A couple of months ago we submitted pictures of our newly built Yamaha Street Tracker to Yamaha and was very surprised when they emailed us back and invited us to enter the bike in the Boz Bros Custom Bike Show held in conjunction with the 2010 Indianapolis MotoGp races. They sent us two free three day passes to the races and a few bucks for transportation expenses.
We didnt really know what to expect but thought we would never have a better opportunity to see a MotoGp race up close so my buddy Russ Medack and I loaded up his Travel Trailer Toy Hauler with our two street bikes, to get around Indy, and our ’75 Yamaha Street Tracker. We drove 18 hours straight through and arrived and set up camp across the street from the world famous Indianapolis Motor Speedway. We unloaded everything and took the Tracker over to the Yamaha tent inside the infield of the speedway. Here we were filled in as to what we would be doing over the next few days.
We set the bike up in the tent and were told that the event was a peoples choice show meaning they would be handing out ballots for spectators to vote on their favorite bike. The bikes were all late model Yamaha sport bikes and were all very highly customized with Hi dollar paint jobs, extended swingarms, huge rear tires, chrome and custom anodizing everywhere as well as custom built parts galore, some even had glitzy displays. We felt out of place with our older (1975) economy built street tracker but thought hey lets have fun, meet some people and enjoy the race weekend!
When the gates opened to the public Friday and the fans poured in, to our surprize our tracker proceeded to do what it seems to do best, attract more attention than a Hooters girl at Walmart… there was always a crowd around it asking questions and taking pictures, we were taken aback by all the nice compliments. Seems the Retro Flat Track look went over very well in Indy! We were even more surprized when after 3 days of showing the bike when the votes were tallyed up we got more votes than any other bike. Yep, we won!
Ben Bostrom of AMA superbike fame flew in Sunday for the awards presentation, we got to meet him and took pictures of him with our bike and talked him into autographing it on one of the white squares on the tailpiece….Was too cool! We recieved a very nice trophy, a gift basket of “T” shirts, caps, lanyards, and other cool stuff as well as a $500 gift card from Yamaha. Definatley made our weekend!
A big thanks to Yamaha for inviting us to attend and providing us with great tickets to some awesome races. Fellow Texan Ben Spies took pole position in qualifying Saturday and at the start of the MotoGp race he got the holeshot and led the first half of the race. Being on a support team, not a factory ride, he just didnt have the horsepower to hold off Factory Honda rider Dani Pedrosa who ended up winning the race. Ben took his first second place finish of his rookie season which was amazing against the worlds best riders!
Seems Indy was a good place for underdog Texas boys this year!