25 Years Ago June 1986

25 YEARS AGO JUNE 1986

If this is June it must be Daytona, and in 1986, things were in flux as usual. The year before saw the 200 switch from Formula One to production-based machinery, and in '86, the grid was packed and star-studded, with Eddie Lawson on a factory Yamaha

FZ750, Kevin Schwantz on a factory GSX-R750 and Freddie pencer and Wayne Rainey on factory Honda VFRs (though new 250/500cc GP

champ Freddie wound up a no show for mysterious reasons). As usual, it was a ding-dong battle right up until Rainey's Michelin chunked and Steady Eddie mo tored on to victory. Our own Doug Toland finished 26th.

• Dick Mann himself, in a Race Watch feature, opined that the switch to Superbike was a brilliant thing to do, but "If you want to give credit to someone for this, give it to Bill France of Daytona Speedway... France told the AMA last year that the featured class at Daytona was going to be Superbikes, whether they liked it or not."

•Curse the Internet: When print was all there was, the Editorial We was able to drop out, tune the CB to Channel 19 and spend two weeks riding to and from Daytona in the

name of testing on, get this: the Honda Aspencade, Suzuki Cavalcade, BMW Ki OORT, Yamaha Venture Royale, Harley-Davidson Tour Glide Classic and Kawasaki Voyager XII. The Honda won, most of the others crawled off and died.

•Also tested, the excellent new Ninja 250 and the not-so-hot KX500.

•Also an inspirational At Large by Steven L. Thompson, back on a Ducati 750GT after a long winter spent beating a brain tumor. We can't keep that guy down. -John Burns