Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

~ ~ ~ 00 O"l I""'"l ~ I""'"l I""'"l ;;:::: lo-< 0.. ~ relations manager and his two secretaries barely finished a press kit before the beginning of each season. Eddie's hometown newspaper, the Ontario Daily Report, was bombarded with press releases on Spencer, who lived 1,600 miles away in Louisiana. The same paper couldn't talk Kawasaki into sending a single release on hometown-hero Lawson. It was so embarrassing to me as an Ontario resident and racer that I often sent the sports editor a pboto and short release on Lawson after important races. But nothing could motivate Kawasaki to promote Lawson more effectively. The third incredible bit of information is that Eddie Lawson almost didn't get the Kawasaki ride that propelledhim from club racer and formerNovice-Daytona-winner into an international star. It sepms that Kawasaki in 1979 was looking for a racer to replace the injured Mike Baldwin on Superbikes. Kawasaki wanted a promising, relatively-unknown talent who wouldn't cost too much and who could be brought along as a future star. After the recruitment search, the company was divided in opinion. One faction favored Pat Eagan, a 27year-old Southern Californian who worked as a motorcycle mechanic and dominated AFM club racing with a £Ombination of a Honda Hawk (beating Yamaha RD400s in the 410 Production class) and an 845cc GS750 Suzuki Superbike. The other faction pushed for lesser-known Eddie Lawson, 20, on the basis of a few good TZ250 rides (he had i ust set new 250cc lap records at three race tracks). The two factions hashed out their positions in a group meeting. Each side displayed graphs of results and photos of their respective choices. Based on performance and experience. Eagan had the edge. But Kawasaki management decided on Lawson because (according LO Chuck Lar en, then president of the company), "He wa more photogenic. " Eagan faded away into obscurity, retiring aftcr a series of huge crashes (and broken bones) on his Suzuki. Lawson, who entered Team Kawasaki as the N umber Two rider, had to deal with several mem bers of the leam doubting that he'd ever amount toanythingas a racer. Lawson turned outLO be Kawasaki's greatest discovery in the history of its U.S. racing proglam. ••• 22 Eddie Law on is a thinker. He rcads a lot, a fact I learned earl y on when I'd see him and he'd quote things I'd said in print, offering a comment or laughing about whatever the article said. Lawson thinks about racing. He reads about racing. He loves racing. He hates to travel, but shrugs it off as a necessary evil related to racing. Racing is what Eddie Lawson does, and what he wants to do. At the track, racing dominates Lawson's mind. He concentrates and thinks and concentrates more, looking in his mind for an extra bit of time here or there. All that thinking and concentrating has been a curse of sorts on Lawson's public image. I have dozens of photos I've taken of Lawson slumped in a chair in the pits, lost in thought, a frown on his face. People wilfrush up to him and ask what's wrong, what happened. And this look of surprise will spread across Lawson's face. "I was just thinking," Lawson will say. "Nothing happened. That's how my face looks when I think." I've seen that look enough to know he's telling the truth. I've watched his . face become taut as he lapses into deep thought. And I've seen that taut look after races he lost, and I've misinterpreted the look, accused him of poor sportsmanship, taken what I saw as it looked to me, failed to understand. It took Lawson years to learn how to lose graciously. "Even if something went wrong with the bike and I lost, I'd feel real bad about it," Lawson told me. "People would think I was all mad about losing but I wasn't: I was just disappointed and trying to think of something I could have done to win. I felt bad, but I wasn't mad." Lawson clearly likes to win, wants to win, is jealous of any race stolen from him by fate. He would have won the 1980 Superbike Championship if his bike hadn't dropped a valve when the mechanics started it for the final race of the year, at Daytona. David Aldana was Eddie's teammate in 1980, and Kawasaki's crew pushed both bikes back into their garage, switched number plates, and senlLawson out. Lawson was disqualified after Cooley protested the last-minute illegal bike switch. Lawson counter-protested the illegally-modified frame of Cooley's Yoshimura Suzuki. A special appeals board ruled in favor of Cooley months later. But Lawson still points out that on riding, on a race track per- purpose in life. During the off season, he trains hard every day, riding his bicycle, running, working out on Nautilus equipment. He rides motocross on a YZ490 every other day, on a practice track nearby his condominium. He spends lots of time riding on the street, too, and will head ,off for a berzerk, ticket-inviting street chase at the drop of a suggestion. La wson's friends are the same ones he had before he became famous, and he acts the same way he did three years ago. But the Eddie Lawson who came back from a season in Europe looked a bit more serious after his hard season of racing abroad. Lawson in Europe in 1983 was a long way from Lawson winning a Novice race at Daytona in 1977. And that first victory at Daytona was a long way from Eddie's motorcycle roots. He learned to ride on frequent jaunts to the desert with his grandfather, and developed as a racer riding dirt tracks on minibikes and small motorcycles. Between his Novice win in 1977 and his Kawasaki deal in 1980, Law-, son ran dirt track on Yamaha 750 twins, winning almost every Juniorclass mile and haH mile dirt track race he entered in 1977. He was #21 in 1978 Expert dirt track points and formance, he beat Cooley. He's right. occasionally rode a TZ250 owned by Ted Dann and tuned by Matt Owens in 1978.