MAKING THE GRADE!
It’s fair to say that 1987 was an enormous year for Kevin Magee: All JapanTT-F1 champion (won every race), Suzuka 200 and 8 Hours winner, crashed while leading Arai 500 at Bathurst, won the Castrol 6 Hour and the Swann Series and even competed in his first world 500cc Grand Prix races.
In early February that year, it was TT-F1 testing at Suzuka. At the time Niall Mackenzie held the lap record on a 500 GP machine at 2m15.52s while Wayne Gardner had the TT-F1 lap record at 2:17.80. On his first flying lap of the second afternoon session on the F1 four-stroke YZF750, Kevin nailed a 2m 16s flat – he was immediately ordered back to the pits. Yamaha didn’t want to let the competition know about this insanely quick Aussie they had. He returned for the first TT-F1 race of the season later that month and won in atrocious conditions. A few weeks later he got the call he’d been waiting for: an offer to ride for Yamaha in the 1987 Japanese 500cc Grand Prix.
“We had dry weather for practice and qualifying,” says Magee, “But I chucked it down the road three times, losing the front. Eddie Lawson gave me a few tips and I sorted the problem. I’d never ridden on radial fronts and there were some tricks to keeping heat in them! Come Sunday and it was raining heavily. I got off the line okay after qualifying 6th, but back then Dunlops were a mile ahead of Michelins in the wet. Randy Mamola walked away on the better tyres and I made it as far as 3rd before coming together with Gardner and high-siding a few laps later. I was really spewing. It was a very important race for me!” Yamaha were happy – that was the main thing.
Then – disaster: April 18 and Magee was leading the Arai 500 by a country mile. It’s thought the wrong pit signals meant that
