Lucas Oil Indy Mile Previews Bryan Smith's Crosley/Howerton/Eaken Kawasaki Rocket Heading into Saturday's Action at the Indiana State Fairgrounds

The Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports powered by Eaken Racing Kawasaki team rallies around the #42 Kawasaki 650R-based mount of rider Bryan Smith 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 on May 27.  Smith took the newly-minted machine to a 3rd-place finish in the 25-lap National main after earlier in the day winning his heat and the Dash for Cash event, all in the team's very first gathering on the track for the 2012 season.  Jeff Gordon, Ricky Howerton, Bryan Smith and Barry Smith take their final breathers before the action starts to rip with The Rolling Thunder Show's annual spring stop at the famed mile oval at the Illinois State Fairgrounds.

As was originally announced back in April, Flyin' Bryan got together with team owner/builder/designer/guru Ricky Howerton after the owner of Howerton Products reached out to the Michigan-based rider about contesting his design at the five Twins Series mile events of the 2012 season.  The resulting answer was a big 'yes' and the end results were pretty amazing right off the start, and then the team went out and won round 7 of the season at the Sacramento Mile, which again was just the team's second outing together.  To you see the pattern developing here?

With the hometown round of the series coming to the Indiana State Fairgrounds mile oval this coming Saturday, August 18, you can bet that owner Howerton and best friend and head-stooge Jeff Gordon have been burning the midnight oil fine-tuning what will now be the third configuration of the machine in what will now be their third outing at the fast and furious Lucas Oil Indy Mile.

I had the pleasure of visiting with the Indy west siders this last Saturday at Howerton's shop on Gasoline Alley, just a handful of blocks south of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.  Both Rick and Jeff were hard at it putting the final touches on what will be the third variation of the machine since it hit the track at Springfield back in late May.  Some of the changes are and may seem miniscule, but builder Howerton isn't cutting any corners nor taking any chances to ensure that by the end of the day on Saturday, they achieve the end result--standing on the podium at one of AMA Pro Flat Track best-attended events over the course of the 5th Annual Red Bull MotoGP Weekend.

So if you are wanting a good bet, the Bryan Smith-manned #42 Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports powered by Eaken Racing Kawasaki team would be a pretty good one for this Saturday night on the eve of the last day of the Indiana State Fair, with the lighted ferris wheel spinning a glow over the action on the track as the stars of The Rolling Thunder Show take the greatest racing series on wheels in the world to the mile oval to show the town's world attendees that this is the real deal in motorcycle racing.

And make sure you take a walk down into the pit area during the fan walk late Saturday afternoon between the break in qualifying and the heat races and take the time to take in this fine piece of machinery and say 'hi' to the team.  Between Bryan, Barry, Rick and Jeff these guys like to have a great time and enjoy the racing and the crowd and would love to have you come by and admire their piece of art.  And tell them Stu's Shots sent you!

As always the best of luck to the Howerton team and the rest of the field for this Saturday's running of round 10 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Lucas Oil Indy Mile.

Let's go racing!

