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/1517309
C ycle toughs in full leather gear, dicing it out on loud, fast motorcycles before a raucous crowd, kicking up dirt and dust along the way! Flaring tempers, cops with nightsticks, protests, angry words, pointing fingers—with 10 grand in cash on the line! Another bad motorcycle movie? Maybe "Little Fauss and Big Halsy?" Or, perhaps a worse one, like "Pray For The Wildcats?" Surely, the cinema is the only place where all these elements could be compiled into one more sneering tale of bad guys on motorcycles? Nope. This kind of chaotic dra- ma is from real life, Cycle News, March 26, 1980, where coverage of the Daytona Short track provid- ed more visions of two-wheeled nastiness than any Hollywood screenwriter could've imagined. The big studios would've rejected the idea that the antagonist, the source of the conflict, Batman's Joker, and Little Fauss' Big Halsy, was nothing but rubber. Bouncy, black rubber molded into the shape of a circle! Tires! For racers, they truly are where the rubber meets the road, or in the case of the Daytona Short track, a tight and rough ¼-mile dirt surface. Choose a bad tire, and all the engine porting, polishing, grinding, and gauging is, in Biblical terms, nothing more than sounding brass. Power in the engine is one thing. Power to the ground is a better thing. The short track event held at Memorial Stadium in Daytona Beach was round seven of what was called the Harley-Davidson Dirt Track series, and Cycle News contributor Henny Ray Abrams was on hand to cover the event. Most of the AMA's top riders, in - cluding Mike Kidd, Terry Poovey, Gary Scott, and his brother Hank, were doing battle for the beefy $10,000 prize that was going to be awarded to the winner of the series. Two rounds were held on this weekend, split over Friday and Saturday evenings. Ten thousand is a mighty big number, but the most important integer this particular weekend was 23, the number of super soft tire sets that were provided by Goodyear. The company, accord - ing to Mike Babick, Goodyear's Assistant Director of Racing, was experimenting with the new compound and had made up the tires, which were supposed to be used at the AMA's Grand National Championship event to be held at the Houston Astro - dome. There is no explanation as to why they were brought to the Daytona event, but what is clear is that there weren't enough of the special new tires for every- one. Kidd and Poovey got them. Billy Labrie, who was leading the points race for the Harley-David- CNII ARCHIVES P166 BY KENT TAYLOR THIS ONE'S A RIOT WELL, ALMOST. Things got a little ugly in 1980 when Gary Scott was briefly detained by Volusia County Sheriffs during the Daytona Short Track.