VOL. 50 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 20, 2013
The Indy Mile gets
rolling with Henry Wiles
(17) getting the jump on
the field that included
Bryan Smith (42), Jared
Mees (1), JD Beach
(95), Kenny Coolbeth
(2), Brad Baker (12) and
Stevie Bonsey (80).
P59
Briefly...
Byran Smith's win at the Indy Mile
marked his 12th-career AMA Grand
National win. That moves him up on
the all-time win list with racing luminaries such as Brad Andres, Gene
Romero, Jim Rice, Mike Kidd as
well as his contemporaries Jared
Mees and Sammy Halbert.
Last year's winner Sammy Halbert
sat out the Indy Mile. His absence
and lack of communications about
it created some air of mystery. No
one seemed to know why, or were
at least keeping quiet as to why he
did not race Indy. It was especially
strange considering Halbert has
constant social media updates that
give you nearly every detail of his
life. When reached by phone Monday morning and asked why he
didn't race, Halbert's voice welled
up with emotion. He said "Um," and
sounded like he was grappling with
how to explain his absence and
then he quickly said, "I gotta go,"
and hung up the phone. Calls and
emails to friends came up with no
reply and Halbert did not respond
to repeated messages.
USC Racing entry. But Robinson
had to work hard and take full advantage of a little over strategizing by Harley riders Brad Baker
and Jared Mees on the final lap
to nail down second. JD Beach
was fifth on the Burnett Farms
Racing/Red Bull Kawasaki, making it three of the top-five finishers on Kawasakis.
In spite of those impressive
stats for the Greenie Meanies,
the fact remains that so far it's
only the Indianapolis-based Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports
team that has figured out how to
make the speedy Kawasaki handle on par with the extremely dialed-in Harley-Davidson XR750s.
And it doesn't hurt that they have
Halbert was coming off a big crash
at the Peoria TT, where things went
terribly wrong for him over the jump
and he had a very hard impact and
it's believed he suffered a concussion. The crash was preceded a
few days earlier by another hard fall
in a regional race in Sturgis.
David Aldana was part of the
opening ceremonies at the Indy
Mile this year. Aldana raced the
night before in a Bultaco Astro Cup
race at the Night Before the Indy
Mile event at Mid-America Speedway in Indianapolis. That race was
continued on next page
