VOL. 52 ISSUE 21 MAY 27, 2015 P89
Briefly...
in 2014 because of the workload.
He's rearranged some things now
and debuted a newly-designed How-
erton Kawasaki.
There may have been some false
hope by Bryan Smith's competitors
after he finished way back in 13th in
Timed Qualifying. It turns out that
Smith was trying a new machine
built by team owner Ricky Howerton,
which Smith reported as good right
out of the box, but needing a few
minor adjustments they didn't have
time to do, so he went back to last
year's machine. "We tried Ricky's
new machine," Smith said. "We just
need some more time on it to get the
setup right. It was good, but not as
good as the bike I won on last year.
Hopefully we can do some tweaking
on the new bike and check it out at
some of these races." Back on his
proven machine all returned to nor-
mality, Smith won his heat race and
Dash for Cash to earn the pole for
the 25-lap National.
Daytona 200 winner Danny Eslick
looked good in his return to Grand
National flat track racing, but was un-
able to make the Main on his Aaron
Lindfors-owned Harley-Davidson of
Salina/T&R Racing XR750. "That
was a lot of fun," Eslick said. "It's
obviously not the results I wanted—I
would have liked to at least put it in
the Main event here at Springfield,
but I've been off the dirt for quite
a few years now. I play a little bit at
home, but these guys race week in
and week out and they're not going
to let some road race cat come out
here and show them how it's done.
I've got to get home, do some home-
work and come out swinging again."
59 WILLIE MCCOY 5
TH
The ageless wonder Willie McCoy, 45,
was again a factor on his Harley-Da-
vidson of Wausau XR750 in his annual
visit to the Springfield Mile. He led a
couple of laps, but lost touch with the
leaders on the restart. "I felt good and
led a couple laps," McCoy said. "I got
a rhythm and was just hanging behind
those guys early on, taking it easy. And
then there was a crash and the race
was stopped. I got a terrible start on
the restart and it took me too long to
get going. Once I got past those other
guys, the front guys were gone."
Vegas Harley-Davidson/Rog-
ers Racing XR750. "It was like
an old-school mile race, very
clean, the track was pretty
good. I waited and waited
and we had such a headwind
coming down the stretch. I did
what I had to do. I needed to
lead it going into three, I cut a
After the restart the battle for the
lead was down to four: Smith (42),
Mees (1), Sammy Halbert (7) and
Jared Mees (6).
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