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Sixth Time’s a Charm for Mang.
Anton “Toni” Mang didn’t really need a Daytona victory to secure his place in motorcycle-racing history. Coming into the 1986 season, the West German was already a four-time World Champion and a winner of 32 Grand Prix races.
Photos by Henny Ray Abrams
He was a factory Honda rider in 1986 for the powerful Rothmans Honda squad and had over a decade’s worth of GP racing to his credit. The purse money for the AMA 250 Grand Prix support race in no way covered the expenses of him and his team making the spring trek to Florida, but by ’86 Daytona was something Mang considered unfinished business. In five previous attempts at winning Daytona’s International Lightweight race, he’d come close, scoring three podiums but never took home the top prize. By 1986, Mang was 36 and probably figured he wouldn’t have that many more opportunities to add that elusive Daytona victory to his already impressive resume.
Toni Mang was raised in suburb of Munich, not far from the Bavarian Alps. A little-known fact was that Mang was a child actor. The first form of racing Mang participated in was skibob, which is about as closely related to motorcycle racing that you’ll get on a ski slope. He progressed to become one of the leading junior skibob racers in Germany.
So, it was not that big of a leap going from skibob to motorcycle racing, which Mang did in the late 1960s, while still a teen. He was also training as a tool and die maker and quickly gained knowledge on how to work on race machines as well, serving as a team mechanic for Dieter Braun, who would win the 125cc World Championship for Suzuki in 1970 and 250cc crown on a Yamaha in 1973. Mang put his schooling to good use when he teamed with Sepp Schlögl and Alfons Zender and the trio designed their own 250cc road-race bike, the SMZ 250 named after each of their initials.
It was abord an SMZ that Mang made his world championship debut, finishing sixth in the 350cc GP class in the 1975 Austrian Grand Prix at the Salzburgring.
In 1976, Mang scored a major breakthrough when he won the 125cc World Championship Grand Prix German round at the Nürburgring riding a Morbidelli. His margin of victory was one minute and 40 seconds! He finished ranked fifth in the 250cc World Championships that season. Earlier that same year, Mang made his first visit to Daytona, and it didn’t last long. In the International Lightweight race, he was out after five laps and was credited with 70th.
After continued success on the GP circuit in 1977, Mang’s second full season, where he scored three podium finishes in the 125cc class, he secured a factory Kawasaki ride for 1978.
The first stop as a factory Kawasaki rider for Mang was Daytona. He had considerably better success in his second appearance at Daytona. Gregg Hansford won the race on a Team Kawasaki Australia machine, ending Yamaha’s 13-year domination of the race. Mang was looking to make it a Kawasaki 1-2, but an 18-year-old Randy Mamola set Mang up perfectly and drafted past just before the start-finish line to nail the runner-up spot. Still, a podium for Mang proved to him that he had what it took to win at Daytona.
In the ’79 Daytona Lightweight race, the Kawasakis were breaking a lot. Mang’s machine was detuned in order to finish the race. The other Kawasaki riders, Mike Baldwin and Kork Ballington, were both out early in the race with mechanicals. Mang raced conservatively and sat back not even attempting a serious move until the final few laps. Then he opened the throttle, realizing that his motor might blow at any moment. But it held together, and he reeled in Mamola late in the race and nearly returned the favor on Randy from the year before but came up just short on his underpowered machine and ended the day in fourth.
The Kawasaki was spectacularly good in 1980, so good in fact, that Mang would go on to win his first 250cc GP World Championship that season. Mang looked poised to finally win the 250cc race at Daytona. He won his heat race on the Krauser Kawasaki going away over Eddie Lawson and earned the pole. Freddie Spencer qualified second, by winning the slower of the two heats. So needless to say, with Spencer and Lawson in the race, even though Mang was favored, it wouldn’t be easy.
In the race, the trio battled up front. But then on lap six Mang showed he had plenty on tap and quickly opened up a lead on Spencer and Lawson, seemingly with ease. Mang continued to widen the gap at a torrid pace, and it looked to be his race. Then problems. His pace was so fast in the middle stages, it cooked the Dunlop tires on his Kawasaki, and he began sliding through the corners. Instead of trying to keep up the pace and risk his tires going off even more, Mang slowed to preserve them as much as he could, knowing that Spencer and Lawson would likely catch him. Mang figured his Kawasaki was strong enough to win the draft game on the final lap.
And the final lap is what it came down to. Mang’s Kawasaki was a rocketship and he figured he could win the race leading out of the chicane, but Lawson’s and Spencer’s Yamahas had plenty of juice as well, and Lawson used the draft coming toward the finish line perfectly, swung high and slingshotted past Mang. Spencer went low and likely would have gotten past the German as well, but Mang darted low at the last second hoping to break the draft and Spencer had to back out of it just a tad. Lawson was about three bike lengths ahead at the stripe. Mang and Spencer were so close they had to go to the finish-line camera to determine Mang had held on for second by inches. It was agonizingly close for Mang. He had the bike that day but underestimated the advantage of the draft at Daytona.
Mang again had a great bike at Daytona in ’81. He would go on that year to win both the 250cc and the 350cc World Championships with Kawasaki, but a loose rear axle cost him the chance to win, and he was helpless to do anything as Eddie Lawson and Jimmy Filice pulled away from him. Again, a podium, now his third on the box at Daytona, but the big prize continued to elude him.
So needless to say, with Spencer and Lawson in the race, even though Mang was favored, it wouldn’t be easy.
It would be five years before Mang returned. Now a four-time World Champ, Mang was so primed, so confident, that he would finally win Daytona in 1986. He had the right to be confident. He now had ample experience in the art of the Daytona draft, and he would be riding the awesome factory Rothmans Honda NSR250 GP machine.
The ’86 edition of the Daytona International Lightweight race had an impressive field of international riders. The biggest challenge to Mang in the ’86 race would be Spaniard Sito Pons, also on a factory-backed NSR250. Mang dominated qualifying to earn the pole. Pons was second on the grid, followed by another Honda-mounted Spaniard Carlos Cardus. German Reinhold Roth was fourth, also on a Honda. Then came yet another German, Harald Eckl and Belgium’s Stephane Mertens. Starting to get the international picture? The top American qualifier was AMA 250GP Series Champ Donny Greene in seventh!
After years of tough luck, Mang got maybe the biggest break of the race before the green flag even dropped. As riders came around after the warm-up lap, Pons stopped at his pit to top off his bike’s tank with gas. Then he started to move to his front-row stating position, but the two-minute board was already up, and he was stopped and forced to start from the back of the field. It probably wouldn’t have matter much anyway. Mang was on his game that day and was unstoppable.
England’s Gary Noel led the start on an EMC, but Mang blew by Greene and Noel on the banking and that was basically the race. Mang was gone. He effortlessly opened up a 30-second lead and lapped all the way up to fifth place. Pons finished a distant second and Eckl third making for only the second (and final) international-rider-filled podium in the history of the race.
Mang had finally won at Daytona on his sixth attempt.
“It was quite an easy race,” Mang said. “It was more like a long practice than a race. Every time I saw a pit signal there was a two-second gain on my lead.”
It would be the last time Mang raced Daytona. He would go on to win the 250cc Grand Prix World Championship again in 1987 and retire after the 1988 season as one of racing’s all-time greats. CN
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