1981 Jay Springsteen Harley-Davidson San Jose 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article

Description

1981 Jay Springsteen Harley-Davidson San Jose - 4-Page Vintage Motorcycle Article
Original, vintage magazine article.
Page Size: Approx. 8" x 11" (21 cm x 28 cm) each page
Condition: Good
California Swing
Springsteen returns, and Honda and Yamaha officially infiltrate.
• Jay Springsteen said just one thing to the
San Jose crowd before spraying them with
victory champagne: “Harley-Davidson!” He
really didn’t have to say it, though. Everyone
knew that his factory XR750 was King of the
San Jose Mile. After all, he had a full straight-
away lead on second-place finisher, privateer
Gary Scott.
What Springsteen should have said was:
“Harley-Davidson and Jay Springsteen!” Be-
cause prior to the SJ 25-lapper, people were
doubtful if The Springer was at all back to his
championship-winning form of 1978. Sure, he
left February’s Houston doubleheader with a
helmetful of points, but he was absent from
the Ascot TT in early April because the week
before that race he crashed a trail bike and
jammed some knuckles in his hand. And
missing the Ascot TT is critical, since most
Winston Pro insiders consider it the first real
dirttrack test of the season.
Mike Kidd won Ascot, riding Mert Law-
will’s Yamaha TT500, while fellow privateer
and former champ Steve Eklund put in a
hard and steady ride for second—and left As-
cot with the Winston Pro lead. So Spring-
steen started the California Swing—four
races jammed into five weeks—riding shot-
Continued
SPORT LINES Continued
Stcvit cm cxcctc*^ ccvteei at a, . .
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Winning makes for a dandy life, says H-D's Randy and his wife
But turn off the bubble machine, says Ms. Griffis.
PHOTOGRAPHY© 1981 MICHAEL STEVENS
gun to Eklund. And as one Harley team
member said, getting a good start in Califor-
nia is an indicator of two things for the rest of
the long, long season: You have the horse-
power to win and the reliability to finish.
Consistency, some say, is the key to winning
the Grand National championship.
So while Springsteen dazzled the Dudley
Perkins Turn Four grandstand crowd with
his feet-on-the-pegs sliding, head tucked in
and throttle wide open at San Jose, he wasn’t
consistent. Only three weeks before, he
crashed in his Sacramento Mile qualifying
heat and didn’t make his second straight
main event for ’81.
On the other hand, Mike Kidd mounted a
Harley for the Sacramento Mile, and came in
fourth. He remounted the same Harley for
the San Jose Mile three weeks later for a
sixth, despite a broken cylinder head stud
which became a two-second star on ABC’s
“Wide World of Sports” the following Sun-
day afternoon. Further, Kidd finished fourth
at the Ascot Half-Mile the week after San
Jose, enough to put him only six points be-
hind Springsteen—proof that consistency,
with a dollop of winning, is the solution to a
successful seasonal points chase.
Steve Eklund’s consistency paid off, too.
He left Sacramento with the series lead after
a tenth-place finish. But nobody really paid
Eklund any mind at Sacramento. Instead,
the railbirds flocked to the Honda pit for the
official debut of the NS750 racer. It had
finished third at a non-points Ascot half-mile
a couple of weeks earlier, and optimism was
high in the Honda garage. But optimism
doesn’t win Grand National races—horse-
power does. And the Honda was short on
Filice took third at Houston's TT
But zeroed-out in California.
power, especially for a mile racetrack. The
NS’s best finish for the Sacramento evening
was a ninth by Jeff Haney in the trophy dash.
So the Honda men went back home for a lit-
tle soul-searching—and to the dyno for a lot
of power-searching.
There was no Yamaha vee-twin to be seen
at Sacramento. Mert Lawwill and his riders,
Mike Kidd and rookie Jim Filice, had spent a
day testing the Virago-powered bike at the
Porterville half-mile track, but discarded it in
favor of two Harleys for Sacramento. Like the...
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