Cycle News

Cycle News 2021 Issue 24 June 15

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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VOLUME 58 ISSUE 24 JUNE 15, 2021 P127 and I got the chore of shovel- ing out the horse manure down to the concrete floor so they could race. It got pretty serious," Danny laughs. "The guys would be changing gearing and every- thing. It was big-time." Danny followed his father's footsteps and got into racing. He turned pro at 16 and got his expert license at 18. Ingram turned some heads in his rookie season in 1983 when he fin- ished on the podium behind Jay Springsteen and Randy Goss on the Half Mile at Knoxville, Tennessee, riding Steve Hall's Harley-Davidson. "The thing I remember the most about that race was beat- ing Jay Springsteen in my heat race," Ingram said of his break- through race at Knoxville. "I was really pumped. It made some people sit up and take notice. They were like, 'Wow! Who's this guy?'" Ingram made six Nationals his rookie season and scored in the top 10 four times, including the Knoxville podium, but then he went through a tough stretch, making the main in only seven Nationals over the next four seasons. "I was really looking for big things, but then '84, '85, '86 and '87, I just struggled," Ingram admits. "I just couldn't get on a fast bike. My dad didn't have the money to buy me the Axtell heads and the Lawwill frames— the stuff that would make you competitive." The turning point for Ingram came in 1988 when top-notch tuner/owner Eddie Adkins gave him the chance to race his Harley. "It was fast," Ingram says. "And I started getting results on that bike." He scored a podium at the Middletown Half-Mile in New York. At about the same time, Bubba Shobert, who lived in Indianapolis during the racing season—and became friends with the Ingram family—offered to let Danny race his personal bike, a full-fledged factory Honda. "I couldn't pass up that offer," Ingram said. "Eddie [Adkins] was pretty sore about it, but I hung out at the Honda shop a lot and knew all those guys and had to give it a shot." The results were instant. His first race on the bike was at the DuQuoin Mile and he took a solid fourth. From there, it just got better. He scored a third at the Hamburg Half-Mile, and was runner-up to Scotty Parker at the Springfield Mile. A week later, In- gram would win his first National at the 1988 Syracuse Mile, but it was an odd win. He learned about it when Cycle News came in the mail that week. "It read 'Ingram Earns First National Victory' and I was like 'I did?'" What had happened was In- gram finished second to Shob- ert in the race, but, afterward, Shobert's bike was disqualified for being underweight. Ingram left the track thinking he'd fin- ished second and never got to enjoy the accolades of winning the National. "A week later, they sent me a bonus check to make up the Danny Ingram leads Chris Carr en route to victory at the Daytona Short Track in 1990.

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