Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
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CN III ARCHIVES BY LARRY LAWRENCE B ultaco, Ossa, Yamaha and Honda. Those were four makes of motorcycles that won the 16 AMA Grand National Short Tracks from 1971 through 1976. Notice the most notable brand in flat track racing missing from that list? That's cor- rect—Harley-Davidson. It was shut out for seven years. From 1970 to 1977, Milwaukee iron went through an agonizingly long drought of national short-track wins. That all changed at the Houston Short Track in 1977 thanks to the innova- tive tuning skills of Dick O'Brien, Bill Werner and the rest of Milwaukee's racing crew and the not-too-shabby riding of legend in the making, Jay Springsteen. First, back to the beginning of the drought. In 1961, Harley-Da- vidson began importing an Italian- made 250cc four-stroke single Aermacchi machine. Harley named it the Sprint and began racing it with the designation CR250 (CRTT for the road racing version). In 1961 at Santa Fe Speedway, Carroll Resweber gave the new Sprint its first AMA Grand National victory. Throughout the rest of the '60s and into 1970, four-stroke Harley Sprints were used to win over half of the AMA Grand National Short Track races. By the late 1960s with machines using two-stroke motocross en- gines, like the Bultaco, ridden by P106 WHEN SPRINGSTEEN ENDED A HARLEY DROUGHT if it couldn't beat them it would join them, so the racing department began working on a short-track machine powered by Harley's MX- 250 motocross powerplant (also an Aermacchi-built machine). According to factory tuner Bill Werner, one of the main reasons the MX-250 moto- cross machine was brought into the states was so the engine could be used in short-track racing. "When you're battling Kenny Roberts, you can't give away short- track races. We were already hard- pressed to get any points at the road races by this time, we couldn't afford to give up points in short track too," Werner explained. "The Italians were very talented when it came to two- stroke racing engines. We depended on them a lot for some of the com- ponents and initial engine setups. We modified them extensively for our purposes. Ronnie Rall to victory at Houston in '69 and the Ossa raced by Dick Mann at Santa Fe Speedway, it was clear that two-stroke engine builders were finally finding the low-end torque to give riders an advantage over those still using four-stroke racers. At Santa Fe Speedway in August of 1970, Bart Markel raced a Sprint to victory and that was it. After that the two-stroke era of short-track rac- ing took over. As racing entered the middle of the 1970s, Harley-Davidson knew something had to be done. The Houston Short Track was part of the big season-opening double- header (along the TT National also held inside the Astrodome) and tens of thousands of fans attended. The race was a big deal and in the mid-1970s, it was a bleak time at the event for factory H-D. In 1973, not one Harley made the main event. That was the first time that had hap- pened since the race was inaugurat- ed in 1968. Same thing happened in '74. Then only a herculean effort by Corky Keener, put a Harley Sprint in the short-track main in '75. He finished 10th. By then, Harley-Davidson figured A good view of the Harley-Davidson MX-250-based short tracker, as Jay Springsteen races to victory at the Houston Short Track in 1977.