Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/126976
Test: Norton Dayton.. Manx 500 The 1950 Daytona 200 • wInner roars on By Alan Cathcart Photos by Phil Masters It's been more than 25 years since a race was last held there, but if you go to Daytona Beach, Florida, and head south along the sand from the high-rise hotels and low-rise bars of the self-styled "World's Most Famous Beach," you'll come eventually to the distinguishable remains of the old beach-road course which hosted the running of the .Daytona 200 until 1961. In !.hat year, the present-day Speedway with its famous 31 0 banks came into operation, leaving the palmetto shrubs on one side and !.he rolling At.lantic breakers on the o!.her to gradually erode a piece of American racing history_ First used for the 200 in 1937, !.he old course's nor!.h turn is marke4 aptly enough today by a wea!.her,beaten hostelry named the Old Timers Bar. At the sou!.h end, there's a cut through !.he sand dunes on to !.he road leading down to Ponce Inlet, which though now largely remodeled, still shows traces in some parts of the narrow, bumpy asphalt straight along which riders ran flat out for TwO miles in a southerly direction, along the sand bar dividing the ocean from the Florida Inland Waterway. There, !.hey'dslow down before flinging their bikes to !.he left, onto !.he beach, sending up rooster tails of sand as !.hey accelerated out towards the water where the sand was harder and gave better grip. Then it was nor!.h for ano!.her two miles, again flat out i.n top' gear bL1t this time treading the penlous path between water and land, before slowing once more - but this time not by so much - for !.he banked nor!.h tum which took !.hem left back onto the tarmac. A 4.2 mile track with only two corners may not sound very much, but as a gruelling test of man and machine it had few equals anywhere in the world, and especially in the postwar era after the demise' of England's BrookJands circuit. 8eart's Manx features rubbermounted footpegs; not normal Norton practice. It was in those difficult days 10r European industry after WW II that the British motorcycle manufacturers discovered America, a vast potential market for them that provided .rich pickings for many years. Success in competition, and especially in !.he Daytona 200,' was an important yardstick by which a marque's excellence was judged; hence the reason that in 1948 the Norton factory decided to enter '! team of specially-prepared machines for the 200-miler. The initial foray, under the guidance of Steve Lancefield, had yielded a second place for a tough Canadian named Bill Ma!.hews but second wasn't what Norton's managing director Gilbert Smith wanted. The following year Norton returned, !.his time with another legendary tuner, Francis Beart, in charge, and he rewarded !.hem with three successive victories on the Florida sand in 1949, 1950 and 1951. In 1952 Beart stayed in England but . Norton won again, to complete a hat-trick for 1949/51 winner Dick Klamfo!.h. The man who broke Klamfoth's run of wins was Billy Mathews, and in winning the 1950 Daytona 200 he gave a win on its international racing debut to one 'of the most famous motorcycle engines !.he world has ever known: the "double-knocker" DOHC Manx Norton single. Squeezed as an interim measure into the plunger-sprung "Garden Gate" frame of the smgle-eam Manx (the legendary Featherbed chassis