Wayne Rainey Rides Again

[Jeff Higgins]

What a great story.

[flatbutt]

Ride on Wayne!

[herr_oberst]

That was a great video. I've always respected WR for staying in the public eye the way he does after his accident, and it was good to see this.

(Jeez, is Keith McCarty age-less ala Keef Richards? He doesn't appear to have changed a bit since he was building Bob Hannahs MX bikes!)

[JavaBrewer]

That was a great video to end the weekend Jeff! Thank you.

[pitargue]

Thank you so much for sharing. Very very nice...

[Dansvan]

Awesome!

[dewolf]

What an effin champion. I remember watching the race live on tv that ended his career. Remember even shedding a tear when I heard it was that serious.

[David]

I loved the Rainey/Schwantz era. Of course being from Houston, I'm a Schwantz fan, but this video is awesome.

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by dewolf

What an effin champion. I remember watching the race live on tv that ended his career. Remember even shedding a tear when I heard it was that serious.

Like everyone else here, I've watched motorsport all of my life. We have all seen far too many perish or get seriously injured. I hate to admit it, but very few have actually moved me in any way. My list is very short. Wayne Rainey is on it. Senna... David Jeffries... a few others...

[Jeff Higgins]

[Steve Carlton]

I was able to shake Wayne's hand 14 years ago when he was working with Yamaha promoting their bikes.

Ate a Ducati for breakfast and met Wayne Rainey

[ckelly78z]

Neat video, and a good way of re-living old times !

[David]

One of my favorite Schwantz vs Rainey duels:

[javadog]

Originally Posted by David

One of my favorite Schwantz vs Rainey duels:

That was the best pass ever, I remember it well. Hockenheim, 1991. That showed Kevin’s determination. It’s fun to listen to Kevin and Wayne talk about their different perspectives of that pass.

[javadog]

Kevin’s perspective, from his biography:

Half way around the last lap Wayne was in front but coming out of the Ost curve at the far end of the circuit Kevin had the rear wheel hanging out in an unbelievably long power slide. It was driving as well as sliding giving him a superb slingshot pass on Rainey as they charged down the second to last straight heading for the chicane. Into the chicane first Kevin tried to take advantage.

“I slowed her up a bit so that Wayne would have to slow down when he didn’t want to, then I would get the jump out down the last straight.”

But Kevin miscalculated, he was further ahead than he realized going into the chicane, him slowing just gave Rainey the chance to catch up and he flashed out of the chicane rapidly overtaking the Suzuki.

“As Wayne came past I moved across to pick up the slipstream, I was concentrating on the back wheel of the Yamaha so that I could tuck in right behind us he came past. I wasn’t watching ahead, we were closer to the corner than I realized. As I moved in behind he got on the brakes, luckily I was still moving right and I kept going, missed his rear wheel. By the time I looked up the corner was there. I was in really really deep, I went all the way back to first, the back was in the air, the front intermittently locking up going skip, skip, skip into the turn. I was across to the inside but managed to get it turned and still leave Wayne enough room so I didn’t run him on the grass coming out. I had the drive down to the Saks curve and got there in front of Wayne, that was the race.”

[javadog]

Another account, some years later:

https://www.motorsportmagazine.com/opinion/motogp/you-release-brakes-and-believe

On the final lap, racing through the forest in top gear, their 500s yowling like a thousand angry chainsaws, Rainey was ahead by a few yards, Schwantz tying his RGV in knots trying to stay with him, a bit like Márquez on the last lap at Motegi, losing the rear of his RC213V so badly that he was half off the bike. This, in fact, was the moment that decided Sunday’s race.

With half a lap to go at Hockenheim Schwantz somehow found himself back in the lead, which is just where he didn’t want to be, because Hockenheim was a huge racetrack, with straights like autobahns, where the key to success was using the vacuum created by the bike in front to magic a few extra miles an hour from your own motorcycle.

Exiting the chicane that took them onto the final straight before the stadium section and the chequered flag, Schwantz moved to the right of the track, Rainey ducking out of the RGV’s slipstream and passing him on the far right. Usually at this point Rainey would be on the far left of the circuit, lining up for the right-hander into the stadium; the last realistic overtaking opportunity. But this time he was on the wrong side of the track, which messed up his perception of where he was, because he wasn’t where he had been on every lap of practice, so his mental picture of his braking markers was all wrong.

Schwantz was now in Rainey’s draft, just inches off the YZR’s rear wheel at 180 mph. What happened next was possibly the greatest overtake in Grand Prix history. But this wasn’t so much Schwantz’s genius at work – “see God, then brake” – this move was in fact unplanned.

“When Wayne comes past me I get a really good draft off him and I’m thinking, it’s not over yet! All I can see is the Marlboro on the back of his seat and then it’s like it comes right back at me, because he gets on the brakes earlier than he intended. So I’m thinking, f**k! What did you do that for?

“What happened is he’s a bit lost, because we’re on the opposite side of the track to usual, so the brake markers and reference points are all different. My first intention is to not hit him. I have to take evasive action and then I start getting the bike stopped. I’m getting out of shape but that’s helping me slow down.

“I’m up the inside and if you watch the video you’ll see me look back. Reason I look back is because I’ve gone back to first gear for a second-gear corner; I’m trying everything I can to stop. When I get back on the gas the engine goes dead and won’t run. I’m like, mother**ker! What’s wrong? I look down and the tacho is at 15,000, when the engine barely turned above 12,000. So I grab another gear and that’s when I look back to see how big is this **** fight going to be when we get to the Sachs Kurve, the final left-hander.”

Rainey found no room to counter attack at the Sachs Kurve, so he crossed the finish line 0.0176 seconds down. He was deeply unhappy about Schwantz’s pass, because the youngster was totally out of control, even though (for once) it wasn’t his fault.

“I was pissed off because Kevin just saw me braking and then he braked and ended up way deep in there. I was still trying to go around the outside of him, but his momentum carried us both to the edge of the track and I knew then it was done because there were no more chances to get back by him. He did a move where he was going to make it or we were both not going to make it. I could’ve leant on him really hard and the chances are we both would’ve gone down. If I had done that, Mick Doohan would’ve been champion that year.”

The Texan and his crew were in paroxysms of joy. There is no official record of what happened next, but you can be sure that one or two of Suzuki’s rent-a-cars didn’t make it back to the airport the next day. Meanwhile, Rainey was burning with anger and so was his team boss ‘King’ Kenny Roberts, who took losing just as badly. Back then, especially when those two Americans were involved, every defeat was the end of the world.

In 1991 Schwantz and Rainey hated each other – really despised each other – and this wasn’t a put-on thing for the cameras. Their loathing had festered in US superbikes and ripened in Europe.