Rainey watches all of the MotoGP races, some on the MotoGP website. The only race he attends is Laguna Seca, about 10-15 minutes from the beautiful ranch style home he built on the hills on the outskirts of Monterey. The Red Bull USGP "was how racing should be. It was clean, they didn't touch...much. And it was nice to see a couple guys going at it the way it seemed like we did every race.
"No matter what, it's the same: You're always going to have two, maybe three guys that are going to be there every race. But when I raced there were three or four guys and you didn't know who was going to win most of the time. Now you pretty much know it's going to be Rossi and then Stoner and Pedrosa and that's it. But they're not banging bars."
While they produced exciting...
While they produced exciting racing, the 500cc two-strokes were also vicious, unforgiving beasts to ride. Rainey tumbles off into the grass (top)after highsiding at Donington, while Schwantz (above) grimaces in pain after suffering a broken wrist in a similar crash at the same circuit.
Rainey doesn't mean to sound like a curmudgeon when he makes the point the excitement level simply isn't there.
"The 500s were hard to ride, but to get to the checkered flag first, that was the hard part. Because those things were so much different to ride than anything else I had ridden before because they were a two-stroke. You basically had 3000 rpm that you rode that bike in, from 9000 to 12,000 rpm. If you went below that it didn't run and above that there was no power. So all that explosiveness was right there within 3000 rpm.
"Nowadays, they start at 5000 and go to 20000. You can ride it anywhere in there. You put it in any gear and the thing will work. It doesn't matter what you do to the gearbox. I remember after a practice session, I'd come in and say, 'You know what, I've got to find 50 rpm for turn two.' I was looking for 50 rpm; that's how close you always were with the limits that we had with those machines at the time."
The move to four-strokes should have been done without electronic assistance, Rainey believes. Four-strokes make the bikes so much more predictable to race and ride hard at the limit that they don't need it.
The two-strokes' light weight...
The two-strokes' light weight allowed contrasting riding styles, portrayed by Schwantz (34), Doohan (2), and Alex Barros (9).
The 500cc field hurtles into...
The 500cc field hurtles into the first series of turns at the original Assen circuit. Schwantz's lap record from the '91 Dutch TT stood unbroken for over a decade, and will remain that way as the circuit was changed in '01.
Instead of the one-line racing...
Instead of the one-line racing often commonplace today, there were a multitude of selections and opinions in 500GP's heyday. Sito Pons (8) tries to hold off Doohan (2) and Schwantz (34), with Darryl Beattie trailing.
"These bikes, you don't have to be in the greatest shape to ride around mid-pack. But if you want to win you're going to have to put the effort in. I always thought the race should be the easy part. All the training and testing and practice, that's the hard part. The race to me was always the easiest part, but it's all the other stuff getting prepared for it, that's where the effort was."
Schwantz sometimes agrees with that assessment. In retirement he sometimes laments his lack of conviction, the laser-like focus and bulldog tenacity that defined Rainey's career. Yet on his best days, like at Suzuka in '91, he was nearly untouchable. Nearly, because Rainey was there to keep him honest, along with Doohan and sometimes Lawson, Gardner, Kocinski, Beattie, Itoh. The list goes on. The Golden Era, indeed.