INTERVIEW
Wayne Rainey
Instead of flying aro und the
world attending Grands Prix,
Rainey will now have the
opportunity to become a
"normal guy." And that
means spending time on the
lake in his new boat.
.
.
pened . I sa w Max go t in ther e too ho t,
a nd he b o u n ce d off Doohan a n d
Doohan hit Crafar. But Mick, he sees it,
he wants to mak e it his advantage. He
wa n ts to ma ke these othe r guys th in k
tha t it's their fault. When he rea lly sees
Max comi ng, he doesn't really want to
challenge Ma x on it . And if you read
Max' s press release, he says he got in
there too hot and he hi t so mebody - he
didn't know who it wa s. I think tha t' s
the reason wh y Mick is World Champion - he takes all these situations and he
makes them a big po int in his head, and
the only guy he has to convince is himself. In the old da ys tha t wouldn't have
happened becau se ther e were too many
guys that w er e a lso on pace, and tha t
were doing their own thing . And then
yo u had Yam aha and Su zuki , so yo u
weren't ever really sure wha t everybody
else was doin g. Mick ' s in a good situation because the on ly guys he ' s go t to
beat are all on Hondas . That was a situa tion that w e talked abo u t. I wa n te d
Sch w antz and Doohan on m y b ike. I
wanted to race them on m y stuff, a nd
Mick has that now."
At tha t point in the interview, Rainey
exc used him s elf a nd returned with a
stac k of com pu ter pri nto uts .
" I wa nt to s how you g uys somethin g," he said, producing a collectio n of
d at a ga thered by hi s crew ch ief, Mi ke
Sinclai r. "I said , 'Hey, Mike, when Mick
says tha t Kevin and I wo uld have a difficult time wi nni ng , I sai d , 'Why don' t
yo u go bac k fro m 1990, pull up all the
races and give me a ll the qua li fy ing
times, all the practice-lap times, and all
the race average times: And he did that
from 1990 throu gh to '98 . It' s am az ing .
What we came u p wi th is that mos t of
the races are like .3 of a kph quicker in
overa ll tim e in speed th an it was in
1990. Some races are only 1 k
