Larry Lawrence | June 20, 2021
Cycle News Archives
COLUMN
This Cycle News Archives Column is reprinted from June 23, 2010, DATE. CN has hundreds of past Archives columns in our files, too many destined to be archives themselves. So, to prevent that from happening, in the future, we will be revisiting past Archives articles while still planning to keep fresh ones coming down the road -Editor.
Danny Boy
Danny Ingram was good to go just six months after a devastating 1993 Memorial Day crash at the Springfield Mile that left him with grave injuries, including a head injury that nearly killed him. That was all in the past as Ingram made a remarkable recovery. For months, the 29-year-old AMA Grand National racer from Clermont, Indiana, was in rehab and then eventually back running, training and riding on his motocross bike. Racing was all Ingram knew, and he felt happy because he was soon to be back on a race bike. The only thing left to do was to get a sign-off from his doctor that he was back to full health and ready to race.
The visit to the doctor that day would change Ingram’s future. The news was not good. His brain had hemorrhaged in two places after his Springfield crash, and, although it was scarred over, any kind of impact could tear away the scars and Ingram could be permanently disabled or worse.
“Dan, you’ve made a great recovery, and I’m sorry to tell you this, but if you go back to racing and have even a minor fall, it could be devastating,” the doctor said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sign off to let you race.”
It took a few moments for the words to sink in. Dan’s mom gave him a hug, but all Ingram could do was stare at the wall.
“I was thinking to myself, ‘I can’t believe it’s over,’” Ingram remembers. “I felt good; I still had a few lingering effects from the crash, but I thought those would go away. It was like I was in a bad dream, and I was hoping I’d wake up.”
But it wasn’t a dream and one of the brightest young riders in AMA Grand National Championship racing was out of the sport.
Ingram grew up around racing. His father, Sam, was a journeyman racer who won tons of regional events around the Midwest. On the national level, Sam was running in the lead pack in fourth at the Daytona 200 on one of the new Honda 750cc fours in 1971, when the camchain tensioner broke. Sam even raced the Honda 750 on the dirt on a couple of mile ovals, and a photo of the bike in its flat-track configuration hangs in Danny’s garage.
Sam had a small motorcycle repair shop in Clermont, Indiana, on the far western outreaches of Indianapolis. The family lived on one of the few farms that remained in the metro Indianapolis area and the Ingram’s place was a hangout of sorts for several generations of riders from across the country who would gravitate to the Midwest for the summer flat-track season.
They’d even clear out the big barn and have short-track races inside.
“I remember Rex Beauchamp, [Bart] Markel, [Jay] Springsteen, Rick Hocking and all them guys would come down. My brother and I got the chore of shoveling out the horse manure down to the concrete floor so they could race. It got pretty serious,” Danny laughs. “The guys would be changing gearing and everything. It was big-time.”
Danny followed his father’s footsteps and got into racing. He turned pro at 16 and got his expert license at 18. Ingram turned some heads in his rookie season in 1983 when he finished on the podium behind Jay Springsteen and Randy Goss on the Half Mile at Knoxville, Tennessee, riding Steve Hall’s Harley-Davidson.
“The thing I remember the most about that race was beating Jay Springsteen in my heat race,” Ingram said of his breakthrough race at Knoxville. “I was really pumped. It made some people sit up and take notice. They were like, ‘Wow! Who’s this guy?’”
Ingram made six Nationals his rookie season and scored in the top 10 four times, including the Knoxville podium, but then he went through a tough stretch, making the main in only seven Nationals over the next four seasons.
“I was really looking for big things, but then ’84, ’85, ’86 and ’87, I just struggled,” Ingram admits. “I just couldn’t get on a fast bike. My dad didn’t have the money to buy me the Axtell heads and the Lawwill frames—the stuff that would make you competitive.”
The turning point for Ingram came in 1988 when top-notch tuner/owner Eddie Adkins gave him the chance to race his Harley.
“It was fast,” Ingram says. “And I started getting results on that bike.” He scored a podium at the Middletown Half-Mile in New York.
