Floyd makes the Daytona winner's circle once again, this time to congratulate son Don.

In the race, Don got a good start running with all the Yamaha guys. “On the 3rd lap going around the east banking, the tach started moving around and the bike was acting weird. I thought it was seizing up, and I could start to see the pit lane coming up. I clutched it, looking at the pit lane thinking ‘if I go in, I’m not winning the race’, so I just let the clutch back out and it started running. After the race, we found that a circlip had come off one of the pistons and it was auguring its way into the piston side, until it fell out one of the ports.” Essentially the race came to him, as attrition to the leaders moved him further up the standings. When the chain broke on Geoff Perry’s Suzuki 500 twin with a few laps to go, Don swept into the lead, which he held to the finish. There was more to the story… “What happened was just before the start Geoff’s bike fouled a plug and they pulled him off to the side. We take off and we go around the oval for a lap, and then they got Geoff’s bike going just as we came by (into the infield turn one to start lap 2), and he joined the field in the back. Where the scoring tower was on the outside of turn one, and initially the scorers didn’t notice that Geoff had missed that first lap around the oval. He quickly started working his way through the field. Meanwhile, I was having a big race with Ray Hempstead. Geoff caught up, passed me and started to inch away, and I was thinking… there goes my win, my victory going away. It was good for the sport, for me, and Geoff and everyone that Geoff had that chain break. He had missed 2 and a half miles, but the scorers didn’t know it until later. The AMA figured it out later and gave me the lap leader money that I didn’t get credited for, those laps that Geoff led.”

The one thing missing from Don’s victory, was his friend Cal Rayborn (Daytona winner in 1968 and 1969). “The Harley team skipped the 1972 Daytona entirely since the new XR750 was not ready to go. That’s how fed up with the iron barrel model that Dick O'Brien was. For me, that’s actually one of the regrets I have about my win that year, Cal wasn’t in that race. It was a big win for me, obviously, but I wanted to feel like I beat all the factories and all the top names that year, but without Cal there is that little missing link in my mind. The Harley team riders did not get to ride their new alloy XRs until they got to the Colorado Springs Mile which was after Cal and I got home from England. I was the first non-factory rider to get one and I rode mine at the San Jose Mile, the next National.”

Being a San Diego rider, Don felt that winning Daytona was just something that was expected. “That’s what San Diego was all about. When I grew up, my Dad had won Daytona, some of his best friends had won, there was Ben Campanale (2 wins), and Ed Kretz (the first winner). Around San Diego, Leonard and Brad Andres had a shop one block up the street (Brad – 3 wins). My Dad was a sponsor of Ralph White (winner) when he got started. Don Vesco didn’t win the 200, but he had won the Grand Prix there. Joe Leonard (2 wins) was from National City, he grew up there when he started riding the bikes. Cal Rayborn won it a couple of times, if you were going to be anybody in San Diego you had pretty much better have won Daytona.”

Soon after Daytona, Don was off to the Trans-Atlantic match races for the 2nd year, with the extensively revised format of F750 bikes from numerous manufacturers, the all BSA-Triumph format having gone away with the financial demise of the company. Don - “Gavin Trippe said the promoter in England didn’t want anyone on 350s. They were trying to get the Formula 750 concept going in Europe and they wanted everyone on 750s. Gavin contacted a Norton dealer in London named Gus Kuhn Motors and the head guy Vincent Davey agreed to provide a Seeley Norton 750 if I would ride it. I wanted to go back, so I agreed. Once we all arrived in England, the Gus Kuhn guys took me under their wing and I spent my whole trip with them. We all had things to do about the bikes on a day to day, and in some cases, night to night basis and I was busy all the time. The 1972 Seeley Norton I rode was fantastic, but they also had an older model that was not as much fun to ride. Every time the new bike would die, they would drag out the old one and I was probably one to two seconds a lap slower on it. It was the electrics that killed us in that series, not even Lucas stuff! They had some trick (at the time) electronic ignition and a battery system that would put burn out soon, and often.

“By the end of the first day of practice at Brands Hatch, Vincent Davey told me I cut a faster lap around Brands than any rider they ever had ride their bikes. It really worked well and only in my mind can I enjoy now what may have been. I don’t know how I would have measured with the Rayborn-Pickrell battles, but I know I could have been close. In the first race at Brands, I think I got sixth. In race two at Brands, we went off the line and Cal, Pickrell and Phil Read (John Player Norton) were all lined up tight in line going into the first right hander. I went in 4th and took an outside line around Read and then when we banked left to come down the hill I had the inside on him and took 3rd. I stayed right with Cal and Ray all the way across the finish line of the first lap, into turn one and again down the hill and then, in a split second the motor died out. No sputter, nothing… it just died. At Mallory Park, I set the fastest lap in practice, then the battery died right on the line before the start of the first race, and they quickly dragged out the older bike for me to ride, but it wasn’t as competitive. In the second race I was going back and forth, dicing for position with Phil Read on the JP Norton. When I got off the bike, his wife Madeline was right there telling me ‘YOU were cutting my husband off…’ well, where we come from if you are in the lead you take your line… and then I crashed at Oulton Park. GRRRRRR! That’s what my Match Races was like. Cal Rayborn… almost nobody goes somewhere for the 1st time and does something like that, he used to ride the highways out near Tecate, riding fast on curvy up and down roads that he didn’t know, he learned to adapt.” An understatement to be sure, as Don’s friend Rayborn tied Pickrell for individual honors on the older iron barrel Harley-Davidson.

“I also rode that bike at the Imola 200 a month later and gremlins messed me up there too. After chasing Agostini around in practice I felt ready to do well at Imola, then the carburetors got an air bubble about ten seconds before the start of the race and I lost about seven laps getting going. Dang it.”


By '73 it was back to the strokers, which proved a handful on the daytona banking. Left to right, Geoff Perry, exiled Brit Ron Grant, Don Emde and Paul Smart.

At the last race at Ontario on the Yamaha, Don had some problems with the bike chattering in a couple of the long left hand corners. Testing an adjustable air shock system for a couple of laps the problem initially seemed solved, until a complete pressure failure caused a big highside crash and concussion. Looking back, Don felt he was never quite the same after that crash. For the 1973 Daytona 200, Don was signed for a one race deal by Suzuki, to be teamed with Paul Smart, Ron Grant, and Geoff Perry. Don was used to setting up his bike for his own personal style, as were most of the riders. Merv Wright has often commented upon how they (US Suzuki) were forbidden from modifying the bikes as supplied by the Japanese, to the point where they were actually disguising aftermarket frames in desperate attempts to make the bikes handle properly. Confirming that experience, Don Emde was in for a culture shock when riding for Suzuki at Daytona in 1973.

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