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Defending Lucas Oil Indy Mile Champion to Ride Indy-Designed High-Tech Motorcycle at 2012 Race   Bryan Smith will be aboard a radically designed bike designed by Indy’s own Ricky Howerton and sponsored by Crosley Radio.   (INDIANAPOLIS-August 14, 2012) Ricky Howerton does very well at his day job working for the very successful family business called Howerton Motorsports located on Gasoline Alley in Indianapolis. The company builds exhaust systems, primarily for Indy Cars, but also for everything on racing on four wheels from NASCAR, to NHRA, to Formula 1. But Ricky loves machines that are on two wheels and go fast on dirt. He got the bug as a kid watching Honda Factory team riders like Bubba Shobert and Ricky Graham burn up flat tracks like the legendary Indy Mile. So, in his “spare” time, he decided to design a dream bike that would dominate the dirt miles…and build it from the ground up.   Bryan Smith broke through years of Harley-Davidson domination to win the last edition of The Lucas Oil Indy Mile AMA Pro Flat Track Grand National in 2010 on a Kawasaki-powered bike tuned by the legendary Bill Werner. When the race returns after to the Indiana State Fairgrounds in Indianapolis, Indiana on Saturday, August 18, 2012, Bryan will attempt to defend his title again on a bike with Kawasaki power, but this time on the radically designed bike hand-built by Ricky Howerton and tuned by successful veteran mechanic Skip Eaken.   Howerton says, “Basically, I wanted to build a street bike that was a worthy dirt track bike. I had stayed in contact with Skip Eaken a bit over the past 30 years since I was a teenager. He asked me what engine I wanted to put in it; and I liked the Kawasaki parallel twin a lot. It’s a really nice engine. It’s real compact. Being a parallel twin, the package is really nice. It lends itself to a lot of freedom in your design work in the rear suspension. At that time he was really interested in that engine as well. He knew that Bryan had won two races with Bill Werner on the Springfield and Indy Mile. He asked if I was interested in building another motorcycle. At the time I was going to build just one. Originally, I thought no; why would I want to do that. I was in the design phase at that time, doing all the computer modeling. The more I talked to Skip, and then my dad convinced me to go ahead and build a second one and let Skip race it.   Bryan Smith went to Howerton and expressed an interest in running the bike on the mile tracks this year. Ricky says; “That was a big deal to have a kid like that want to run for pretty much a no-name like myself in that series at that level. I got my other bike back from Skip, and put a couple more engines together and then really fined tuned those things—really massaged them and got them ready to run on the track. We took something you could run on the street and got them to where you could change parts on them quicker on the race track and have spares, etc. That all happened in February of this year, before the dealer show. I call them the number 1 and number 2 bikes, but they are so similar, but I had to use decals so we can identify them. The number 2 bike is actually the street bike I rode around on for two weeks before this deal happened. The 1 bike actually has a VIN number, so I guess you could actually ride it to the Indy Mile. If you know what nice is; well then it’s pretty obvious that it’s really nice. It’s more like a two-wheeled Indy Car.”   And the bike has been fast—very fast. In Bryan’s first outing at the Springfield Mile, he had a great showing and was a threat to win. At Sacramento, Bryan had a dominating day, winning on just his second go-round on the new bike. Howerton says that the team has big ambitions going into Indy. He notes that the shape of the tracks at Indy and Sacramento are similar. But what gives the team the biggest edge? Howerton says, “First and foremost it’s the guy sitting on the seat. That’s one of the reasons I’ve always liked motorcycle racing. I make my living in car forms of racing. Obviously, there’s more money in that. But it’s the human element in motorcycle racing at whatever level whether it’s Moto GP or Motocross that’s the most important thing. Other than that, I think Kawasaki on the engine side of it shows huge potential. That thing makes great power. I’d have to say that the engine on that thing on the miles is just a horse. But the rear tires on the motorcycles across the board are like a restrictor plate. There are a lot of engines out there that make a lot of power. The KTM—that big engine makes a lot of power. The Lloyd Brothers Ducati makes great power. I think building your power profile and getting the power to the ground is the biggest thing. That’s where Skip Eaken, with his history of building Harley engines for decades and him being a part of the Honda factory team…he just has so much knowledge of what to do and what not to do. He’s not a guy who’s a dyno racer who looks for the most peak power. He knows that on dirt tracks it’s hard to get enough grip. He just does a great job with the engines.”   The #42 team will be sponsored by Crosley Radio of Louisville, KY. Bo LeMastus is the CEO and owner of the company. LeMastus says, “We do everything from turntables, jukeboxes, various radios, to telephones. Everything looks like it came from back in the day; be it the ‘30’s, 40’s, 50’s etc. But, obviously everything is state of the art. I was a competitive motorcycle racer as an amateur. That’s how I met Ricky. I’ve been involved in motorcycle racing since the late ‘70’s. It was a natural marriage when Ricky got involved in flat track that Crosley would be a perfect sponsor. Flat track racing is so grassroots. To me it takes you back to the ‘30’s and ‘40’s and that was the earliest form of bike racing, really. It felt like a nice natural tie-in for us. For the coming Indy Mile, from our company here, we will probably bring up a good 50 to 75 of our teammates and their families. So it’s been a neat connection for us to really get our staff involved. I love anything with two wheels. And to be able to partner up and do something with Rick Howerton was just a dream. He is so talented.”   After seeing the huge reaction to the new bike in person at Sacramento, LeMastus is excited about seeing what Bryan can accomplish. He says, “It’s going to be a big night. That’s for sure.”   Why would Ricky Howerton build his labor of love? He says, “I think to tie in what I’ve learned throughout my life and to go to the track and to kind of re-live what I used to watch through Bubba and Ricky back in the day… I’ve got about 3,000 hours now in building the two motorcycles to really get them ready for Springfield this year, and other than a few times when I’ve gotten tired from working 18 hour days or something; it’s been fun the whole time. I think that’s important for me because it’s nothing we’re making money on. It’s a big personal deal, and I’ve had fun the whole time I’ve been doing it.”   The Lucas Oil Indy Mile returns as a featured event of the Indiana State Fair, and again coincides with the Red Bull Indianapolis GP weekend. Activities will be begin with gates opening at 2:00pm, timed-qualifying from 3:00pm-5:00pm, opening ceremonies 7:00pm with the first race at 7:30pm.   Tickets on sale now Advance tickets available at The Indiana State Fairgrounds Box Office, any Ticketmaster location, www.ticketmaster.com, or by calling 1-800-745-3000. For additional ticket information and web links, please visit www.IndyMile.com. Advance tickets include admission to the Indiana State Fair and race ticket. Will-Call and Day of Race Tickets will pay $10 at gate to get into fair, then proceed to Grandstand box office to receive tickets at a $10 discount.     www.IndyMile.com

