Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Names team ‘Dooley Racing’ in honor of grandfather

 

On October 2 at the ECTA Arkansas Mile, local motorcycle racer Matt Durand, owner of Durand’s Auto Detail of Columbus, set four land speed records. 

While Matt hasn’t been land speed racing long, he has spent a lot of time on motorcycles, starting at age 14 and growing up racing motocross. This trip was Durand’s fourth to the Arkansas-Mile, which takes place twice a year in Blytheville, Arkansas, at the Arkansas International Airport. 

Matt said, “My grandfather was a racer in the 1920s, and his nickname was ‘Dooley,’ so we named our team Dooley Racing.”

Durand’s Dooley Racing Team raced in two classes on two different bikes, an MPS 350cc two-stroke and an MPS 350cc four-stroke. One of Durand’s bikes is a vintage 1984 Yamaha RZ 350 two-stroke, with the other bike being a 2021 Yamaha R3 320 cc four-stroke.

Durand broke a pair of records in the two-stroke class and another pair of records in the four-stroke class. His fastest speed in the two-stroke class was 131.862 mph, and his fastest speed in the four-stroke class was 116 mph.

When asked if he expected such an excellent performance, he said, “Yes and no. We try not to get too caught up in expectations. Our goal is always to give it our best try. We just ended up being much faster than the last time we competed there and broke a record we had previously set. It meant a lot to walk away with two world records.”

Mike’s been racing since he was young but gave it up for a number of years. 

“One day, I said to myself, you aren’t getting younger, so if you’re gonna do the stuff you’ve always wanted to do, you gotta do it now,” said Durand.  “So we brought out the old vintage two-stroke bike like I rode as a kid because you just don’t see them that much anymore at these competitions, especially.”

Dooley Racing is sponsored locally by Yeetees Designs in Mill Spring and Taylor Automotive Performance in Dallas, TX. Their two-stroke engine builder is Ed Toomey, and they utilize Superbikes Unlimited as a tuner for their four-stroke bike. Matt and his team will compete again in the spring of 2023, looking to break their established records and set a few more.