CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
B
y the early 1960s, pri-
marily spurred on by
the popularity of Honda,
lightweight motorcycles
were all the rage in Amer-
ica. Honda had a whole
stable of bikes new for
around 500 bucks and
with a post-war economic
boom well underway, by
its third year of opera-
tion, Honda's lightweight
motorcycles had more
than doubled the sales of
motorcycles in America.
Naturally riders started
racing the little Hondas
with good success; in
fact, Honda riders quite
often embarrassed riders
on the more established British and American
brands with twice the displacement.
Harley-Davidson, seeing the handwriting on
the wall, acquired a 51 percent stake in Italy's
Aermacchi in 1960. The AMA also listened to the
demand and in 1963 established a professional
lightweight class for 250cc machines.
There was a brief period in the new series
where four-stroke 250s were competitive, led by
Harley-Davidson's Aermacchi-made Sprints, along
with some Parilla, Ducati and Honda 250s, but by
the mid-'60s the 250 road races were being domi-
nated by Yamaha two-strokes, with the occasional
Bultaco sneaking in a victory here and there. By
the late 1960s the AMA allowed 350cc displace-
ment for four-strokes in the Lightweight class to try
to level the playing field a bit against the Yamahas
and almost everyone still racing Harleys switched
to the higher displacement.
But the year before the rules change at Loud-
on in 1968, Floridian Don Hollingsworth raced a
250cc version of the Sprint to victory in the Nov-
ice National at Loudon and in doing so became
the last rider to win a national-level event on a
250cc Sprint. A couple of years later, in April of
1970 to be exact, the extraordinarily talented Cal
Rayborn gave Harley's Sprint it last-ever victory
when he raced a 350cc version of the bike to
victory at Seattle International Raceway in the
Lightweight final. As for the 250cc version of the
machine, Hollingsworth's win a couple of years
earlier was the last.
"You really had to have your act together in
both handling and horsepower to outrun the
twin-cylinder two-strokes," Hollingsworth recalls.
THE LAST HARLEY 250 SPRINT WINNER
P82
Al (left) and Don Hollingsworth
