difference in 1992 was Rainey's determination, his ability to hang in there, to keep push ing when he was bruised and broken.
"It was tough," he said. "I was on the ground, I was hurting, getting beat. I crashed a lot because I wanted to win so bad. I finally told myself I was gonna go home, get fit, and sure enough, the season turned around and we won. It's never over, ya know, `til one guy gets the most points."
More than anyone, Wayne Rainey and Michael Doohan know the truth of that statement.
