Harley-Davidson: Rispoli Clinches AFT Twins Championship

Rocket Man

Latus Motors Racing rider James “The Rocket” Rispoli clinched the 2020 American Flat Track (AFT) Production Twins championship with a fourth-place finish aboard a Harley-Davidson XG750R motorcycle at the Progressive AFT Finale at the Daytona International Speedway Short Track in Daytona Beach, Fla. With one race left in the season Rispoli has 300 points and an insurmountable lead over the rest of the AFT Production Twins field.

The championship is the first for a rider competing on the Harley-Davidson XG750R, a motorcycle built for competition and powered by the liquid-cooled, fuel-injected and race-tuned Harley-Davidson Revolution X V-Twin based on the production engine originally designed for the Harley-Davidson Street 750 motorcycle.

After finishing in second place in the first three races of the season, Rispoli won for the first time on the Indy Mile in August and has won six more races, including a mid-season string of five in a row – Springfield Mile II, Williams Grove I and II, Dallas Half Mile I and II – that powered the number 43 Harley-Davidson bike into first place in the class standings. Rispoli scored his seventh win at the Atlanta Short Track II race on Oct. 3. To give you an idea of how he’s been doing, here’s a clip from Dallas:

The 29-year-old racer from Londonderry, N.H., began racing AMA flat track in 2008 and finished second in the GNC2 class in 2009. Rispoli then turned his attention full-time to motorcycle road racing, winning AMA SuperSport national championships in 2010 and 2011, and raced in the British Supersport series from 2014 to 2018. In 2019 Rispoli returned to AFT competition, placing sixth in AFT Production Twins with four podium finishes. For the 2020 season Rispoli joined the Latus Motors Racing team, founded by George Latus, owner of the Team Latus Motors Harley-Davidson dealership in Gladstone, Oregon. In the mid-2000s, Latus Motors garnered race wins and top-three championship finishes while serving as the title sponsor for the 2000 Grand National Champion Joe Kopp, who is now the manager of Latus Motors Racing.