FAST OR FARCE King of the Baggers
FAST OR FARCE King of the Baggers
SETH RICHARDS
When MotoAmerica announced it would host a one-off exhibition race for American V-twin baggers at Laguna Seca in 2020, some race fans believed it would be a joke. They imagined a field made up of yokels in starredand-striped leather vests blaring “Born to be Wild” from their fairing speakers, lighting up the corkscrew with starred-and-striped showers of sparks as chrome scraped asphalt, and a torrent of wipeouts all ending with fringed handlebars plowing furrows in gravel traps.
But that’s not how it’s played out. Two years before, a pair of industry veterans approached MotoAmerica president and three-time 500cc Grand Prix world champion Wayne Rainey to pitch two ideas. One was racing two-cylinder scramblers on mixed-surface tracks. The other was racing baggers.
Ultimately, scrambler racing with its multisurface requirements was deemed a step too far for North American roadracing tracks. But when Rainey and MotoAmerica executives watched footage of baggers going around a racetrack, they realized it was worth pursuing, especially when parts and accessories giant Drag Specialties got behind the idea. King of the Baggers was born.
According to MotoAmerica chief operating officer Chuck Aksland, viewership numbers for the Laguna Seca race were so high that creating a series was the only possible choice. Laguna’s numbers were no fluke; at the end of the 2021 season, MotoAmerica’s online videos across all classes had 25 million views. Half of the views were of King of the Baggers content alone—and there had been only three races.
Nor is KotB just an online phenomenon. “It’s bringing more fans to the racetrack,” Aksland says. “A lot of them are fans of baggers who had no idea what MotoAmerica was and they’re discovering superbikes and sportbike racing. We like to look at it like we’re making the party bigger for all of motorcycle racing. We didn’t take anything away from our normal schedule to make it happen. If you’re a superbike fan and you have a problem with baggers, don’t watch them; just go buy a hot dog.”
Kyle Wyman, 2021 King of the Baggers champion and 2019 Daytona 200 winner, says the series reflects a broader trend: “There’s a huge shift in the market where people want performance baggers and they want to watch them race on track. People have demanded this out of MotoAmerica as much as MotoAmerica has brought it to life. The top three attended events in 2021 were the three bagger rounds, and that’s no coincidence.”
To Wyman’s point, the popularity of bagger and cruiser-style motorcycles in America is undeniable. No manufacturer has capitalized on that interest like Harley-Davidson, who continues to have the largest market share of street motorcycles sold in the US.
Not only that, the established racing categories are based around motorcycles that many of the Japanese OEMs have either largely abandoned, as in the case of 600cc supersports, or have allocated fewer development dollars toward, as in the case of 1,000cc superbikes. Understanding the relationship between the decrease in sportbike development and the decrease in sportbike sales is the proverbial chicken-or-egg situation. Regardless, the impact of decreased sales is evident in the paddock: Factory support in America’s premier roadracing series has largely vanished. Until now. Harley-Davidson and Indian are both fielding factory efforts in King of the Baggers.
If riding a 620-pound motorcycle with no electronic safety nets past its intended limits isn’t racing for racing’s sake, what is?
“From a manufacturer’s perspective,” Aksland says,
“I think racing has as much to do with the image of the whole company as it does a particular machine winning on Sunday and selling on Monday.”
The old win-on-Sunday-sell-on-Monday adage is the race fan’s version of “If you build it, they will come,” an optimistic belief that if only manufacturers displayed their products on track, the golden age of the early aughts would return. But in motorcycling’s field of dreams, the customers never came back. Winning on Sunday, it turns out, isn’t enough.
King of the Baggers represents a reversal of the adage. Harley-Davidson’s and Indian’s massive customer bases in the US bring a ready crowd into the racing fold and big sales numbers justify factory efforts. Sell on Monday, win on Sunday, reinforce brand loyalty in the process.
If the whole thing sounds like another simple marketing exercise for the manufacturers, consider Wyman’s take on riding his factory Screamin’ Eagle Road Glide at full tilt.
“It’s a lot like riding a superbike,” he says. “There’s a ton of torque available at all rpm ranges, so to maximize that torque you need to use much more of a point and shoot technique, like on a superbike. Couple all that power with no rider aids and it’s a blast. There’s no traction control, no quickshifter or autoblipper, no slipper clutch. It’s all about rider input.”
The fact that baggers aren’t designed to prioritize performance doesn’t detract from the spirit of competition. On the contrary, if riding a 620-pound motorcycle with no electronic safety nets past its intended limits isn’t racing for racing’s sake, what is?
Lap times tell no lies. “The lap record at Inde Motorsports Ranch is a 1:44.9 on a Yamaha YZF-R1 superbike,” Wyman says. “During testing of the Road Glide, we clocked a 1:48.2 lap time. Hypothetically, if we made the 1:44.9 pole position for Superbike, the qualifying cut off for the grid would be 1:49.4.”
In other words, if lap times were the only qualification for eligibility, an Indian Challenger or Harley-Davidson Road Glide could feasibly line up on a superbike grid.
If race fans still think King of the Baggers is a farce, the joke’s on them.
