VOL. 55 ISSUE 21 MAY 30, 2018 P139
Rainey got a major confidence
booster just a week before the
British Grand Prix. He'd won the
pole and gone on with teammate
Magee to win the prestigious
Suzuka 8 Hours.
Back on the GP circuit, British
tire company Dunlop was keen
to win its home GP, as well, and
Rainey said the company had
come up with a "really good com-
pound" for that race. Lucky Strike
Yamaha was the only top team
on Dunlop, so, as Rainey recalls,
"If you had an advantage with the
tire it was for our team alone."
Another ace up his sleeve were
the new AP carbon-fiber brakes
Rainey's Lucky Strike Yamaha
would use at Donington Park. It
would be the first time the brakes
would be used. The decision to
use them in the race was Rain-
ey's. It was a gamble, but Rainey
said, "I hadn't won a race yet and
wasn't really in the championship
battle. They felt great in practice,
so I figured I'd go with them. I re-
ally had nothing to lose."
The lighter weight carbon fiber
brakes allowed Rainey to flick his
bike back and forth more quickly
than he could with the traditional
brakes and also gave him less
chatter while heavy on the bind-
ers, yet there were characteris-
tics not yet fully understood and
Rainey found one of them first
hand on the warm-up lap.
"Everybody rushes off into the
first turn and I went to put the
brakes on and everybody was
stopping… I couldn't stop!" Rain-
ey said. "It felt like I was going to
plow into the back of these guys.
Then the brakes suddenly built
heat and I almost looped out. So
not being used to those brakes
that whole lap I was making sure
they stayed warm. I didn't know
sitting on the line if they were go-
ing to cool off. We had no experi-
ence with that stuff."
Rainey got a great launch off
the line at the start of the GP and
he was flying. "Coming around
the first lap I had over a second
lead," he recalls. "Then the next
lap it was two and I think we
stretched it out to over seven."
Rainey was gone, but then a
new problem, staying focused for
the closing half of the race.
"Those last 15 laps took for-
ever," Rainey grins. "I remember
I told myself to just keep focused
on braking, shifting and my lines.
Every once in a while my mind
would start drifting and I'd have to
quickly snap myself back into fo-
cusing on the job at hand. It was
the longest race of my life."
Talking about coming around
the last turn on the final lap with
his first GP victory in hand, you
can tell by the way his eyes light
up that the memory still is vivid in
Rainey's mind.
"I can still feel it now," Rainey
says. "I came around that last
corner and I knew I was going to
win it. Man, that was a feeling I'll
never forget. It was great."
One of the lasting legacies of
Rainey's first win was that car-
bon-fiber-composite brake rotors
quickly came into general use.
Of course, Rainey would go
on to win dozens more races and
three world championships, but
he remembers that first victory at
Donington Park in 1988 as a very
special moment in his racing ca-
reer. Looking back now perhaps
his most special. CN
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Rainey's first win at
the British GP was
probably his most
memorable.
