Daytona 200

Last several years running endurance world championship for Yart, the Australian team.

And they had a couple of years sent their riders over after they won the championship to compete in the Daytona 200.

Hanneke, Nikola Kanepa.

Okay, yeah.

in AMA nationals.

And in 66 and 67, Triumph won the Daytona 200 with their little 500 overhead valve engine.

Now, AMA rules at that time said 500 cc is the limit for OHV and for side valve, 750.

And, of course, people... saw this as an improper preference and so forth.

It shot off the corners, and top end be damned.

Well, Sportster's little baby, the XR750, was unsuitable for road racing.

In 1972 and 73, the Daytona 200 was won by little Yamaha 350 twins.

Little pistons going up and down and just...

I mean, I'm trying to think.

um yeah because when they took over daytona 200 um azra wasn't going so we never really overlapped uh and and so forth so you know this year seeing it from the other side uh it's been pretty interesting so i i mean you know seeing it on this side like you know i mean i i don't know if ben speeds is the craziest thing you're seeing but you know i guess the closest thing to um you know, media pass would be like the VIP, right? So like, like, you know, what was like, you know, some of the coolest thing, the craziest things that you saw.

So at the race or just in life period.

The race, the weekend.

Congratulations to Bender.

Congratulations to Bender for him.

First season and Moto America, come in, haven't seen any of these courses in his life or ridden, probably did a few tests to come in like this and... dominate and beat a former champion in Josh Heron and the Daytona 200 winner and to be the person that everybody thought was going to have the runaway win for the championship in super sport.

And here comes Bender coming in focus, in rhythm, finding the sweet sides of leaning and turning in the corners, finding good pace at every course that he's been to this year in America.

... can do on the left, can't you? But on them it was both sides.

Um, but yeah, the, the, the craziest thing about the Boxer Cup thing was going from doing, like, a club level MRO Bemsey, going to Daytona 200 to race.

Like, literally went from Bemsey MRO last round of the whatever year it was to the next ra- year at Daytona, and obviously, like, we're in a hotel where, uh, there was a wet, white, a wet T-shirt competition kicking off and all that sort of stuff.

[laughs]

I was like, "Never got that at MRO," do you know what I mean? Literally, I remember I'm like, "What am I doing here?" It was mint.

Getting to travel a bit.

Like, I always say, like, I want, my daughter, I want her to do something, either a hobby or a sport, just so she gets to travel around and experience things 'cause my mates are be at home and then just be like, they'll just go out every week on the, on the, on the piss basically.

And I'm at, like, Daytona or Sachsenring or Mugello or wherever else like that, and it's pretty cool.

And when we emailed earlier in the week just about scheduling this, I'd sort of dug up a chain that we had recently where you were investigating a bike.

I don't know if it had... been donated or how it got in front of you, but it was potentially, uh, a Daytona 200 race winning bike.

Uh, and it was just, it was interesting that you'd reached out to, to really do all of your due diligence to, to see what, what was the precise history of that, uh, that bike at the time.

And, um, I recall I was able to, uh, identify that there were a handful of, of bikes made for a team, a race team, which would be normal, uh, but the one that actually crossed the finish line is in our museum in Hinkley.

Uh, [clears throat] but that used to be an important thing in, in Grand Prix racing and in national racing when two-strokes were the thing, that, uh, it was a more available technology for those of limited resources, such as myself.

But I did have the pleasure of seeing, uh, Richard Schlachter in '81 running away with the Daytona 200, um, but only for a limited time, because for some reason, the worn sprockets, I think, it began to, to jump...

The chain began to jump the sprockets.

That was the explanation that was given to me anyway.