VOL. 51 ISSUE 25 JUNE 24, 2014 P67
a rewarding feeling."
The race? It was a shortened
half-wet nightmare, my report
tells a sad story. Shadowing Law-
son for second behind Wayne
Gardner: "Sarron made yet an-
other small mistake with big con-
sequences. He touched a white
line braking… and went down in
the mud."
But these fast corners had
a special allure for top riders.
Wayne Rainey was fascinated
and appalled by Spa. "These
were the kind of corners you'd
look forward to all the time."
Look forward to? Yes, with a
strange sort of fascination.
"Look at a track like Salzbur-
gring, racing right up against the
guardrail at 180 miles an hour,"
the three-time World Champion
said. "You're in sixth gear and
you've got to change direction,
and it's so heavy to steer be-
cause of the gyro effect. Every-
thing seemed to be in slow mo-
tion, the way the bike went. But
as far as your brain went that was
in fast motion.
"Eau Rouge at Spa was really
daunting in the dry, but in the wet
it was unbelievable. You go down
the bottom of that little valley
there, and up the other side, and
there was guardrail on both sides
of the track. You overcook it and
… you hit something. But to get
the lap time you had to get an Isle
of Man mindset. You didn't think
about what might happen.
"You go down through a left,
then you flick it right, and when
you did that in the wet you would
lose both tires. As you were los-
ing it you had to flick it back left,
and now you were going uphill
so you had to be on the throt-
tle. And as you get into the left
the bike goes light, over a blind
crest. You'd be spinning and slid-
ing sideways through there, and
you had those little dips or div-
ots from all the trucks using the
road, and rain would be sitting in
there in little puddles. That was a
crazy corner. It was like you were
balancing on disaster, especially
in the rain. And it rained there ev-
ery year that I raced."
The other corners mentioned
by all were the almost flat-out left
and subsequent fifth-gear right
on the mountainside at the Salz-
burgring. On the right hand side
– guardrail; on the left a rock face
surmounted by banks of specta-
tors, who have seen some grisly
crashes there over the years,
including one in 1977 that killed
Swiss rider Hans Stadelmann
and hurt a number of others, and
The run through the
first set of corners
at Assen also ranks
high on the list
for GP riders who
like the fast stuff:
Rainey (1) leads
Mick Doohan (3),
Schwantz (34),
Lawson (7) and
John Kocinski (19)
in the 1992 Dutch
Grand Prix.
"They thought that was the
funniest crash they'd ever seen.
That was the first time I'd ever
been laughed at after highsiding
at 150 mph." - Wayne Rainey
man, made you feel like you're
doing something."
The new shorter Spa gave
Sarron one career highlight –
pole position by more than two
seconds over Eddie Lawson in
1988. "That one lap is still in…
more than just my memory. It is
in my body. One of the biggest
satisfactions in my whole career.
I knew that by getting that real
danger, I made a complete ab-
straction of it. And when you can
do that and go faster it gives you
