ducati breaks harley's streak on flat track

Harley Davidson has been dominating flat track racing in America basically since it began. On the faster one mile tracks it is 17 years since any other manufacturer has won a race. So it was huge to see the Ducati Hypermotard 1100EVO powered flat-tracker take the marque's first ever Grand National victory in the Yavapai Downs Mile in Arizona. Apart from ending an unbroken 17 year winning streak by Harley on one mile tracks, the win marks the first time a READILY AVAILABLE PRODUCTION ENGINE has won a Grand National Twins race in 29 years not some custom block [ finger points angrily at harley].

Sore winner?

no my thing is harley is allowed to compete with custom milled blocks that dont even come close to resembling factory mills except that they use spark plugs. so of course they semm to have a winning streak in most feilds of racing when every other make is forced to pure factory mills

nope every other make can build a custom job , just as Harley does , Harley has jus been doing it so long they can do it much cheeper , and yes you can get a street legal XR750 , hard to find , but they're out there ..

If Harley had followed Ducati's lead , would na happpened , Ducati is the only bike other than a Harley I would even consider owning , while Harley was building a reliable flat tracker , Ducati has been building extremly fast twins for many years , the technology in the desmo heads is nothing short of amazing

also in Harley's defense , the VTwin is a perfect flat tracker ..

Prolly too wet behind the ears to remember , but in the mid 70's Yamaha put King Kenny on a godawful fast 750 four to compete in flat track , he ran a couple races and said no more , too fast , too dangerous , had a special setup to shut down one or two cylinders , so he cud back off enuff to make the turns ..

Jack the Bagger wrote:Prolly too wet behind the ears to remember , but in the mid 70's Yamaha put King Kenny on a godawful fast 750 four to compete in flat track , he ran a couple races and said no more , too fast , too dangerous , had a special setup to shut down one or two cylinders , so he cud back off enuff to make the turns ..

dang I am old, I know what your talking about, That old Yamaham flat put everyone else in the dust. Wish the japanese bikes would get more into this kind of racing again.