Round 4 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track
Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by
Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Springfield Mile I event saw
a new player in the game at The Rolling Thunder Show, and the new
team immediately made a big impact on the field in The Rolling
Thunder Show.
Back in April, veteran rider Bryan Smith
announced he would be riding a new Kawasaki in the five mile events
for the season, the very same motorcycle that debuted under the
tutelage of former championship-winning tuner Skip Eaken, with
Australian flat track champion Luke Gough at the controls in the 2011
season. Smith, Eaken and long-time IndyCar fabricator Ricky Howerton
were teaming up for the new season with a double-handful of new
Kawasaki 650R-based mounts in order to make an assault on the big
tracks of the AMA Pro Flat Track schedule.
While rider Gough had made some great strides
with the 2011 version of the machine, Howerton approached Michigan
resident Smith about riding his machines for the 2012 mile events.
Flyin' Bryan was immediately impressed, and within six weeks the #42
Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports Powered by Eaken Racing
Kawasaki/Midwest Performance Hardware/Guts Wear-sponsored team was
rolling the new and updated machines out of the team's transporter at
the first Twins Series event at the Illinois State Fairgrounds mile
oval on May 27 over the Memorial Day Weekend.
In the shot above, Flyin' Bryan acknowledges the enthusiastic crowd at Springfield while builder Howerton and right hand man & close friend Jeff Gordon roll the #42 machine out to the grid.
A long-time fan of the sport, Rick Howerton
worked on perfecting his in-house 650R-based parallel twin build over
the off-season after the bike's initial debut at Springfield the
season before with Australian Gough at the controls. With over 2500
hours invested in designing, building and fine-polishing the new
threat to The Rolling Thunder Show, his long hours of toiling,
sweating and putting his dream to work paid off pretty quickly, hot right out of the
box.
Flirting with the top-5 right off the bat in
qualifying, Smith settled into a 7th-place overall qualifying spot
out of the 48 riders that took a timed session for the day, and at
the time the 3rd-fastest Kawasaki (Johnny Lewis #10 qualified
fastest, Brandon Robinson #44 qualified 5th) of the 11 riders on
Kawasakis that had taken a timed lap. “We had to make a few
changes early to the bike to get it right for Bryan, but it paid
off,” stated builder extraordinaire and IndyCar fabricator
Howerton.
When the first heat race of the day lined up
with 16 riders ready to kick start the day's events, Smith settled
into the middle of the front row amidst fast qualifier Lewis, 2-Time
and defending AMA Grand National Champion Jake Johnson and a strong
line-up of Grand National racing's best. Slotting in second at the
end of the first lap to Johnson, Smith went on a charge that had the
paying house standing on their feet for the next seven laps as he
went on to lead the remainder of the heat at the line (where it
counts) to win his first race with his new team by .084 seconds over
Jersey Jake and by .203 seconds over fast qualifier Lewis.
In the 4-lap Dash for Cash event, it was almost
the same scripted scenario as his heat, but with Kenny Coolbeth, Jr.
leading the first lap and Smith taking over for the last three laps
to lead Johnson home again. During the podium
ceremonies (pictured above before runner-up Johnson and 3rd-place
finisher Jared Mees came up to help celebrate) Smith gets a chance to
enjoy the limelight while being interviewed by one of the great
announcing crew from AMA Pro Flat Track.
When it came time for the 25-lap National main
event, Smith and the Howerton/Eaken team were ready to go at it, and
Smith led 15 of the 25 laps, making the new-build Kawasaki look
awfully good for it's first time out with the new team. In the end,
he brought the bike down low coming off of turn four in the dash to
the final checkers, which caused his tire to spin off of the turn and
allowed eventual-winner Willie McCoy and Johnson to slip by to take
the top-2 spots, with Smith finishing in the 3rd-place spot just .033
seconds behind McCoy and .016 seconds behind Johnson.
Since that time, Howerton has added to his long
hours of toiling over and with the machine. “Yeah, we started with
about 17-1800 hours in this thing by the time last season had wrapped
up, and now we're pretty close to having about 2500 hours in them,”
Howerton surmised during my visit to his shop on Monday, July 23 as
he was getting everything loaded-up for the 2200 mile trip to
Sacramento.
Starting with the initial bike (#1-left above) in late
2010, that bike is the one that Luke Gough campaigned with Skip Eaken
during the 2011 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand
National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season.
