on his EX650. Another year saw eight of the Kawasaki twins at the Springfield Mile in September, with Bryan Smith winning on an EX650, this time mounted in a dirt-track frame built by Howerton Motorsports that had been campaigned by Gough in 2011. By the 2015 September Springfield Mile, an astounding 27 Kawasaki EX650s made up the GNC2 class’ s 35 bike entry, with another 23 in the GNC1 class. That’ s 50 Kawasaki 650 twins … Once again, Bryan Smith won the GCN1 class, on a Kawasaki, this time prepared by Howerton Motorsports in Indianapolis. Werner’ s effort in the 2010 season had paid off for the AMA and brought a lot more young racers into the sport they had previously been shut out of by the prohibitively expensive to run XR750 Harley-Davidson.
LIGHTWEIGHT TT It was not only in AMA flat track racing that the Kawasaki 650 twin was proving popular though. On the other side of the Atlantic, the British Auto Cycle Union decided to reestablish the Lightweight class at the 2012 Isle of Man TT. Rather than using 250cc GP machines, the race was now for series production 650cc twins. Right away the Kawasaki 650 proved the popular choice, with all but 11 of the 43 starters in the inaugural race on EX650-based machines, Ryan Farquhar winning at a race average speed of 114.15mph. This class allowed almost unlimited engine modifications but mandated use of the standard road bike chassis. Private British tuners soon boosted the power output of the 650 Kawasaki twin and in 2013 James Hillier on the winning Kawasaki averaged 117.69mph. Again, Kawasaki 650s dominated the class, 32 of them making up the majority of the 43-bike field. By 2014 all but five of the 49 Lightweight TT entries were 650 Kawasakis. One of them was an Italian Paton, a 650 Kawasaki engine in a chrome moly frame raced by Ollie Linsdell to sixth. The 2015 edition of the race saw the winning average speed upped to 118.936mph by Ivan
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