838 N. Delaware Street | Indianapolis, IN 46204 US

AMA Flat Track: Sacramento Mile Round 7 Wrap-Up






















While Jake Johnson gets a big hug from team owner Dave Zanotti, crew chief Ted McDermitt takes the reigns of the #1 Zanotti Racing/Schaeffer's H-D/Boughner Racing/Arai-sponsored XR750 after the 25-lap National main at round 4 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season.  Johnson had just brought the 2-Time and defending AMA Grand National Championship-winning machine home in 2nd-place behind Springfield Mile I winner Willie McCoy.

3rd-place finisher at the Illinois State Fairgrounds Memorial Day Weekend classic Bryan Smith rolls up on the #42 Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports powered by Eaken Racing Kawasaki/Midwest Performance Hardware/Guts Wear-backed 650R-based mount while master builder Rick Howerton (back to camera) discusses the race with Bryan's Dad, Barry, and team member, sponsor and long-time friend Jeff Gordon.

The first Twins Series event of the season just over two months ago saw the Howerton/Eaken parallel twin emerge as one of the significant new players in town by immediately making an impact on the field and the series.  While winning his heat race and the Dash for Cash event at Springfield, and just coming up short of the win with a 3rd-place finish in the main, Smith and the team immediately were regarded as 'the one's to beat' at the remaining four mile events of the 2012 season.  And when Sacramento rolled around last weekend, they had stepped-up their game and made some improvements to allow Flyin' Bryan to take his first win (in only their second race together as a team) ahead of Johnson and series points leader Jared Mees on the #9 Rogers Racing XR.

Smith, who had previously won the Sacto Mile last year and in the '03 season (during the now-defunct Formula USA Series), won practice and then went out and qualified 9th-fastest, but less then .4 seconds behind fast-qualifier Jersey Jake.  Winning his heat to qualify for the National main and coming home in 3rd-place in the Dash for Cash, the only thing left was the 25-lap big show.

