King Kenny
In all ofyamaha’s 65 years of racing, one man stands above all others: Kenny Roberts.
Not only did the Californian take three back-to-back 500cc Grand Prix titles between 1978 and 1980, he also became a successful manager for the marque from the mid-1980s on, taking three 500cc titles with Wayne Rainey (1990-1992) and a 250cc world title with John Kocinski in 1990.
He later became a manufacturer in his own right, taking onyamaha with the three-cylinder two-stroke Modenas project and later the fourstroke Proton/kr effort.
He started out racing with his mother lying about his age so he could compete. Being born in Modesto, he was perfectly situated to take part in the many local dirt-track races that were popular at the time and that would be the crucible for generations of successful American racers.
Kenny soon started winning by such a distance that he would be placed into categories with machines twice the capacity of his own as a handicap…
His long-time association withyamaha began early, with him taking on the might of Harley-davidson on the ovals on a humble road-based Xs650cc twin: the end result of the partnership would be two Grand National titles in 1973 and 1974 along with two successful outings on the fiercetz750 twostroke based flat-tracker, before it was banned…
But for Brits everywhere, King Kenny will always be remembered for that seminal Silverstone 500cc GP in 1979, a race unsurprisingly chosen by many as one of their favourite sporting moments.
Despite what Murray Walker said, we could all see that Barry Sheene didn’t wave, but he did get beaten: by just three hundredths of a second.
Wayne Rainey – by his own admission – shouldn’t have been racing on this day.
A highside in practice coming out of the final corner at Goddards had taken two fingernails from his left hand, given him a compression fracture of his back and – more worryingly – given him concussion and lagging vision.
In his autobiography called ‘Wayne Rainey – his own story’ he says: “I didn’t say anything about my head. I knew I was concussed but the doctors hadn’t checked and I wanted nobody to know. Next morning I woke up and swung my head and my vision was behind the movementt. I decided to do morning warm-up and seee how it would feel. I was two seconds off the pace.”
For the race, Rainey’s tactics were to tryy and get into the lead from his second-roww start and just hang on to whoever would eventually come past.
In the race, a collision on lap one saw Mick Doohan slam into Alex Barros, with Doohan falling and causing pole-sitter and Rainey’s championship rival Kevin Schwantz to crash in spectacular fashion.
Rainey would eventually lead the
race, only to be overtaken for first at Starkey’s by teammate Luca Cadalora on the penultimate lap. It would be the Italian’s maiden 500cc victory.twenty points and the win next time out at the Brno circuit in the Czech Republic gave Rainey an 11 point lead over Schwantz and Suzuki going into the next race at Misano – his favourite circuit.
Wayne’s career would end at that race thanks to a crash that left him in a wheelchair. But his achievements in the 500cc World Championship – three backto-back world titles in 1990, 1991 and 1992 – are a testament to his greatness and a big part of theyamaha Motor Company’s 65 years.