Along with the street tracker version (as talked about with Stu's
Shots late December 2011) that one (#2-right above) is now the back-up bike for
Bryan.
“Skip provides all of the horsepower, and went another way
with his new Kawasaki for Luke for the 2012 season, going with the
J&M Framed-model,” commented Rick during our visit on Monday.
“He's doing his deal while we put this together for the five mile
events for this season. I've already had everyone asking about going
forward for the 2013 season in putting something together for the
rest of the Twins Series events, but that's a lot of extra work and
time that I'm not too sure about for now. For now we're going to
just concentrate on winning Sacramento, Indy, Springfield and Santa
Rosa. Ha!”
Not only have the hours built up in perfecting
the machines, but so has the money involved. Howerton continued, “We
also added NAS fasteners, which are aircraft-rated for high strength.
But you don't have to safety wire those.” Some of those average
$3-4/each and Rick guessed they could have close to $1000 just in
those alone.
Of course originally, they built everything
from the ground up before hitting the track at Springfield during the
Memorial Day event. One of the original builds on the bike is the
hand-made exhaust. Howerton continued, “Those were built to plan
with Inconel (commonly referred to as Iconel in the U.S.), which is a
high-temp metal used in all of our exhaust applications and in
Formula 1 applications, and sells for about $120/per foot.” And
the finished product, like the rest of the machine, is a work of art.
“Bryan was in town last week checking out
last minute things on the bike, and one of the areas he
was concerned with was braking,” Howerton mentioned. He rode it
up and down the street with the original brakes, and would come in
and Rick asked him about them. Long story short, after affixing a
caliper off of a Honda CRF450, “we added the Brembo twin piston
unit (above) off of a Ducati. He came back with all smiles after that, so we
knew we were good in getting it stopped for him.”
Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports Powered by Eaken Racing Kawasaki left side shot.
“We also made some changes on the foot pegs
and brake and shifter assemblies, again all hand made, but are really
pretty trick pieces. I'm pretty proud of those. One of the original
pegs had a metal spot on it, and it caused Bryan's foot to slip off
on the restart after the red flag during the National, so we went all
rubber with it, and then also made up a new shifter assembly.”
Howerton Motorsports Kawasaki right side shot.
Howerton sourced a spare brake master cylinder
off of eBay which had just arrived that day. “$19 for this one,
can't beat that! I'm going to throw that into the crash cart now so I
don't forget.”
The crash cart was also made-up to match all of
the racing gear, and looks impressive sitting with the bikes and the
Crosley Radio stands which will help to make-up their pit set-up at
Sacramento , Indy and beyond. It can be seen in the shot above on the left side in the back.
“And we crafted our own quick-change rear
disc and gear assemblies as well,” Howerton beamed (above.)
Howerton and company look to have a fun time
and a good day at Sacramento on Saturday, and beyond for the remaining four mile events of the year. “The owner of Crosley
Radio (crosleyradio.com), Bo LeMastus, is coming in to hang out with
us. He'll be at Indy , too, on Saturday, August 18. Crosley Radio
is based out of Louisville and has helped us immensely on this, and
he's a long-time flat track fan just like the rest of us. He's got a lot of enthusiasm for the sport and in general, and is alot of fun to hang around with.
"Crosley sent
us a juke box which we'll have set-up in the pits to play some music
and talk with the fans, and we've got some promotional flyers to hand
out while Bryan signs autographs during the fan walk. That
reminds me, I gotta remember my iPod so we'll HAVE some music to
listen to instead of just the radio!” Needless to say, they'll be jammin' in the pits with this sweet piece spinning some numbers!
“We also re-did the seat for Bryan, the
original was too slick and you could see in some of the pictures he
was having to hold himself with his left hand from sliding too far
back onto the tail section on the track at Springfield. We had the
seats cut to size and lowered and should be just right for him now to
where his backside should line up just right on the number plate.”
The team is still coming together in terms of
really gelling with one another, with Bryan's Dad, Barry, having done
all the prep and building on his Moroney's FastHog.com XR-750s for
last season, they are all still getting used to one another. But by
the looks of what Bryan was able to do at Springfield, eventually
finishing 3rd in the
National main, they seem pretty cohesive already! And that was just after their first event together.
