Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 43 OCTOBER 28, 2014 P99 Point. That's also got a lot of up and downhill and fast bends. Yeah it's dangerous, but I try never to look off the track – I don't intend to go there." Kocinski was racing a mongrel Yamaha 1988/89 hybrid that was ridden in Australia by Michael Dow- son. It was tuned by Bud Aksland and ran under the Team Roberts canopy. Kocinski impressed by quali- fying eighth, faster than big names like Freddie Spen- cer, Wayne Gardner and Ron Haslam. It rained on race morning and the weather was still iffy when the GP was green flagged. Eddie Lawson and Wayne Rainey, in the middle of a fierce battle for the championship, went away along with pole winner Kevin Schwantz to the front. A couple of laps in and Christian Sarron joined the lead pack. Schwantz had no sooner made his way to the lead when rain began falling. Schwantz backed off and lifted his hand, but Lawson and Sarron didn't see it and motored past. Rainey also slowed and toured behind Schwantz. Lawson and Sarron went from dry track to wet with Sarron crashing spectacularly, cartwheeling his blue Yamaha. Lawson took the hint and immediately rolled off of the throttle just as the red flag flew. Kocinski had worked his way up to fifth and that was where he'd start when the race was resumed. On the restart it was Lawson to the front with Kocinski following in second. By the end of the lap Rainey and Schwantz had gotten by Kocinski, but he was in the mix with the best GP riders on the planet in his debut. Then it started raining again and again the red flags came out. The group behind Kocinski - P.F. Chili, Kevin Magee, Mick Doohan, Sarron, Niall Mackinzie and Rob McElnea - were battling so fiercely that they missed the flag. The end result was Doohan crashed into the back of Kocinski. Doohan flew off his bike on impact, but his bike wedged into Kocinski's. Kocinski tried in vain to somehow ride both bikes before finally wobbling off the track and crashing. That might have been it for Kocinski's 500cc GP debut, but he caught a break – with officials perhaps twice stretching the rules. One, the red flag came out again, and race organizers decided to go against tra- dition and prepared for another restart. Later it was revealed the reason for starting the race a third time was because the police had had problems with an unruly crowd all night and they told promoter Bernie Ecclestone (under intense pressure promoting his first motorcycle Grand Prix) if the race was stopped with only eight laps they couldn't guarantee they'd be able to keep the angry mob out of the paddock. Officials also inexplicably allowed Kocinski's team to run Magee's back-up bike on the restart. They hastily prepped the bike for Kocinski, adjusting the levers on the starting line right up to the point when they had to clear the grid. This time it was raining and riders were on full wets. Schwantz cleared off early, with Rainey and Kocinski running second and third. In the closing laps Rainey's Dunlops started to come in and he started chopping dramatically at Schwantz' lead. Even though when he took the white flag Schwantz had a four-second lead, he didn't want to take any chances and wicked it up with disastrous results. He lost the front end going into a tight right-hander and slid into the dirt. Rainey went on to win, with Ko- cinski a triumphant second and Lawson third. Ag- gregate times from the three legs were tallied and it made the final order an American sweep with Rain- ey, Lawson and Kocinski, first, second and third. Veteran motojournalist Michael Scott described Kocinski's performance in Belgium as "simply stunning." Scott added about Kocinski: "Riding a strange bike in the wet after five laps he was faster than Eddie Lawson. He's special." If you see photos of the podium from Spa that year, you'll see Kocinski up there with Rainey and Lawson, but that unfortunately wasn't the end of the story. FIM officials ultimately decided the third seg- ment of the race was against the rules and voided it, instead adding the aggregate of the first two dry segments (just eight laps) and awarding half points. So if you look in the record books today it shows Lawson beating Schwantz and Rainey, with Kocin- ski finishing fifth. Regardless of how it played out, those at Spa that day witnessed an astounding de- but by a rider who was at the time considered to be the future of Grand Prix racing. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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