Wayne Rainey

The contract didn't specify a bike, but he had Philip Morris, so Marlboro Cigarettes.

And I had Wayne Rainey, Yamaha, and Marlboro Cigarettes.

fighting against each other and, and outbidding each other, which was good for me.

So I was playing them off and then with Honda and of course in the, like in any industry, you can't sort of, you can't fib your way through things.

Um, Kimmich wants, without a doubt, the most naturally talented guy I've probably ridden against.

But he, until he slowed down a little bit, he didn't become the full package.

You know, Wayne Rainey, Eddie Lawson, I think were just two of the most gifted guys that they had everything.

You know, the consistency, speed.

Right there.

Wayne Rainey, there was Eddie, they were all there.

And it was just this enormous battle.

And I remember seeing the numbers, two, three, four, five, six, seven, you know, on the numbers of the bikes.

So I went into the race and I thought, well, I had the potential to win if I was fully fit.

So if I could get onto the podium, I'd be really, really happy.

So I start off, and Rainey took off, and Wayne Rainey was really quick.

And so I was trying to follow him, but I was having trouble on the braking, the pushing against the scaphoid bone, and it was very painful.

And so you were right on top of the guys.

And Kevin Schwantz is going by, Wayne Rainey, and all my heroes.

At the end of practice, they'd come ripping over the hill and then shut her down.

And then they'd go into the runoff area at the entrance of turn two.

[laughs] Yeah.

And in those early days, uh, it's much, uh, written about, much heralded, the rivalry with Wayne Rainey.

It started way back then.

I can remember the Transatlantic Trophy, and it was meant to be, uh, USA against Europe or what have you.

You and Wayne just took over the show.

It was nothing to do with that.

It was Wayne Rainey versus Kevin Schwantz at Brands Hatch, and boy, what a race.

Yeah, and how we didn't, um, you know, end up in the gravel more often n- than we did, and I, I, I think those match races, we ended up, um...

came this big moment, which was like Daytona 72 with the 100-horsepower two-strokes.

Wayne Rainey, in the post-practice press conference, got up and said, Australian GP, 93, he said, we have chatter, we have hop, and we have skating, and we don't know what to do about it.

They'd made it too stiff.

And even before that, Honda had won the first two years of World Superbike with RC30, which had a chassis.

And the first one was at Brands Hatch in 1989.

And Kenny brought his whole Yamaha team together He brought John Kaczynski, Wayne Rainey, and Kevin Schwantzer came as well.

He wasn't part of Kenny's team, but Jim and Shirley and Kevin's mum and dad and Kevin and Randy Momola.

And it was really amazing.

I actually don't know if, BEMC still exists, but at the time, well, it has a great history.

There was a BEMC race going on and we put this day of champions alongside a BEMC race.

So on the track, we had people like Wayne Rainey and Trevor Nation and Trevor and Wayne, you know, clashed a little on that day but it was it was really fun and we had a raging bull you know one of those bulls that tries to shake you off and Jim and Shirley had made an amazing um barbecue machine to to barbecue pit uh and we had a barbecue we had it was it was oh Kevin yeah Jim and Shirley brought the motor home actually as well so it was it was really quite a marriage of British motorcycle racing at its very best and, you know, these amazing Grand Prix races.

I remember it well.

So there really isn't any true factories running around in, in MotoAmerica.

Now, Wayne Rainey and his troops have done a great job at pulling it out of the, out of the dumpster fire that it was, giving it some rule stabilization.

But they're having a devil of a time to have a title sponsor, to find a good place to broadcast or have... or for you to be able to see the racing on TV anywhere.

Their YouTube idea is good, but it's not pulling in the people that you would expect.

It's the trade seem to be coming back as people realize that we all can't have collegiate level jobs, and there's good money to be made being a, an automobile tech or a motorcycle technician or whatever, you know.

So I don't know.

I- the one thing I do think that they need to do is I think Wayne Rainey needs to take the series, and I think he needs to make the rules a l- more compatible with the World Superbike rules.

And that means putting people on Pirelli tires, running a s- I'll call it a spec ECU on the bikes, and letting them go race.