MotoGP Champions Schwantz, Rainey, Doohan, Lawson - The Golden Era

Rainey believes Suzuka '93 was more exciting, though an informal poll of the players and observers from the time don't agree. Schwantz was a player, as was a fast Honda, only it wasn't Doohan. The Australian had survived a harrowing practice crash, then chose the wrong rear tire and drifted back from the leaders. Instead it was Shinichi Itoh, the circumspect factory rider whose NSR500 was rumored to be fuel-injected--and it was a missile.

"That thing was just, I mean, I could feel him coming up on me and I knew which side he was going to pass me on going down the straight because my bike would lean that way," Rainey recalls. "So when it would start to lean I'd just lean into that because he'd be coming by and I'd want to get behind as quick as I could. But he would pull us six or maybe eight bike-lengths down each straight."

The race was the third of the season, but the first for Rainey on the very rigid Mk III chassis. "That was when Yamaha learned a whole lot about chassis and they built a chassis that was really stiff. The suspension was basically in the sidewall of the tire. Ohlins was going through some things with their seals and we had some stiction problems in the suspension, so the tires were not only giving me grip, but they were also my suspension. The chassis that we had was so stiff that if it wasn't for the tires I wouldn't have been able to even ride the bike."

Rainey's strategy was to use the advantage of the quick-heating Dunlops to build a lead. If he was able to get away, there was no catching him. "My whole strategy was I had to get a good start and I had to be first, second or third into the first turn," Rainey said. Unfortunately that year at Suzuka, it would take him the entire first lap to get up to eighth. "That [clutch] grabbed and everybody just went by me." Yet seven laps in and he was with the leaders, Itoh and Schwantz, with Schwantz's teammate Darryl Beattie making it a quartet on lap 13.

"I was able to slide it and turn it and do things that the Michelin guys absolutely could not do," he said. "I was just kind of having fun. I was racing them, but I was having much more fun doing it than any of the Michelin guys. Every time they'd try to do what I would do they'd end up out of the seat, but doing that also overheated my tires."

Soon everybody caught back up and Rainey dropped back to fourth. He knew his only chance was to lead into turn one on the final lap, "then I could gap them through the esses into the Keyhole. I could pick up a lot of time there to where they couldn't slipstream at all back to me. But if they led me into turn one, then no matter where I passed them throughout that next lap, they would still blow by us down those two straights. So, for me it was very important; I had to lead going into turn one to get the gap so they couldn't get all that back."

Rainey led into turn one, but he lost it all when the rear stepped out in the long fifth gear downhill leading to the Hairpin. "That's fifth gear flat and that thing stepped out on me in fifth gear and about threw me off. So I had to get, obviously, out of the throttle really quick gathering it all back, but they caught it all back on me. So the gap that I had made they got it all back right there." Beattie passed him at the end of the back straight, but he ran it in too deep and Rainey counter-punched in the fast left leading to the chicane. Schwantz dove past Beattie into the chicane but couldn't edge past Rainey, finishing in his shadow, officially .086 seconds and with the fastest lap of the race. Beattie was just two-tenths behind, with Itoh crossing 1.5 seconds later.

And as much as Rainey remembers that race, it's one of many that come to mind.

"It was always like that," he now says. "It seems like we were racing always to the very end with somebody. But that Suzuka race in '93 there was four or five of us going at it the whole way."