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 T he Peoria TT in 1963, home- town hero Larry Williamson went into the record books with an accomplishment that will last forever, but neither he, nor any- one else at the time, understood exactly how momentous that day would ultimately become in an- nals of AMA racing history. On August 25, 1963, Williamson finished with a solid result of fifth in the Peoria TT Lightweight National. How does a fifth-place result get a rider into the record books? With that finish, Williamson became the first rider to finish an AMA Grand National on a Japanese motor- cycle. What he raced that day was a Yamaha flat tracker, powered by a TD1 250cc road race engine. Williamson figures he could have won the race had it not been for one little issue with the Yamaha that forced him to slow on a crucial part of the track. Two other riders— Tom Clark and Jack Simmons— were Yamaha-mounted as well and finished 11th and 12th, that day. The first Yamaha motorcycles sold in the USA were imported in the late 1950s by Cooper Motors, an independent distribu- tor. The models were the YD1 (a 250cc, two-stroke, twin-cylinder, street bike) and MF-1 (a 50cc, two-stroke, single-cylinder, street bike, step-through). By the early P102 WILLIAMSON'S BELATED CLAIM TO FAME compete in an AMA Grand National for the first time by way of the Lightweight class of the Peoria TT. Many of the leading national riders were racing with either Harley-Davidson support or Harley dealer support. That's where Williamson came in. He was known as an excel- lent rider overall but was espe- cially good on TTs. He finished on the podium at the Peoria TT National in 1962 and was com- ing off a runner-up finish in the Daytona 200 to start his '63 racing campaign. Even though he had a deal with Triumph for the big bikes, he was open to 1960s, a few enterprising racers in Southern California recognized the good power available from the two-cylinder two-stroke 250 and began putting them in racing frames and were raced in TT and short with good success. Yamaha took note and built a limited-pro- duction version of its popular YD-1 called the Ascot Scrambler. The AMA changed the rules for the 1963 season introducing 250cc machines into national competition. Knowing the suc- cess riders were having in region- al events in Southern California, Yamaha saw an opportunity with the new AMA rules to possibly Larry Williamson racing the 1963 Peoria TT on a Yamaha, powered by a TD-1B road race engine. It was the first Japanese motorcycle ever to be raced in AMA Grand National competition. PHOTO: COURTESY LARRY WILLIAMSON