-Lawson helped Owens prep the bike before the races. "We would work all night before a race, get no sleep," Lawson remembers. "We always put it together at the racetrack." Then, with no sleep, a tired Eddie Lawson would set out LO race Mamola, Spencer, Schlachter and the others. Spencer beat him that year, at Sears Point, Lawson's stock-engined TZ being far slower than Spencer's Erv Kanemoto-tuned TZ; Lawson's rear wheel was also too narrow for the slick installed by Owens. Lawson's dealings with Owens ended at Riverside, California, in early 1979. After working all night on the bike again, Lawson crashed at a club race. He dislocated his hip. Doctors said he'd be on the sidelines for most of the year. Eight weeks later, Lawson was racing, this time on a TZ250 owned by Harry Hunt and tuned by the capable Roland Cushway. Suddenly Eddie Lawson, with plenty of sleep before races, was setting 250cc lap records at every track he ran at-Riverside, Ontario, Willow Springs. Then came the Kawasaki deal. Lawson was hired to ride Superbikes, to team with Aldana. But he asked to ride a KR250 at Daytona. Kawasaki declined, importing Gregg Hansford to ride the KR there. So Eddie asked permission to ride Hunt's ••• Eddie Lawson can be a genuine nice guy. Peter Clifford, editor of Motocourse, the road racing annual, flew into Los Angeles for a few weeks in mid-Janaury of this year. 1 had shown Lawson an advance copy of this year's Motocourse, and Lawson loved it. When CliHord called Lawson from the expensive Disneyland Hotel, Lawson called me to tell me Clifford was in town. "Gee," I said to Lawson. "I hoPe he's not paying for the room in that hotel-it's tough doing that if you 're free-lancing. Maybe I should invite him to stay here at my house." I never had the chance. That evening C1iHord was secure in the spare bedroom of Lawson's condominium. Lawson had picked him up, given him a place to stay, driven him around Los Angeles, taken him dirt riding in the desert. "When people are nice to me, I'm nice to them," Lawson said. "That's the way I was brought up." ••• Eddie Lawson has no regular girlfriend. "I'm too busy having fun with too many girls to count," he says. I'm not sure I believe that he can't count his ladies. Lawson, like any racing star, has his groupies, girls eager for any contact with him. In any case, chasing girls doesn't deter Lawson from his racing, his TZ250. Kawasaki agreed. Lawson won the race, beating Freddie Spencer and Anton Mang on the last lap, slipstreaming past to win by scant inches. Mang, reigning World Champion, was second, Spencer third. Hansford retired with engine trouble. Lawson unzipped his leathers after leaving the winner's circle. The Tshirt underneath, made by Eddie's mother, read "Freddie Who?" Kawasaki asked Lawson to ride the KR250 for the rest of the season. He did, and won the championship. He also was sent over to Japan for the Suzuka Eight Hour, arriving at the track after hours of wandering through the Kawasaki Heavy Industries facilities, looking at jet engines and watching train cars being built. At Suzuka, as at Daytona, Lawson was a second-string rider; Kawasaki made it quite clear that Hansford was the star. In qualifying, Eddie turned a lap in 2 minutes 18.25 seconds. Hansford qualified at 2 minutes 18.34 seconds. Another young American import, Freddie Spencer, qualified his Honda at 2 minutes, 18.83 seconds. Lawson and Hansford rode together and finished second in the race, 40 seconds behind Wes Cooley and Graeme Crosby: Lawson had run off the track and tipped over when Australian Mick Cole fell in front of him during the race. Traveling back to the U.S., Lawson grew tired of carrying the huge trophy he received, and simply set it down and left it in a waiting room at Narita Airport outside Tokyo. Back in America, Lawson won the 250cc championship again in 1981, and took the 1981 Superbike title as well. (At one race, Lawson beat Spencer in the last turn by riding around the outside-on the grass.) In 1982 he was Superbike Champion once more. In 1983, Lawson went to Europe. His goal in 1983, he said from the start, was to get experience. To learn. To get ready. Lay the ground work, then go back and race. Consider this. At several races in 1983, the distance Lawson trailed Spencer was equal to the distance Spencer and the easy-starting NS500 gained right 0[£ the grid while Lawson struggled with the hard-starting YZR500. Roberts could catch Spencer; Lawson could run the same lap times as Spencer, but not make up lost ground. The big question now is what Lawson will be able to do in 1984. ff} want to win, now," Lawson says. "I'm going to ride harder. I'm going to ride LO my absolute limit. Which I think will be better than last year, since I was pretty conservative Last year. "I feel that I'm going to do much, much better and I feel that 1can race with Freddie. Yamaha has been working really hard on the bike and they have a lot of confidence in h. They've changed it a lot and I think it will be competitive. I feel good about it." ••• There are people who doubt that Eddie Lawson can defeat Freddie Spencer. Some don't .think Eddie is even a threat. Numbered among those people is not Freddie Spencer. The World Champion won't be found dismissing Lawson-he knows, he remembers, and he realizes that the 1984 battle to retain his crown may bejustas intense as his 1983 battle to gain his crown. I don't know how it will turnout, but I cannot escape a gut feeling I have about the 1984 World Championship. My feeling is that Honda will falter, maybe once, maybe twice, and Steady Eddie Lawson will be right there to win. •

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