Cycle News - Archive Issues - 1980's

Eddie Lawson. 1984 500cc World Road Racing Champion. Lawson clinched the title by winning the Swedish round over Raymond Roche. World Championship Road Race Series: Round 11 • L.awson does it In style! By Ian Norris ANDERSTORP, SWEDEN, AUG. 11-12 Eddie Lawson clinched the 500cc road race World Championship in the best possible way, with a win in the Swedish Grand Prix that had "Champion" written all over it. When defending champ Freddie Spencer broke his collarbone at Laguna Seca and announced he would not race at Silverstone or Anderstorp it was as good as certain that Eddie Lawson would be World Champion - sure he could have mechanical trouble, but a factory Yamaha tended by Kel Carruthers hasn't suffered mechanical failure for two full seasons now. Lawson could fall o££, but he hasn't stepped of[ a machine during a race since he came to Europe at the beginning o£ 1983. No, with Spencer's £ailure to appear, Lawson's victory was virtually certain. All he needed were steady finishes - in fact, all he had needed since mid-season, thanks to Spencer's injuries and mechanical problems, was a steady finishing record, and that was just what he had got. First practice was run on a cold, wet track on Thursday, and nobody got below I minute, 58 seconds on a 2.5 mile track with a lap record held by Kenny Roberts at 1:37.11. Fastest was Belgium's Didier de Radigues on the Chevallier-Honda with 1:58.06, and he was followed by wet-weather specialist Barry Sheene with 1:58.38. Lawson was third with 1:58.88. By Friday, however, the rain had "0 e nd.the· swe w e p -... • •• race levels. Unexpectedly fastest was former World Champion Sheene, who won his last GP at Anderstrop in 1981 and was confident that this was the one circuit on which he had a chance of a win. Sheene's fastest time o£ 1:39.31 was beaten in Friday's second session, with Lawson and Honda's Raymond Roche setting identical I:38.9 laps to go to the head o£ the leaderboard. Roche's time was set on the three-cylinder NS500 Honda, which was generally expected to be raster than the NSR500 £ourcylinder round the twisty Anderstorp circuit. Surprisingly for students o£ Japanese psychology, even the Honda factory admitted by the fact that they did not bring a single four-cylinder machine to the track that their latest product was not suited for this race. Only Randy Mamola regretted the decision by Honda, because he \hought that he would have liked to try the NSR. "The power o£ the four might have been useful," said Mamola. "But it is heavier and you need to be more precise in your lines with it. Maybe it could have been more difficult to ride here, because 30 laps is a long time." Randy was denied the opportunity o£ even seeing how the machine felt, however, and used the three to set third fastest time just 0.15 seconds slower than Roche and u The final session saw Ron Haslam underlining the fact that Anderstorp is a Honda three circuit by bettering the Roche/Lawson time by a tenth o£ a second and taking the pole. Occasional GP rider Wayne Gardner was fifth behind Mamola, but the front row o£ the grid was the three factory Hondas and Lawson's Yamaha. The agile Honda threes had the advantage over the Yamaha four, and Lawson admitted it. "This is a di££icult circuit for a £our-cylinder," he said. "The threes point well and they are much easier to ride on the kind o£ corners we have here. With the four, you need to be on the exact line everywhere, but the threes are more £orgiving. I've been following Randy in practice and man, that thing's fast." That £inal session was run on Saturday morning, with the afternoon free for the 250cc GP, and there was an air o£ relaxation as Lawson and Mamola stood in the press box and watched Christian Sarron take the 250cc World Championship title by finishing second on his Yamaha behind the Real o£ winner Man£red Herweh. The race was the usual 250cc duel, with four riders sharing the lead. Team Marlboro Roberts rider Wayne Rainey seems to have got over his problem in starting his Yamaha and was well placed in the early stages o£ the race. He clashed fairings with Austria's Siegfried Minich during the close battle at the head o£ the £ield, however, and finished out of the points again in 13th place. Alan Carter of Britain had his best for some time and finished fourth behind Herweh, Sarron and Yamaha-mounted Jacques Cornu. The Sidecar championship was also decided in Sweden, with Holland's Egbert Streuer and Bernard Schneiders taking the fourth place which was all they needed to win the title. The race was won by Switzerland's RoJ[ Hiland and Kurt Waltisperg, with Werner Schwarzel and Andreas Huber of West Germany second. Alain Michel and Jean-Marc Frese o£ France were third. At the start of the 500cc GP it was the usual right between Haslam and Mamola to be first into the first corner, and