3 LEAF CLOVER

During Dick Mann’s racing career, people said: “He sure is lucky. Just when you think someone’s got the race sewn up, he comes from nowhere to win it.”

The truth was that Mann understood what machines could and could not do. He managed his resources wisely. In 1970, he won the Daytona 200 on a Honda CB750-based racer. Mike Hailwood on a BSA Triple was out on lap eight with center-piston failure. Cal Rayborn’s iron XR Harley-Davidson failed a valve. Ron Grant’s Suzuki seized, and then Gary Nixon’s Triumph Triple failed, as Hailwood’s had. And there was Mann, first at the finish.

AMA racing’s rules had for years pitted 750cc Harley side-valve four-strokes against everyone else’s 500cc overhead valve (OHV) models and two-strokes. Then, in 1968, Harley-Davidson brought innovations to Daytona that rubbed out the Triumphs that had won the 200 in 1966 and ’67, relegating them to sixth