CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
S
ummer of 1988. This was
Wayne Rainey's second time
around the GP block. Four years
prior, things hadn't gone to plan.
Coming off an AMA Superbike
Championship, in 1984 Rainey
raced a Roberts Yamaha in the
250 Grand Prix World Champion-
ships. He finished eighth in the
series. The next season he was
back racing in America. This time
around, Rainey, now racing in the
premier 500cc GP class on the
Lucky Strike Roberts Yamaha,
was determined not to let history
repeat itself, yet things were not
coming together quite like he'd
expected. The '88 GP season
was on the home stretch and
Rainey felt he was in a desolate
valley looking up at what seemed
like an insurmountable peak.
Rewind to earlier in the sea-
son—Rainey had shown good
speed in the first three rounds
that season, but he was still wor-
ried.
"I'd been close, but hadn't
gotten a podium," Rainey remem-
bers. "And then you start thinking,
'Am I ever going to get that win?'
My teammate [Kevin Magee] had
already won, Kevin [Schwantz]
had already won. You start ques-
tioning whether it's ever going to
happen for you."
But then things started to click.
At the Expo 92 Motorcycle
Grand Prix at Jerez, Rainey blast-
ed away from the start and led 27
laps before Eddie Lawson finally
reeled him in, and after much
work, got around him. Rainey fin-
ished second. It marked his first
500cc GP podium. Then came
a string of podiums at Imola,
Nürburgring and Salzburgring.
Rainey suddenly found himself
second in the standings. Yet still
no win.
Then a statement made on a
PR trip to Assen sparked some-
thing in Rainey.
"Kevin and I were on a plane
with some other racers," Rainey
recalls. "We'd been talking and
someone said 'There's really only
one race to win if you can't win
your home GP and that's the Brit-
ish Grand Prix.' That was true for
me, too. There was just so much
history around with that race."
So, with that thought in mind,
Rainey made a mental note—the
British GP was one where he
would go all out to win.
P138
RAINEY'S FIRST
GRAND PRIX WIN
Wayne Rainey celebrates his first
GP win at Donning Park in 1988.
