Those baggers fishtailing at full speed

Based on commentary during this practice, it sounds like the 'rules' are more 'guidelines' this time around.

 

Have to admit I thought it was dumb at first. I was wrong. It looks to be a cool event!

 

I was at the first AMA XR1200 series event at Road America. One or two laps into the race, at the bottom of T5, I saw one bike smoking and then maybe four of five of them fell down. I looked at the other two photographers there and asked “Is anyone surprised?”.

Nope! But it was a demolition derby for sure.

 

Yep... and even Kyle Wyman won the race and crashed during his Victory Burnout!

 

I came up with this idea about 10 yrs ago. Bagger Class. But it would had been 2 up with a mandatory pit stop mid race to switch riders. 1st half rider becomes the bitch for the 2nd half. Radios would be MANDATORY to be on at full volume.

Heard of a series in Europe that is just for Honda Odyssey's. Also seen theres one in the 24hrs of Lemons. My 18 Odyssey will surprise you with how it handles. Sometimes I forget its a freaking minivan. It would be fun to do an auto track day with it. Just imaging you are out there in your $220K Porsche GT3 and get waxed in the corner by a minivan.

 

The idea that this is stupid is just a stupid idea..

People race "anything" whether it has wheels or not it doesn't matter what it is... if it can be competitive and fun ... it's a race !!!
and nothing is funnier than somebody on a beggar posting lap times quicker than somebody on a sportbike doesn't matter if the riders are good or bad.... It's still funny as fuck

 

Those guys rode hard and it was a hoot to watch.

 

Well we are all talking about it and seems a lot of people liked it so couldn’t be too bad. As stated before they will need to adjust the rule book and to be honest as cool as I like seeing an ohlins front end you sure don’t see many Harleys with ohlins if they out aftermarket forks or even upgrades on them. Carbon bags are available and I’ve seen a few harleys with carbon bodywork each to their own, but that’s like a 300lb guy on a sport bike putting a full ti pipe and ti fastners all over his bike (ones for unsprung weight are a different story) vs skipping a meal and taking a dump. It’s still a pig just a bit less of one I’d allow triples, some sort of either fork internals ( no idea what’s in Harley forks), brakes, etc maybe limit or balance bikes as far as ci and power adders and make the rules so that crowd can see them and actually buy them and yes you can buy the same stuff, I get that but you won’t see folks running to get a set u triples machined and grabbing a set of ohlins forks but places like PM sure to sell a lot of aftermarket brakes, triple, etc. I’d imagine lap times will drop a lot but the market for this will probably not even notice that. I’m not much of a Harley guy, ridden a couple nicely done road Kings and although not my thing I could see how people would like having them.
Struck me as kind of odd as they made the loose rules to allow it open which is kind of cool but if it was basically a big marketing things I’d have put a few more limits and focus on the stuff these companies sell in that side of the industry. I’d say maybe a super stock plus type of rule book, not full on Superbike with some of the components. I’m sure after this they will be able to get a feel about the cool after market stuff that worked for teams and what didn’t and have some discussions to make it more appealing to more shops/ teams to jump on board. The Harley crowd is huge in drag racing, they have a large and loyal following and road racing if foreign to a lot of them. Make it so the fans can “ea vision” building a bike with aftermarket erry-thing just like bike x and they will be setting records at deals gap. Some of the Harley drag race classes are very effective from the marketing side and the companies supplying those parts do a great job with fans/ potential customers at the track. That was a big eye opener to me when working with a pro mod team last year at a race and was kind of walking around digesting the new to me drag racing stuff. It was either die hard wanna be bikers or yuppies with too much money but either side of the fence I saw a lot of people spending A LOT of money. I saw power commander sell 2 units and a 3rd with about every add one just in the short time I was looking at their newest dyno they brought. They also had ecu flash companies on site, a few dynos, some just for hp runs and others to to quick tuning after either flashing or installing pipes, pc, filter etc right at the track. They all had a wait as well so something was working well that weekend I was there.

 

I think it's a lot like the old Superbikes in that they have to replace a lot of parts because they simply won't hold up for more than a lap. We road raced a Triumph TR4 in vintage racing... you almost have to throw away the whole car just to get the thing to make it around the race track reliably. Back in the day, the solution around that was to cycle parts out every 1-2 races, but that was when they were new and you could go to the dealership or order parts by the pallet from the factory (for the serious racers with connections). I'm sure the Indian is less this way than the Harley.

They did say they have cartridge fork internals that drop into the Harley stuff, but I still would be worried about fork flex. I know a few of the machines had huge billet fork braces to help with that, but they also looked custom.

I think the thing is, the aftermarket is so strong on those, most of what you can find on them is already available.

 

I was actually surprised at the number of bikes running stock HD conventional forks with out of the catalog cartridge conversions (obviously revalved) with fork braces. From what Rob was saying while covering the race, a LOT of what we saw was already straight out of the existing HD aftermarket, he was rattling off builds faster than I could keep up.

I like the rough theory for the rules currently, keep it pretty open so we have wild machines out there. I don't think you can go supersport just yet, you need the sheer outrageousness of these bikes to help build interest. You also want platforms for as many vendors as possible to use as advertising.

 

i can’t recall which publication it was, but the Chrysler Pacifica made the 2020 ‘top 10 cars that are surprisingly fun and practical for $30k.’

they point out that most mini vans have big V6s and sedan suspensions these days, and that, especially when empty, they’re surprisingly quick.

we have a 2014 Odyssey, and the transmission hunts all over and makes dumb shifting “choices,” but the engine is a gem.

unfortunately i only drive the van with 5 kids in it, but it still gets out of its own way as well as it needs to.

 

It was just as fun to watch as I thought it would be. MotoAmerica would be crazy not to give a race to this huge and unrepresented share of the new bike market and aftermarket. The interest this generated can’t be ignored by anyone trying to grow the sport overall. It may not be racing that leads to Motogp or World Superbikes, but it was fun, and brought in new participants at a high level. And for sure, I was very surprised that the baggers were faster than the vintage Superbikes, and that there were no huge crashes or engine explosions, just a few retirements. Big as they are, they looked real good for their first time out.

 

i mean there's a guy hauling the mail in a Renault Kangoo delivery van at the Nürburgring...



(bikes in the top right corner at 3:49)

might as well race baggers