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VOLUME 57 ISSUE 12 MARCH 24, 2020 P95 ship with Marlboro was still strong so he had funding, but it wouldn't be quite enough. Roberts took Rainey with him to Europe to find the rest of the backing they need- ed. They came up with enough funds thanks to Yamaha, Dunlop, Dainese, AGV and Spidi to cobble together a barebones, two-rider team. It was slapped together with Rainey teamed with Alan Carter, who at the time was the youngest GP winner in history. The season started off on a positive note when Rainey won the Daytona AMA 250cc Grand Prix race, beating future world champ Sito Pons. Rainey knew Daytona well and he was espe- cially fast through the chicane. Pons crashed while trying to keep pace with him. Then it was off to Europe for the start of the GP season. He crashed in qualifying, ripping his finger wide open. But his time was still good enough for fifth on the grid, but then he couldn't get the bike fired on the push start. It would be a problem that plagued him all year long. He finally got the bike going and went to work on the treacherous track. "When I came up to pass a guy I'd go out in the wet, slide around and pass them," Rainey recalls. Unfortunately for Rainey his shift lever seized, and he was forced to pull out of the race. It would be the start of numerous mechanical glitches that season. Then came the race at Misano where Rainey was so impressive, spotting the field a half lap before racing back to score his first GP podium. Rainey signed to race for Roberts for just $40,000, less than his bonus for winning the Superbike title the year before, so when an opportunity to make some extra money came to race in the Anglo-American Match Races, he took it. But he raced a borrowed and outdated 500cc GP bike that was way more powerful than anything he'd been on before. At Donington Park it was cold and the tires rock hard. Rainey crashed, the bike chas- ing and beating him up along the way. He'd race the next two GPs with a broken foot, making the already tough push starts even more difficult. He scored 10th in Spain and then crashed in Austria. Then came a string of solid finishes. A sixth at the Nürburgring and then again in France. At Yugoslavia he won the pole, but again hampered by not being able to start the bike he ended up fourth. It got so bad at the Dutch TT in Assen, Rainey was in the rain trying desperately to fire the bike when he heard Roberts yelling from pit lane, "Push harder you c*** sucker!" Rainey, finally fed up with Roberts yelling, gave him the bike once and said, "Here, you start the thing." Roberts took off down the paddock running and bump- ing, running and bumping to no avail. They later figured it was the oversized intact ports on the cyl- inders they used, which couldn't flow enough air at very low rpm to fire and the cylinders would flood. It was also a lonely time for Rainey. He only came home twice during the season and spent most of his time running during the day and watching vid- eos in his motorhome at night by himself. He also did most of his own cooking with the exception of special occasions when Kel Carruthers' wife, Jan, took pity on him and fixed him a proper meal. As a result of his meager diet and his constant running, he lost 15 pounds that season, alarming his mother when he returned home. While Rainey's first year in Grand Prix racing had its ups and downs Kenny Roberts looks back and thinks Wayne did all right. "I thought he did really well that year," Roberts later told author Michael Scott. "Learning new tracks and a new type of rac- ing. We did the whole thing on a whim, underfunded. And he matured a lot." CN This Archives edition is reprinted from Vol. 49, Issue 31, August 7, 2012. CN has hundreds of past Archives editions in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. To prevent that from happening, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road. - Editor SEASON Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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