Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/568010
CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE T he year was 1986. Kevin Schwantz was only a little over a year removed from club racing a pair of Yamaha productions bikes in CRRC and WERA club races and suddenly he found himself on the starting grid of a World Championship Grand Prix. It was Assen and the Dutch TT in late June. Schwantz was just coming off a broken collarbone he suffered in a high-speed crash at Brainerd. He'd missed three AMA Superbike races due to that injury, but he came back and scored a podi- um at Loudon the week before Assen. Schwantz' shoulder was still not up to 100 percent, but he wasn't about to pass up the chance to race in a GP. The opportunity came by way of a powerful ally in Barry Sheene. Sheene had watched Schwantz' amazing rides in the Transatlantic Match Races that spring and thought the young American was the shot in the arm racing needed to come out of what he saw as a slump of fan interest. Sheene perhaps also saw in the 21-year-old Texan, a younger version of himself. Sheene seemed to have an innate understanding from the beginning that Schwantz was a rider who had a personality that connected with racing goers. "Over the Donington weekend he really im- pressed me," Sheene said in a 1986 television interview, referring to the Match Races. "He just enjoyed his racing so much with the amount of enthusiasm he had. So I thought I'd do something for him. I went to Suzuki and asked if they could help. I just thought it was really important because motorcycle racing is not getting very good crowds at the moment and I thought a guy like that, who entertains like he does, really does, it would be nice to see him have a chance." Sheene paid out of his pocket to have Schwantz come over and participate in the Race of the Year at Mallory Park, where the young American raced a 500cc GP bike for the first time—one of Sheene's Heron Suzukis, brought out of a museum. "I think the race was run in two legs," Schwantz said of the Race of the Year. "In the first leg I finished second behind Roger Marshall and I just beat Roger Burnett. In the second leg I was just gone, cleared off. There is a stop for the throttle that keeps you from spinning it back too far, a pin that's Araldited in. The pin fell out and two of the cables fell off the carburetors. So SCHWANTZ' FIRST GP P100 PHOTOGRAPHY BY HENNY RAY ABRAMS Kevin Schwantz was made fun of by Paul Iddon's factory Suzuki TTF1 crew for the way his leathers looked at Assen in 1986, but it was Schwantz who had the last laugh.