Harley-Davidson

Walter Davidson, a co-founder and president of Harley-Davidson, competed in a Chicago Motorcycle Club endurance race in 1906, though his motorcycle did not finish. Two years later, he won an endurance race in New York's Catskill Mountains with a perfect 1,000 +5 score, putting Harley-Davidson on notice. As early as 1908, Walter G. Davidson competed in a Federation of American Motorcyclists Endurance and Reliability Test, scoring a perfect 1,000 points on what must have been a single-cylinder machine. The first V-twin powered model, which became a bulwark of the brand, came a year later with the "Silent Little Gray Fellows" series of engines.

A prototype of an early loop-frame Harley-Davidson, ridden by Edward Hildebrand, competed on September 8, 1904, in a Milwaukee motorcycle race at State Fair Park, placing fourth. Arthur Davidson, another co-founder, initially opposed factory racing, believing that daily riders did not need or want race-modified motorcycles. However, Walter Davidson believed racing was a great way to demonstrate a bike's performance.

By 1914, Harley-Davidson had pulled ahead of Indian Motorcycle Company and dominated motorcycle racing. In 1921, Harley-Davidson became the first team in history to win races at an average speed greater than 100 mph (160 km/h). In 1922, Harley-Davidson won all eight National Championship races sponsored in the USA for motorcycling. Between 1920 and 1925, after building 45-inch and 74-inch engines, it broke 30 land-speed records at Daytona Beach.

Harley-Davidson formed its first factory competition team, known as "The Wrecking Crew," in 1913. This official factory team dominated motorcycle racing on dirt and board tracks in the early 1920s with talented racers including Red Parkhurst, Otto Walker, Fred Ludlow, and later Joe Petrali. The nickname was revived in 1968 when Harley-Davidson Class C dirt track and road racing teams won 18 out of 23 possible National Championships. In 2006, the official Harley-Davidson Wrecking Crew was reformed to include the Factory Team and select riders from independent teams receiving Harley-Davidson support.

Joe Petrali, born in San Francisco in 1904, began racing at age 12. He joined the Harley-Davidson factory team after winning a 100-mile race on a borrowed factory racing Harley. Petrali's star shone in the 1930s; he scored the highest number of points in 1931 and every year between 1932 and 1936, except 1934. He also reigned as national hill climb champion from 1929 to 1937. In 1935, Petrali won all 13 national championship races in the country. A year later, at Daytona Beach, he set a world land-speed record of 136.183 mph on a modified Harley-Davidson 61-cubic-inch, overhead, valve-driven motorcycle, running without a streamliner casing due to stability issues. Petrali retired from racing two years later.

Harley-Davidson dominated hillclimbing, a speed sport where competitors race up steep hills, taking all trophies by 1910 with seven consecutive first-place finishes. Indian Motorcycle Company invented hillclimbing in the early 1900s. By 1928, Excelsior and Indian built limited-edition motorcycles strictly for hill climbing, with Harley-Davidson following suit in 1929 with the Harley-Davidson DAH, a rare hillclimb-only model. The Great Depression led to the closure of Excelsior and reduced funding for hillclimbing for Indian and Harley-Davidson, making professional events nearly nonexistent until a resurgence in the 1960s and 1970s.

Harley-Davidson also specialized in endurance racing, which involves long races over challenging and varied terrain. Walter Davidson's 1908 victory in the Catskill Mountains endurance race was a significant achievement for the brand.

Harley-Davidson was successful in dirt-track racing, also known as flat-track racing, which involves racing around dirt, oval-shaped tracks at high speeds. In the 1930s, Harley-Davidson dominated dirt-track racing, largely due to Joe Petrali's emergence. In 1947, dirt-track racer Jimmy Chann won the first of three consecutive AMA Grand National Championships. In 1950, Harley-Davidson riders won 18 of 25 National Championships and broke six new racing records. After winning the AMA Grand National Championship in 1954, Harley-Davidson riders continued to dominate, winning every Grand National Championship for the next eight years.

Introduced in 1957, the Sportster family was conceived as racing motorcycles and was popular on dirt and flat-track race courses through the 1960s and 1970s. The XR750, a Sportster-based motorcycle, became the dominant dirt-track racer from 1970 onwards, winning 29 of 37 AMA Grand National Flat Track Championships from 1972 to 2008. This bike, available for sale starting in 1970, was essentially a destroked Iron-Head Sportster with two front cylinder heads and a hotter cam, running two carburetors. In 1972, improvements included aluminum heads. The XR750 utilized rules permitting a 750cc engine, 250cc larger than the 500cc limit for engines without OHC configuration.