although Haslam won that, Mamola was soon past and into the lead. Lawson was third and ROche fourth. There was bitter disappointment for Barry Sheene, who made a bad start from his second row position and was well down the £ield when Klaus Klein £ell on the first lap. Sheene got past the fallen machine and rider, but got caught out further round the same corner when the back end of his bike got away from him and he fell in the middle o£ a group of riders. Sheene had nothing worse than a bruised hip. At the head o£ the race it was Mamola leading Haslam, with Lawson just behind them and Roche catching up. Lawson could take the title with a fourth place, and it looked as though that was what he might be planning to do - no fireworks, just keep racking up the points. On lap five, accidents at opposite ends of the course brought out yellow flags on two of the most important corners o£ the track. At the tight right-hander which follows Anderstorp's 160 mph straight, Sergio Pellandini had gone down, taking Steve Parrish with him, and although both were unhurt there were flags out for a couple o£ laps as the debris was cleared up. More seriously was a fall by lLalian Lorenzo Ghiselli at the 90degree left-hander which precedes the short pit straight. Ghiselli £elI at the exit from the corner, which has no . run-orr area, and a doctor's car and an ~Ia c Wel' P.'\r Ii? . 1.#• . cuit for a full six laps while the rider, £ortunately not as badly hurt as it first appeared, was prepared for the trip to the hospital. Anderstorp sadly lacks service roads alongside the track, and ambulances have to drive along the course, so the race was errectively neutralized for rive or six laps. During that time Roche slipped past Lawson to put the Yamaha rider back into fourth place, but it soon became third again for Lawson when Haslam dropped out with a broken radiator hose. "I thought it had started to rain," said Lawson. The Hondas were not pulling away from Lawson, however, and he could be seen to be looking down th'e inside of Roche each time they approached the corner where Ghiselli lay with his attendant vehicles. Sure enough, on lap 12, when the yellow flags finally came in, Lawson slipped easily past the Frenchman on the inside and set orr after Mamola. On lap 15, the gaps were I second between Mamola and Lawson and another second between Lawson and Roche, but Lawson was eating away at the distance between him and the leading Honda. Surprisingly, Lawson was making up the time on the infield, with its twists and turns, and losing out a little along the long straight. Within a couple of laps, Lawson was upwith Mamola and beginning to look at possible passing points, but Roche was also catching up and beginning to trail the leading pair. On lap 19, Lawson saw his chance and took it, taking Mamola on a tight left-hander in full view ofthecrowded paddock grandstand. • Passing Mamola on a corner was one thing, but holding him off on the straight was another, but Lawson was able to do it, and with one-third of the 39 lap race left to run it looked as though he had made up his mind to go for a win and do the thing right. Just one lap later, that win seemed even more certain as Marnola careened of[ the track on the same corner where Lawson had passed him two laps earlier. Randv had fallen victim to a fault which has happened before with the Honda three, but which is totally unpredictable. There is a possibility that one of the three cables which operate the Honda's throttles can bind up, blocking the throttle open, and that is just what had happened. Randy was unhurt, the bike was undamaged, butsuch is the nature of the Anderstorp in£ield, with its soft earth and knee-high vegetation, that it was impossible to extract the machine quick enough to carry on the pursuit of the race leader. "I was pushing to get the bike out," said Mamola later, "but the corner workers were pulling, and with my helmet on they couldn't hear me yelling at them." When Kel Carruthers hung out the board with "RM OUT" on it, Lawson nodded his head. To the casual onlooker, it might not seem much, but Kel knew that Lawson had seen what was possibly the most important pit signal of the year. Lawson. you see, is not one to waste energy on a race track, and he doesn't usually acknowledge signals. A nod from him is the equivalent of both hands off the bars from 'a more demonstrative rider. The gap to Roche was now 1.5 seconds, but the French rider, who has been the revelation of the 1985 season, was catching up, and with just five laps to go he passed the fluorescent red and white Marlboro Yamaha. Lawson could have let him go, for the title was now assured, but you just knew that he wanted to finish the thing 0[£ right with a win. For a couple o£ laps Lawson stalked ~~Qe l111d,it ~a~ oj>vious,th}1tpe "I'!s .s I •• j

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