Lawson (3 ) leads Roche (21 I, Ch ili, Gardner (1 I, Sarron (71, Magee (1 61 and the rest of the 500cc class - 1989 could end up being the best ever.
By Alan Cathcart
For once the superlatives are justified; this .
has - been the most suspenseful , most
surprising -off season for Grand P rix road
racing since the modern era began four
decades ago . Moreover.-it now
leaves us poised in even greater
.
suspense to awai t the start of
a rac ing year tha t seems likely to provide more superlatives still _
perha ps the most exci ting GP season ever
is abo ut to begi n.
Thoug h the exci tement is far from
confined 10 the 500cc class thai's where
it's most concentrated, heigh tened by the
amazi ng sequence of events involvi ng
reign ing World Cha mpio n Eddie Lawson and his bitter riva l of the pas t half
decade, two-ti me 500cc titl e holder
Fredd ie Spencer.
You could have wri tten a Holl ywood
script based on the events of the pas t six
mo n ths and had a har d time convinci ng
the average enthusias t of its probability;
yet truth has proved stranger than fiction
- even if we're unl ikely to ever reall y
know the real facts beh in d. the startling
move wh ich sparked this who le seq uence
of chess moves, Stead y Eddi e's defection
to H onda.
In a way, it was the fact tha t a ll th is
eru p ted once the '89 rosters had seemed
to be set, that star tled the GP world the
most. Once Kevin Sch wantz turn ed down
G iacomo Ago st ini 's offer to ri de a
Marl boro Yaf!laha th is year (a nd a
H~>nda dea~?) 10 f~vor of another year
With S~U kl , the silly se:'son seemed to
have f!uled ou t before 1\ began. Sure,
we'd a ll hea rd these rumors about
Law~ n and Honda , but they seemed
~tal.n t