Needless to say Smith, Johnson, Mees, Sammy Halbert and Brandon Robinson put on one heckuva show at Sacramento last Saturday night as they battled throughout the event's just over 16 minutes.  But in the end, Smith had more then come to terms with the characteristics of the Kawi rocket and showed that the 750cc powerplant was more then capable against the all-mighty and long-conquering XRs and had plenty of power to make for some serious closing rates along the straights at the Cal Expo Fairgrounds.

In the end, the gap to runner-up Johnson only shows .038 seconds on the official results tab, but make no mistake about who had 'em covered with Smith leading 23 laps at the line and Johnson following through with the other two crosses of the stripe.  A new sherriff is surely in town in The Rolling Thunder Show, and with three more mile events on the season's schedule the rest of the teams and riders have got to be thankful there aren't any more for this season.

What should be very interesting when everything comes out in the wash at round 10 at the Lucas Oil Indy Mile on August 18 is when Johnny Lewis on the #10 Scott Powersports Kawasaki returns to the track and Brandon Robinson gets another shot on the #44 Werner-Springsteen Kawasaki after his best-ever result of 4th-place at Sacto.  Add in Slammin' Sammy on his always-potent #7 South East H-D XR, Henry Wiles on the #17 Lloyd Brothers Motorsports Ducati, Willie McCoy returning to action on his #59 Harley-Davidson of Wausau and the rest of the greats in The Rolling Thunder Show and that should make for some seriously excellent racing at the Indiana State Fairgrounds during the Red Bull Indianapolis MotoGP Weekend, in front of what should be a packed house.  That is one race you DON'T want to miss!

A big congratulations, again, to the Crosley/Howerton/Smith team for their breakout win last weekend, and a big tip of the hat to Mees and Johnson, your current points leaders, for their excellent runs as well!

With the series rolling into the Castle Rock TT tomorrow night, the Singles Series will take over for the next two events.  The Peoria TT is set for Sunday, August 12 and then the greatest racing show on wheels in the world heads to the Lucas Oil Indy Mile for the next Twins Series event of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season.  And this train is moving on and it's moving on fast!

Round 7 Sacramento Mile links of interest (story of the race, videos and complete results):


Thanks to Dave Hoenig and Cycle News for the (as always) excellent coverage of last weekend's round 7 of the 2012 AMA Pro Flat Track Harley-Davidson Insurance Grand National Championship presented by Motorcycle-Superstore.com season at the Sacramento Mile:

http://cyclenews.coverleaf.com/cyclenews/20120731?#pg48

Dave also has a very nice selection of pics from the Sacto Mile on his great site Flat Trak Fotos.com.  A big thanks to Dave for all of his efforts in always getting THE great shots!

http://www.flattrakfotos.com/2012%20Results/7-28-12.html

AMA Pro Flat Track posted the following videos from the Sacto Mile (another big thanks to AMA Pro Flat Track and the great duo of Yve Assad and Will Fulford for their undying efforts in the production of these (and ALL of their) videos.

Bryan Smith #42 Crosley Radio/Howerton Motorsports Kawasaki 1st-place interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI3ptNKkJNE

Jake Johnson #1 Zanotti Racing/Schaeffer's H-D XR750 2nd-place interview:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=47nnKIAM-R4

Jared Mees #9 Rogers Racing/Blue Springs H-D XR750 3rd-place interview (which has some excellent footage on the back straight at Sacramento that shows the closing rate of the Kawi on the #1 & #9 XRs):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAEKuDb_6AE

And again, thanks to AMA Pro Flat Track for the complete results from the Sacramento Mile:

PDF version, complete:

http://results.amaproracing.com/live/results/pdfresults/ft/2012/F1235/default.aspx

Standard version, drop-down box:

http://www.amaproracing.com/ft/events/results.cfm?year=2012&eid=2012021235

AMA Flat Track: Inside the Howerton Motorsports-Eaken Racing/Bryan Smith #42 Kawasaki, Getting Ready for the Sacramento Mile & Beyond

 

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 3^rd 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!