We featured Paul Hartman's Racewear and his supercool Triumph Bonneville hooligan racer in Sideburn 38 and saw he had a new firebreathing bike so asked for the story on it. This is what he told us...
Kind of a crazy deal, and sometimes I still don't believe it. I won this bike in a raffle that Davis Fisher did to raise some money. Last summer Davis announced on his Instagram that he was going to sell raffle tickets for his Kawasaki 700 Twin AFT racer. Tickets were $50 and he was to draw a winner once he sold X amount of tickets. I usually don't enter these things, but what the hell, I bought one. A couple months went by and I kind of forgot I even bought a ticket.
One random Saturday I was watching the live stream of AFT on FansChoice, and I got a call fromSingles racer Jesse Janisch. He's like 'Dude you just won Davis' twin! He just did the drawing with Robby Bobby and pulled your name'. I freaked out. I'd never won a draw before.
Once the American Flat Track series came back to the west coast I cruised up to Sacramento to meet Davis and pick up my new bike. That was a super fun day that I'll never forget. If you ever get the chance to watch the Sacramento Mile from the infield, do it!
The bike is back home with me now and I got the chance to ride it out at Perris Auto Speedway [below]. It's pretty insane and I can't wait to keep playing around with it. My plans now are to go through it and understand the bike a bit more. I'll probably switch out a few little things and give it a new visual. I'm sure some events will pop with an open twins class, and I'll be there. Would be cool to watch the bike do another AFT race. Maybe I'll find someone who wants to race it in the production twins class. That would be fun to see.
Thanks to Davis Fisher and his dad Rex for setting me up with an awesome bike. Savage Customs made the frame and a lot of little custom parts on it. It's really a work of art when you see it in person.
Cheers, Paul