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VOLUME 57 ISSUE 4 JANUARY 28, 2020 P103 ride whatever he wanted in the Lightweight portion of Peoria's double national weekend. Ya- maha reached out to Williamson via Peoria's local Yamaha dealer, Pierce's Cycle. "I'd known the folks at Pierce's since I was a kid," Williamson said. "At first they were talking to me about racing a scrambler-type Ya- maha, and I told them that probably wouldn't work that well at Peoria. So, Yamaha called me and told me they had a TT bike that was being raced by a novice out in Southern California and they wondered if I would give that a try." Williamson agreed, but he wanted the bike a couple of weeks before Peoria so he could practice and race the bike at an upcoming TT in St. Louis. "I took it down to St. Louis and broke the crankshaft off of it on the jump," Williamson remem- bers. "Those bikes were notori- ous for breaking crankshafts because the clutch was out on the end of them. "I called them and told them what happened, and a guy showed up at the house, and he had a TD-1B with him, the road racer. They thought maybe I could use the road race engine in the flat track frame. So, we put that engine in it and went to Peoria." The minute Williamson got on the track he knew the combina- tion of the flat track frame and the road race engine had real potential. "It was a strong motor," he recalls. "The Harleys [Sprint] were a little faster, but I could out accelerate them. To keep it in the power, I was clicking four gears going down the straightaway." But according to Williamson, there was a problem, and it was no small issue. While the TD- 1B engine was faster than the production Yamaha motor, it suf- fered the same Achilles heel with a fragile crank. A hard landing off the jump under power would almost certainly snap it. The solution Williamson came up with was pulling in the clutch just as he was about to land off Peoria's famous jump. "It was a hard bike to ride. The shift was on the left side and the Triumph I was riding in the big bike national was on the right, so that kept me thinking. And I'd have to make sure I was com- pletely landed off the jump before I could engage the clutch," he said. "So that cost me some time, but I still thought I had a shot at winning." With no time on that engine be- fore the national, Williamson said he snuck out the little Yamaha into practice with the big bikes for a break-in. He was stunned by the little Yamaha's power. "I was out there with the Sport- sters and 650 Triumphs and BSAs, and I could outrun some of them down the straightaway. I thought, 'holy cow, this thing is a jet!'" The field for the Lightweight race was packed with talent, including riders like Bart Markel, Dick Mann and Mert Lawwill. It was mostly a Harley field with a smattering of other brands, such as the Yamahas, a Bultaco, a Parilla and a Ducati rounding out the entries. Williamson had to be cautious over the jump because of the fragile crank and he ran 10th on the first lap, but then he perfect- ed his landing technique, then used the power of his screaming little Yamaha road race engine to work his way up to a very re- spectable fifth by the finish. At the time no one seemed to appreciate the fact that this was the first Japanese motorcycle to race in an AMA Grand National. Williamson said there were only a few curious onlookers that really took much notice of the bike. Wil- liamson never saw the bike again after Peoria. "It was only years later that I was told the importance of that race," Williamson said. "I have no idea whatever happened to the bike. I heard it went back to the kid who was racing it in the nov- ice class at Ascot. I think the bike probably went back to Yamaha. Who knows where it is today." These days Williamson is the Vice President of the Peoria Mo- torcycle Club, and he still works the national every year. If you go to the TT this year you might run into Williamson, and now you'll know that he's someone who was a big part of a cool little piece of racing history. CN Subscribe to nearly 50 years of Cycle News Archive issues: www.CycleNews.com/Archives