Ben Campanale and the 1938 Daytona 200
Ben Campanale was not an unknown rider in New England, but to much of the national crowd at Daytona he was still an outsider. He came to the 1938 Daytona 200 on a Harley-Davidson WLDR, stepped into one of the roughest races in American motorcycling, and left with a win that put his name in the record books.
The race had everything that made the old beach course dangerous: a large field, hard-packed sand, a paved straight road, Indian and Harley riders fighting for room, and a protest after the finish. Campanale got shoved off course, fought his way back, and crossed the line first on the WLDR.
A New England Racer on a 45-Inch Harley
Campanale was born in Worcester on September 19, 1914, and came up through the tough prewar New England racing scene. He fit the Class C period: part mechanic, part showman, part athlete, and part survivor. Stories about him include a boyhood motor iceboat built from an old Harley engine and an aircraft propeller, along with stunt riding before his Daytona wins made him a national figure.
By 1938, the AMA’s Class C rules had put production-based side-valve motorcycles at the center of the sport. Campanale’s bike was not a Grand Prix exotic or a Brooklands-style special. It was a Harley-Davidson WLDR, Harley’s 45-cubic-inch side-valve competition model built for the kind of beach-road racing that defined Daytona before the speedway era.
The Early Daytona Beach Course
The 1938 Daytona 200 belonged to the beach-road era, before the Speedway and before Daytona became a closed-course race in the modern sense. The early course used hard-packed sand for one long straight and the paved beach road, later A1A, for the other. The lap was roughly 3.2 miles, and the racing depended as much on tide, surface, and nerve as it did on horsepower. The beach-road layout shaped every part of early Daytona beach racing, from the tide schedule to the way riders fought for room.
The southern beach course could turn one hard move into a race-deciding argument. A rider was not just holding a line through a paved corner. He was running at speed between sand, road, turn approaches, spectators, and a surface that changed with the tide.
The Hillbish Fight and the Protest
Campanale’s race came down to a fight with Lester Hillbish, who was riding for Indian. The two were running neck and neck when Hillbish forced Campanale off the track. Campanale recovered, got back on the course, and caught Hillbish again.
The story has always had a little outlaw flavor. Campanale was said to have made kicking motions toward Hillbish’s front tire after he came back alongside him. It was not polished sportsmanship, but it was very much the language of prewar motorcycle racing: if you were going to shove a man off the course, you had better understand that he might come back and tell you about it at speed.
Hillbish backed off, Campanale stayed in front, and the Harley crossed the line first. The Indian side protested the result after the race, but racing legend Jim Davis was one of the officials and had seen Hillbish force Campanale off the course. Davis denied the protest, and Campanale’s win stood.
The letter from H.A. Devine kept the argument alive after the checkered flag. In Harley circles, the 1938 result carried the force of a young rider beating a large national field, pushing back against Indian pressure, and winning on the beach at Daytona.
The Daytona Record
Daytona’s preserved record lists Campanale as the 1938 winner on a Harley-Davidson over 63 laps in 2:42:10, an average of 73.99 mph.
Campanale beat a field of about one hundred riders. Even without leaning on a perfectly round entry count, that was a massive field for the beach-road course. After being run off and fighting back through the sand, the win changed his career.
The serial number of Campanale’s WLDR has not surfaced, and no authenticated surviving machine is tied to the 1938 win.
The 1939 Repeat
Campanale answered any doubts the simplest way possible: he won Daytona again in 1939. This time he was on a factory racer given to him by Harley-Davidson. That second victory made him the first two-time Daytona 200 winner and proved the 1938 result was not a lucky beach-race upset.
The factory attention followed the 1938 win. Campanale went to Daytona as a fast New England rider on a stripped WLDR and came home as a rider Harley could put behind a factory machine. In 1939, he came back with that support and did it again.
Campanale’s name stayed attached to American motorcycle racing long after the prewar Daytona years. He later survived the deadly 1941 Oakland 200 crash that killed Tommy Hays and June McCall. He was honored by Laconia in the 1990s, inducted into the AMA Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1998, and remembered as one of the early Class C riders who helped define the Daytona 200 before the Speedway era.
Campanale’s Place in Daytona History
Ben Campanale’s 1938 Daytona 200 win sits at a turning point in the race’s history. Daytona was still a beach-road contest shaped by tide, sand, and nerve. Harley and Indian were still fighting through production-based Class C machines. The riders were close enough to settle arguments with elbows, lines, and sometimes a boot pointed at a front wheel.
A young New England racer brought a Harley-Davidson WLDR to Daytona, got shoved out of shape by one of the Indian men, came back, won the race, and survived the protest. The 1938 Daytona 200 forced American motorcycle racing to remember his name.
Daytona would keep changing after that, from the beach-road years into the postwar era and eventually into the Speedway age. By the time of the 1948 Daytona 200, the same beach-road format had become a postwar proving ground for a new generation of riders.