At about the same time, Bubba Shobert, who lived in Indianapolis during the racing season—and became friends with the Ingram family—offered to let Danny race his personal bike, a full-fledged factory Honda.
“I couldn’t pass up that offer,” Ingram said. “Eddie [Adkins] was pretty sore about it, but I hung out at the Honda shop a lot and knew all those guys and had to give it a shot.”
The results were instant. His first race on the bike was at the DuQuoin Mile and he took a solid fourth. From there, it just got better. He scored a third at the Hamburg Half-Mile, and was runner-up to Scotty Parker at the Springfield Mile. A week later, Ingram would win his first National at the 1988 Syracuse Mile, but it was an odd win. He learned about it when Cycle News came in the mail that week.
“It read ‘Ingram Earns First National Victory’ and I was like ‘I did?’”
What had happened was Ingram finished second to Shobert in the race, but, afterward, Shobert’s bike was disqualified for being underweight. Ingram left the track thinking he’d finished second and never got to enjoy the accolades of winning the National.
“A week later, they sent me a bonus check to make up the difference from first to second,” he said.
In 1989, Ingram had his best season. He raced alongside teammate Steve Morehead on a team formed by Skip Eaken and Mike Sponseller and finished third in the Grand National standings behind the factory Harley-Davidsons of Scott Parker and Chris Carr. Ingram scored six top-five finishes, including podiums on his home Indy Mile and the Springfield Mile.
Racing for a Honda team wasn’t always the easiest thing. One time in particular at Sturgis,
South Dakota, Ingram was the lone Honda in a field of Harleys. Ingram won the race, and his celebration lap was met with a loud chorus of boos.
In 1990, Ingram finally got to savor a National victory when he held off Carr to win the Short Track National at Daytona.
“I’d been an expert for eight years and to finally get to enjoy that National win was a great feeling,” Ingram remembers.
Ingram came back and became the first two-time winner at the Daytona Short Track by winning again in 1993.
What was the key to Ingram’s short-track success?
“I think it was my ice-racing experience,” he says. “I was five-time National Ice Racing Champion, and it gave me a lot of practice on my starts.”
Making money on the circuit was tough, but Ingram was scratching out a decent living. He earned a $20,000 bonus for finishing third in 1989. The hard-riding, hard-partying lifestyle that characterized so many of the riders in the Grand Nationals was something Ingram tried to keep a handle on. He was one of the guys who took his training seriously, and, while he wasn’t immune to having a good time now and then, for the most part Ingram was serious about being in shape to race.
Ingram’s main buddies in his racing days were Will Davis, Rodney Farris and Davey Camlin. Sadly, all three lost their lives on the race track. Ingram became very close to Mike and Lexie Morr, who were the owners of the team he raced for in his last couple of seasons. Lexie passed away earlier this year [2010] and Danny spent time with Mike to help him get over the loss.
Ingram says he has no memory of the Memorial Day Weekend Springfield crash that ended his career. It happened during a semi when three riders came out of turn two, side by side. The inside rider, a rookie, slipped and hit Rodney Farris sending Farris into Ingram, who was on the outside. Ingram hit the unprotected concrete barrier on the outside wall at more than 90 mph. He suffered serious brain injury and a broken neck. He was unconscious for nine days.
Today Ingram shows no outward signs from that crash 17 years ago. He now works in the construction trade, has a nice house and property in Clermont, and is happily married to his own Lexie. He’s still fit as a fiddle and recently did some car racing—and even hopped on an ex-Jake Johnson Suzuki at a local flat track and smoked everyone there in a practice session.
“It was like I’d never got off the bike,” Ingram said with a smile.
The ride was strictly for fun. Today, he and his brother ride their Harleys to an occasional race, and he and his dad remain close and enjoy restoring old bikes in their spare time. The Ingrams are local racing legends around Indianapolis.
“I look back on my career and am proud of what I accomplished,” Ingram said. “I had help from a lot of great people—as bad as my Springfield crash was, I was very lucky to come away from the sport in good shape.” CN