The cover of Today’s Motor Sports in July 193 featured Ronnie Doyle, of Abilene, Texas, racing his No. 14 Harley-Davidson just ahead of the No. 68 Triumph of John Platchek of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, in the 1963 Daytona.
Racer Gordon Lunde cleaned out his house and was good enough to send me some of the old magazines in his collection.
One was this July 1963 issue of Today’s Motor Sports, an auto racing photo magazine that covered the 1963 Daytona 200.
Pictured on the cover is Ronnie Doyle, of Abilene, Texas, racing his No. 14 Harley-Davidson just ahead of the No. 68 Triumph of John Platchek of Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
Doyle finished ninth that year and Platchek was 39th. It marked the first time the AMA allowed full fairings on race bikes.
It was a mixed bag of riding styles back then. With flat track dominating the AMA Grand National schedule many riders put their foot down through the turns even at road races as Doyle does here. Platchek used the more traditional “European” riding style with knees firmly planted on the tank as he cornered.
Doyle and Platchek must have been either photogenic or lucky. Less that a year later a racing photo of Doyle was featured on the cover of Cycle. A year earlier Platchek made that magazine’s cover.
As far as I can find Today’s Motor Sports magazine didn’t last much beyond 1963.
Rider Files 
So that’s where Rossi got the idea to put his foot out entering a corner.
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ha, ha… no doubt.
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The magazine began in June 1960 as “On The Grid” and was known as “America’s Motor Sports Magazine”. The title was changed in February 1961 to “Today’s Motor Sport’s” and was known as “The Racing Pictorial Magazine” due to it’s focus on photo journalism. The magazine ceased publishing in January 1964 due to a fire at the publishing house. Issues also include international/national/local race reports, entry lists, race schedules, photos, ads and feature articles Everything is copied to a mid-sized USB flashdrive (4GB, PC and Apple compatible) and organized by year and month. The scanned archive has been run through an OCR program (optical character recognition) is now completely searchable by keyword. Save time and money whether you are searching for articles listing a driver, track or a particular marque.
This format allows for ease of use and portability.
See Sports Car Scan’s website at http://www.sportscarscan.com for more information and magazine samples.
Regards,
Chad Struer
Sports Car Scan
Website: http://www.sportscarscan.com
Email: cs@sportscarscan.com
(831) 277-1118
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