FULL CYCLE : Lawson Seeks to Repeat Laguna Seca Win, but on a Honda

In six years of motorcycle racing at its highest level--the world 500cc road racing series--Eddie Lawson of Upland won championships in 1984, 1986 and 1988 riding a Yamaha.

During the off-season, in one of the most startling switches in cycling history, Lawson took his No. 1 plate and moved to Yamaha’s bitter rival, Honda.

Sunday, in the Dunlop United States International Grand Prix at Laguna Seca, Lawson will be trying to win his first trophy in three races on the Honda to go alongside the one he won in the same race last year on a Yamaha.

The cycling press, shocked at the development, was quick to claim that Lawson’s move was a buyout by the larger Japanese bike manufacturer. Lawson says, however, that the reason was not money, that he took a cut to make the move.

“It was a combination of a lot of things, but mostly it was a feeling I had that Yamaha was not really behind me the way I felt they should be,” Lawson said after flying home from a race last Sunday at Phillip Island, Australia.

“After six years, maybe the team got too relaxed. I don’t really know what happened, but it didn’t seem as though the team was working together with the same purpose, so about halfway through the season I contacted Erv Kanemoto about riding for him on a Honda. I had heard that he was putting together a new team.”

Kanemoto, a longtime Grand Prix team manager from San Jose, handled the wrenches for Freddie Spencer when the Louisiana rider was a three-time world champion. Curiously, Spencer came out of an injury-induced year’s retirement last month to take Lawson’s former Yamaha ride.

Surprisingly, in the seven races remaining in 1988 after Lawson, Kanemoto and Honda began their hush-hush negotiations, the soft-spoken Southern Californian won three of them, including the season finale in Brazil.

Lawson will not say so himself, but his manager, Gary Howard of Anaheim, says the lack of confidence on Lawson’s part came from the way that team manager Kel Carruthers and owner Giacomo Agostini romanced Kevin Schwantz, the young Suzuki rider from Texas, who won the opening race in Japan. Schwantz elected to remain with Suzuki, but Lawson apparently saw it as a breach of faith.

“So far, I have been pleased with the move,” Lawson said. “Erv is very professional, an easy guy to work with, and we seem to think along the same lines. We’re both geared to the same thing, and that’s to win another world championship. We both know what it takes to win, because we’ve both been there.”

Lawson finished third, back of fellow Americans Schwantz and Wayne Rainey of Downey, in the opening race at Suzuka, Japan, and fifth in Australia. He trails Rainey and 1987 world champion Wayne Gardner of Australia in the points after two of the series’ 15 races.

The switch also brought together the two riders who fought one another so bitterly through the past several seasons--Lawson and Gardner.

Technically, they are not teammates. Lawson rides for Team Rothmans Kanemoto Honda, and Gardner, who has been the No. 1 factory rider since 1986, rides for Team Rothmans Honda.

“We get the same bikes from the factory, and we have the same sponsor, but Erv prepares my bike and has nothing to do with Gardner’s,” Lawson explained. “And unlike factory rider teammates, we don’t share any tricks or ideas we come up with.”

Last year, as Lawson was dethroning Gardner as world champion, stories persisted that there was bad blood between them. Lawson says it was overblown by reporters.

“We were never close friends, but it wasn’t as bad as it was made out,” he said. “We had no problems. We would say hello to one another and keep on going. We were not friends, but we were not unfriendly, is how I’d put it. It’s hard to be friends with someone you’re riding hard against every week for the world championship.”

The world champion came home hurting, however.

Lawson, although looking as lean and whippet-like as the day he graduated from Chaffey High School in 1976, arrived here with a right wrist--the throttle wrist--still tender from a cracked bone, a sore left leg, a pulled back muscle, a stiff neck, an aching collarbone and a bruised left hand.

“I’m kind of a mess, but I hope to be healed up by Sunday,” Lawson said with the trace of a smile. “It’s just been bad luck.”

The cracked right wrist came from a fall March 13 while testing the new bike in the rain in Japan. The pulled back muscle came from stretching exercises and was so painful that Lawson said it was several days before he could sit back in a chair.

All the other hurts came from a 150-m.p.h. spill, two days before the Australia Grand Prix.

“I was just beginning to feel better when I came up on Kevin Magee, one of Kenny Roberts’ Yamaha guys, going through a high-speed corner. When he straightened up, I was in the wrong place with nowhere to go. I got out in the grass, the bike started wobbling and sent me over the handlebars. The bar caught my leg when we came down and I couldn’t move the leg for a couple of days.

“It was just a freak deal, but it kind of messed me up. I was glad to get fifth (in Australia) with all that was hurting. It was awful frustrating, and embarrassing, to know I had such a fast bike and couldn’t show it.”

Even though he won there last year, Laguna Seca may prove frustrating, too. It is the most physically demanding course on the Grand Prix circuit with its 11 turns (four right, seven left) over a hilly 2.196 miles.

“You’re continually leaning, braking, shifting and accelerating. It’s the slowest track we race on all year and I just hope I’m well enough to handle it.

Lawson has won five times at Laguna Seca, twice on Superbikes and twice on 250cc bikes in national championship races in addition to last year’s world 500cc event.

“One nice thing about Laguna Seca, this year at least, is that we get a week off after the race before heading for Spain,” Lawson said. “I need a few days to enjoy my new place.”

Lawson has been home only two weeks, mostly a day or two at a time, since last January, when he moved into the $1-million mansion he had built in the hills above Upland.

“I hadn’t been in it for more than a couple of days when we went to Japan to test,” he said. “Then we came home for a few days before we went to Brazil for some tire testing. From there we went to Australia to check out the new course in Phillip Island.

“We came home for a few more days until we left March 10 for Japan, and I didn’t get home until April 10. I got in Monday night, stayed through Tuesday and left for Laguna Seca the next morning.”

On April 30 he will be in Jerez, Spain, to start a string of 11 races in Europe that will include Misano, Italy; Hockenheim, West Germany; Salzburg, Austria; Rijeka, Yugoslavia; Assen, Holland; Francorchamps, Belgium; Le Mans, France; Donington, England; Anderstorp, Sweden, and Brno, Czechoslovakia. The season will end Sept. 17 in Goiania, Brazil.