“Crosley is sending up a couple of drivers
this afternoon out of Louisville to hook-up and head to Sacramento
with the full gear ready to go,” stated Rick. (As of Wednesday,
July 25 2:30 PM EDT +/-, they were almost there. “Jeff Gordon,
Dink (one of the other wrenches on the machine that has worked for
Dreyer Honda in Indy for decades, also one of the team's sponsors)
and I are flying out around 4:40 PM EDT on Friday and we'll be ready
before we land!”
One of the other areas of concentration since
the Memorial Day Weekend was the starter box (shown above with usually-camera shy and proud builder, Howerton), which will be used
primarily by friend/helper/gofer/stooge/sponsor Jeff Gordon, who is
one of Rick's long-time Indy friends, and whose shop Speedway
Engines, is right next door to Howerton's on Gasoline Alley on Indy's
westside.
Speedway leases all of the engines for the Indy Lights
Series that follows the IndyCar Series trail, and has an impressive
layout in their shop, as well. If you think flat track is expensive,
try leasing an Indy Lights motor for a season that costs roughly $10/mile
to run. All engines are rebuilt, checked and replaced as necessary
every 1700 miles.
“I've probably got close to 30 hours just in
the starter box. We wanted something that would look right with the
rest of the gear, and it was made for JG's large frame (Gordon stands
at about 6' 4” +/-), since he'll be the one carting it around, we
made it to spec, so to speak, for him.” Balance was taken into
account when putting it together, and it pivots with ease! “I
don't have it stickered up yet, but we have Crosley's name on there
and it looks better then just a two-wheeled cart with a battery and
starter motor on it.”
One of the items that Rick touched on again
with me during this trip to his shop was the amount of time that went
into just the fuel tanks. His Dad, Jackie Howerton, a former USAC
Silver Crown champion driver, who now lives in Prescott, AZ., spent
close to 80 hours on the two tanks forming them on an English wheel.
“One of Bryan's concerns after the red flag at Springfield was if
we had enough fuel. I asked him, do you want to top it off, and he
went 'well.....' so we topped it off, and still had plenty left over
after 25 laps. We're in good shape as far as fuel economy is
concerned."
In the shot above taken at round 4 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Springfield Mile I event, builder Howerton, right-hand man Jeff Gordon and Bryan's Dad, Barry Smith can be seen getting ready for another round of action on the mile oval at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.
Two of the things that Howerton wouldn't touch
on were weight or horsepower. “You've heard of those Harley XR750s
haven't you? Well, we're real close to them for sure........ha, ha!”
I tried to flirt with numbers of 270-280 pounds on the weight and
95-98 HP on the output, but he wouldn't budge, even off the record, about the 750cc powerplant.
Hey, a guy has to have SOME secrets, right!? “We're real good so
I'm not too worried about either now!"
One thing builder/craftsman Howerton is quick
to note is all of the help he has received in putting this all
together. “I couldn't have done it own my own, so a big thanks to
all of the volunteers who've helped work late into the night/early
into the mornings, like Jeff, Dink and a whole slew of other people.
They've been a big help all around and without them it wouldn't have
been possible to get this ready again for Sacto on Saturday. They're
all just like me, big flat track fans, who were willing to lend a
hand to see us try and get us a win in one of these.”
In the shot above, Barry, Jeff and Rick can be seen proudly acknowledging their's and Bryan's win in the Dash for Cash event at Springfield on May 27 while Bryan takes in the accolades on the podium. If these guys get on a roll, this could become a familiar scene in the remaining four mile rounds in the 2012 season.
I'd say based on effort alone, these guys are
pretty close to the top rung on the box, and if not at Sacramento on
Saturday, then maybe in front of the home crowd at the Lucas Oil Indy
Mile over the Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP Weekend on August 18. I
sure wouldn't bet against them, based on what they've done so far,
and with four more mile races yet to go in the 2012 AMA Pro Flat
Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented
by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season they've got some room to wiggle,
but probably won't need it. Can you say 'place your bets now?'
So keep a close eye out for Bryan Smith on the
#42 Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports Powered by Eaken Racing
Kawasaki/Midwest Performance Hardware-sponsored parallel twin in the
upcoming mile events. With round 7 of the 2012 season ready to roll off on Saturday afternoon, he could just be the one to spoil the party
and get Kawasaki back on top again at a Twins Series mile race just
like he did at Indy and Springfield in 2010 with the
Werner-Springsteen team. And if that happens at Indy next month, the whole west side of town will be rockin' and partying!
Good luck guys and have fun, you deserve it!
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