Cycle News

VOL. 51 ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 11, 2014 P113 plained. "One of those was with Chas Mortimer, who, with former world champion Takazumi Kata- yama, was forming a team around Dani Amatriain with factory Hondas and sponsorship from Lotus watch and Repsol. They agreed to let me come on board as a second rider. It was a deal where I didn't get paid, but I got to keep prize money. It was a dream come true." Leisner tested a Honda RS250 in the off season and his first GP of 1989 was the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka. His debut weekend got off to a rug- ged start to say the least. "I didn't have an A kit or even a B kit," Leisner said of the Honda his team gave him on a shoestring in '89. "Obviously it wasn't an NSR, just a production RS250. My Italian mechanic was doing everything he could to try to make it faster and better. He put on a set of upside-down forks. This was just when they were coming in. I went out in the first session and every time out of the hairpin at Suzuka the bike would wheelie out of there. One lap I went into the fast left hander before the chicane (130R) and went for the brakes and my lever came to the bar and I saw my brake line shoot up like some sort of water wizard, just flicking around in the air. I went straight off at 140 miles per hour into the gravel trap and tumbled for the longest time I'd ever tumbled." What happened was the upside-down forks his mechanic installed extended longer than the stock forks and eventually the stretching caused the brake lines to snap. It was one of three crashes Leisner had that weekend. Welcome to Grand Prix racing! Leisner found GP extremely tough going throughout the season. It was chaotic racing on tracks he'd never been on before, with very little time to learn and having to battle all the GP regulars and normally a slew of local wildcard riders who all knew the track well. "With my stock RS, I was down on power to the kitted bikes, much less the factory bikes," Leisner explained. "Back in those days they would give 50 to 60 riders starts and there would be 36 riders on the starting grid for the race. Every session was timed and if you didn't go a second faster in every session you'd fall back a half a dozen spots on the timesheets. It was really challenging just making the field. Every time I made the field later in the season that was just a bonus. There was no pressure once you were in the race; the pressure came in trying to qualify." Leisner finally made the grid in Austria at the Salzburgring GP. "I'd gotten to test there, so that helped a lot," he said. Leisner ran in the points and had a great battle with Wilco Zeelenberg be- fore his bike began to slow and he dropped to finish 23 rd . The confidence he gained in Austria seemed to propel Leisner. He was solidly in the field in the next round at Rijeka in Yugoslavia when he crashed in the final session breaking his finger and putting him out of action. At Spa he qualified again but slid off in treacherous rainy conditions on lap five breaking his collarbone putting him out for a few rounds. And so it went for Leisner pretty much all season. If it wasn't some strange bike issue, it was a crash or an injury that kept him out of the races. In all he qualified for four GPs and missed three rounds due to injury. "It was tough, but I learned so much," Leisner said about his '89 GP adventure. "Not just about racing, but about life. I got thrown over there as a 21-year-old kid not knowing anything about the food or language. I lived over there and didn't do a lot of back and forth. I did a lot of growing up that year that's for sure, plus I got to race in front of huge crowds for the first time. I mean some of those races had close to 150,000 showing up on race day. That was a thrill. And the paddock was really friendly in those days. We'd all eat togeth- er and there'd be a pub at most circuits. That's changed a lot, there's not a lot of that comradery like that anymore." CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives

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