CN
III ARCHIVES
BY LARRY LAWRENCE
T
he late 1960s
and early 1970s
were an exciting
and dynamic time in
American motorcycle
road racing. The
world was starting
to get an indication
that American riders
weren't completely
clueless on the pave-
ment. Foreigners
were coming to Day-
tona and finding the
Yanks were plenty
fast. The domination
of Harley-Davidson
and the British
makers was slowly
coming to an end as
the Japanese makers
made major leaps on the racing ladder.
Suzuki with Art Baumann was the first Japanese
brand to break through and win an AMA Road
Race National (technically Yamaha actually was
the first with Dick Mann's victory in the "250 Na-
tional," an AMA Grand National points-paying race
that featured 250cc machines at Nelson Ledges
in 1965, but that's an another story). Baumann's
Suzuki victory came in September of 1969 at
Sears Point, in Sonoma, California. Honda was
next with Dick Mann winning the prestigious Day-
tona 200 on the revolutionary CB750 in March
of 1970. Kel Carruthers put Yamaha on the board
with his road race victory at Road America in April
of 1971.
That left Kawasaki as the lone Japanese
manufacturer that hadn't won an AMA Road Race
National. With Kawasaki's recent announcement
that it was pulling out of AMA Pro Road Racing,
we thought it was a good time to look back and
review Big Green's historic first national road
race win.
It came in September of 1971 at the brutally
hot and humid Talladega Superspeedway (then
called Alabama International Speedway), inter-
estingly, a race that was carried live on radio
stations across the country on the Motor Racing
Network (MRN). The rider who won at Talladega
that day was none other than the speedy, but
sometimes accident prone, French Canadian
Yvon DuHamel, nicknamed "Super Frog" in the
politically incorrect vernacular of the time.
DuHamel had been racing in Canada since
the late 1950s and began his forays south of the
border by the early 1960s. By 1968 DuHamel
was a formidable 250 Grand Prix competitor
KAWASAKI'S FIRST NATIONAL
P102