By 1952, the WR and WRTT model racers were showing their age against newer, lighter European competition. Harley-Davidson responded with the KR, a design that moved the side-valve motor into a smaller, lighter, stronger machine. For 17 years, the KR and KRTT models held off the competition, bringing Harley-Davidson 13 victories at Daytona alone from 1953 through 1969. Factory rider Carroll Resweber won the National Championship four years running, from 1958 to 1961, a record held until Scott Parker broke it with five straight championships between 1994 and 1999.

In 1961, Harley-Davidson built a fully-faired road-racing version of its dirt-track competition model, the KRTT750, which achieved speeds as high as 163 mph. In 1963, Ralph White won the Daytona 200 Road Race on a KRTT750. From 1955 to 1969, 12 of the 15 AMA Daytona 200s were won on the KR750 (dirt track) or the improved KRTT750 (road course).

Dick O'Brien, hired in 1957, coached and led Harley-Davidson's factory team for 26 years. Under his leadership, the team earned the nickname "The Wrecking Crew" again. Cal Rayborn took top honors at Daytona in 1968 and repeated his win in 1969. Mert Lawwill's efforts as a racer and builder helped Harley-Davidson secure one last Grand National Championship with the KR before it was retired.

O'Brien scrambled to get an overhead-valve bike online in 1970, cobbling together a stopgap based on a 750cc Ironhead. This first iron XR750 suffered from excessive heat. In 1972, the iron XR750 was retired in favor of the alloy XR750, one of the most successful bike motor designs of all time. Harley racer Mark Brelsford brought the Grand National Championship back to Harley-Davidson that same year. The alloy XR750's dominance in dirt racing continues to this day. Cal Rayborn won two nationals and brought Harley its last AMA Grand National roadrace win during this period.

Harley-Davidson revived its road racing program in 1994 by forming the VR1000 Superbike Racing Team. The VR1000, a liquid-cooled, fuel-injected V-twin, was initiated in 1988 by Vice President of Engineering Mark Tuttle. It was piloted by Miguel Duhamel when it debuted at Daytona in 1994, but did not finish the race. The VR1000's design, completed in 1989-1990 by H-D designer Mark Miller and Roush Racing's Steve Scheibe, was five years behind competitors like Ducati's 851/888 series by the time it raced.

Despite its challenges, the VR1000 performed better on tracks suited for it. Miguel Duhamel left Harley after 1994, but riders such as Chris Carr and Pascal Picotte continued. The 1996 season was more competitive, with Tom Wilson taking second at Mid-Ohio, the VR1000's first podium finish. Chris Carr earned the VR1000's first AMA Superbike pole at Pomona in 1996. In 1999, Pascal Picotte claimed two podiums with a second at Pikes Peak and a third at Sears Point. Harley-Davidson retired from the AMA Superbike series in 2001, with rumors suggesting company infighting over its budget contributed to its demise.

The Revolution engine, introduced for the 2002 V-Rod street line, was based on the VR-1000 Superbike race program. It was developed by Harley-Davidson's Powertrain Engineering with Porsche assisting in making the engine suitable for street use. The VRXSE V-Rod Destroyer, Harley-Davidson's production drag racing motorcycle, uses a Screamin' Eagle stroker 1,300 cc incarnation of the Revolution engine with a 75 mm crankshaft, built to run the quarter mile in less than ten seconds. It is not street-legal.

Harley-Davidson's association with sportbike manufacturer Buell Motorcycle Company began in 1987 when they supplied Buell with fifty surplus XR1000 engines. After Harley-Davidson discontinued the Buell line in October 2009, founder Erik Buell established Erik Buell Racing and continued to manufacture and develop the company's 1125RR racing motorcycle.

Harley-Davidson won Grand National Championships in 1976-1978 and Grand Prix titles in the 1970s. While the late 1970s were dominated by consecutive wins by Jay Springsteen on AMA Grand National, the 1980s continued with several racers. Starting in 1981, Scott Parker won 83 races in that decade. Ricky Graham and Randy Goss also won several championships. Non-factory, modified drag-racing classes, run by organizations such as the All Harley Drag Racing Association, use highly modified Sportster, Evolution, Shovelhead, and occasionally antique engines running on multiple fuels.

Harley-Davidson also owned and sold Aermacchi's series of sporty 250cc and 350cc bikes to stay competitive in the youth market. In 2001, Harley-Davidson announced plans to enter the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Pro Stock drag racing series with a Screamin' Eagle/Vance & Hines effort.

This article is based solely on the supplied corpus. No external sources were consulted; claims that could not be substantiated against the corpus were omitted under the drop-the-claim rule.