| January 23, 2022
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from the April 20, 2005 issue. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
Rainey Days at Honda HRC
By Scott Rousseau
If not intrigued, three-time 500cc World Road Racing Champion and former AMA Superbike Champion Wayne Rainey was certainly curious as to why we would ever want to discuss his days as a factory Honda Superbike rider.
“Why would you want to talk about that?” was Rainey’s first response. “Nobody ever asks me about that.”
That’s why. Well, that and the fact that Rainey’s 1987 AMA Superbike title and sole Daytona 200 victory came while piloting a Honda. But even more interesting than that is how Rainey, who won an incredible six of nine AMA Superbike races in 1986, finished second to teammate Fred Merkel in the series standings that season, or how he managed to fend off a charging Kevin Schwantz to win the 1987 title. Or how, by God, did Honda ever let Rainey, who was clearly set for big things in Europe, get away to Yamaha? Rainey’s blanket response to all of this is that he doesn’t really think about his time spent with Honda very often.
Wayne Rainey’s one and only Daytona 200 win came aboard a Honda in 1987.
”But I guess I do have to thank Honda and Gary Mathers for giving me the opportunity to race for the team and to restart my career,” Rainey adds.
Restart his career? Actually, that is sort of correct. After spending the 1982 and 1983 seasons racing a factory Kawasaki in the Superbike class, Rainey earned the 1983 AMA Superbike Championship and was “rewarded” by being sacked after Kawasaki pulled out of road racing. “They fired everybody, so I went to Europe for a year [’84] and then came back and raced for Bob Maclean [’85] for a year, and I used that time with Bob to start a relationship with Honda. Gary Mathers and Rob Muzzy had already gone to work for Honda, and Gary approached me about racing for Honda in 1986. Gary gave me that shot.”
Rainey joined “Flyin’ Fred” Merkel in the Honda camp and was drafted for double duty, campaigning both the Superbike and Formula One classes for Honda. Switching from the heavy four-stroke production-based Interceptor to the flyweight 500cc two-stroke each race weekend provided a steep learning curve.
“Yeah, I learned that you have to focus on one type of bike,” Rainey says.
But as far as the demands of racing both classes go, Rainey was up for it. Although he collected only a single race win in the Formula One class that season, at Road America, he was consistent enough to ultimately land fourth in the series standings by the end of the season.
But on the Superbike, Rainey was magic. Unfortunately, he got off to a shaky start when he chunked a tire on the 15th lap of the Daytona 200, ultimately finishing a lucky fourth. That race was followed by a controversial Sears Point event, in which Rainey and Suzuki’s Kevin Schwantz were docked a lap each for failing to heed the waving yellow flag and passing lapped riders in the process after Scott Gray went down. The pair crossed the finish line one-two, but third-running Merkel was awarded the victory instead. Protests by Rainey and Schwantz did not reverse the outcome.
“Schwantz and I were lapping riders,” Rainey recalls. “And the guy that we were lapping had broke, and he was coasting, but they had a waving yellow in that corner. But when you’re at speed and somebody is coasting, it’s impossible not to pass. The guy wasn’t racing. They said we passed a rider under the waving yellow, and Merkel won that race. That basically cost me the championship. Then after that they decided not to DQ guys for passing riders with broken machinery.”
Rainey crashed out of the race at Mid-Ohio later in the year, but those three miscues marked the only three times that he failed to win. Rainey saw the checkered flag first in six of nine races, including the series finale at Road Atlanta.
And the win streak spilled over into 1987, too, as Rainey earned his only career Daytona 200 victory, lapping up to second place in the race. He then went on to win the next two rounds, at Gainesville, Georgia, and Brainerd, Minnesota. Consistency the rest of the way would land Rainey his second career AMA Superbike title that season, even though Schwantz basically did what Rainey had done in ’86: won more but finished less.
Honda’s Rainey went on to win the AMA Superbike Championship for a second time in ’87.
“It was pretty cool.” Rainey says. “Through the year we also had those Camel Challenges, where we raced five laps and the winner won $10,000. I won a few of those that year. I also remember that was the year that we went to the Trans-Atlantic Match Races in England, and Kevin [Schwantz] and I won everything. That was kind of where our rivalry started, too. We were banging into each other pretty good over there, and we really woke the Europeans up as to who Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz were. We were on the American team, but we were racing each other like we weren’t.”
Recall that Rainey had already done a stint in Europe back in 1984, and now he admits that at that time he didn’t feel he was ready to be there.
“Kenny Roberts had put a 250 team together just before the season started that year, and we basically got the bikes at Daytona, raced there and won, and then went straight to South Africa,’ Rainey says. “I had never been out of the States before that, and I went to Europe and had to drive my own motorhome and live in it by myself. I remember that was when they had push starts, and I wasn’t very good at those either. I had some good races, but I came home at the end of the year. I knew that I still had a lot of work to do before I could race in the World Championships.”
By contrast, after ’87 Rainey knew he was ready to take on the world.
“What Honda did for me really was prepare me to go back to Europe,” Rainey says. “When we won the championship in ’87, I was ready to go back. I felt like I had done all that I could do in America.”
Unfortunately, Honda didn’t feel the same way.
“We had worked really hard to win the championship in 1987, and it was important for me to win that championship because I knew that 1988 was going to be a turning point for me,” Rainey says. “My goal was to go to Europe, but Honda only offered me the chance to keep racing Superbikes in the States.”
It was a big letdown, but looking back on it now, Rainey feels that the decision had more to do with the upper brass at Honda never being a Rainey fan.
“I never really felt like Honda was totally behind me,” Rainey says. “The team that Honda had put together was basically from Kawasaki. Gary Mathers and Rob Muzzy were from Kawasaki, and Sparky Edmonston was from Kawasaki. We were Kawasaki guys racing Hondas, and we just never really fit into Honda’s scene even though we won the championship for them.”
In stepped Yamaha and Kenny Roberts, who offered Rainey a 500cc GP deal that would pay the same amount of money that Honda was offering—in other words, chicken feed by GP standards. Hmmm. What to do? “I said yes to Kenny and cut my ties with Honda, who also provided me added incentive to go beat them in Europe,” Rainey says. “It’s funny because in ’89, when we were racing against Eddie and he was on the Honda, different people from Honda would come and tell me that they were pushing to get me back to Honda, like there was another door open for me over there.”
But Rainey never stepped through that door. Instead, he stayed with Roberts for 1990, and the rest is Yamaha history. CN
