CAFÉ RACER 76: 2021 KING OF THE BAGGERS CHAMPIONSHIP

Tortilla chips, wraps, dips, salsas… and King of the Baggers V-twin motorcycle road racing. Does it get any better than that? MotoAmerica, North America’s premier motorcycle road racing series, is thrilled to announce Mission Foods, the world’s leading brand for tortillas and wraps, as the title sponsor of its highly anticipated three-round 2021 Mission King of the Baggers Series.

Last year, the class made its debut as an invitational race at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and that event’s incredible popularity with the motorcycle industry, racers and fans has led to the class now being featured in a three-race championship.

The opening round of the Mission King of the Baggers Series will kick off at the 2021 MotoAmerica season opener at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta, April 30-May 2. Round two will take place at Road America in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, June 11-13, with the series finale set for WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca in Monterey, California, July 9-11.

Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta

Round one of the Mission King Of The Baggers Championship featured an exciting battle at the front between Mission Foods S&S Cycle Indian Challenger rider Tyler O’Hara, who was last year’s King Of The Baggers invitational winner, and MotoAmerica Superbike rider Kyle Wyman, who was aboard his Screamin’ Eagle Harley-Davidson Road Glide Special. O’Hara and Wyman each took turns at the front with Wyman getting the holeshot and leading the race until lap five when O’Hara took the lead and, ultimately, the checkers.

At the stripe, O’Hara’s margin of victory over Wyman was just under half a second. Meanwhile, third place went to Frankie Garcia, who raced his Roland Sands Design Indian Challenger to his second consecutive King Of The Baggers podium finish.

“Kyle (Wyman’s) is riding awesome,” O’Hara said of the newest addition to the King Of The Baggers rider lineup. “To have that full factory effort coming in here, it’s an awesome challenge. I love a challenge, and I think it’s great for the sport and it’s just going to elevate both of our programs, and our bikes are just going to get better and better. So definitely it’s good to have. Hopefully, we can get some more bikes. The Indian Challenger, you can go out and buy it and basically get all the parts that I’m running on my bike and come out and race. I’m looking forward to getting more bikes on the grid, but for sure there’s definitely more of a challenge this year.”

Road America

Round two of the 2021 Mission King Of The Baggers Championship took place on Sunday at Road America, and in the home state of Harley-Davidson, the Motor Company swept the podium. Harley-Davidson factory rider Kyle Wyman started from the pole and led every lap of the race all the way to the checkered flag. Indian-mounted O’Hara was in hot pursuit of Wyman for most of the race until he was sidelined with a mechanical issue, which handed second place to Wyman’s brother Travis, who was just announced earlier this week as Kyle’s teammate on the factory team. Third place went to Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson rider Gillim.

Kyle Wyman was obviously ecstatic to get the win.

“It’s amazing,” Wyman said. “We got (Harley-Davidson’s) Bill Davidson congratulating me in victory lane. The who’s-who of the motor company is here. I think they gave away 200 tickets to employees this weekend. There’re people that came out specifically just to watch this race, so to get it done here in Harley’s backyard is just an incredible feeling. Those guys deserve it. They work so hard. Harley has put a pretty large number of people on this project full-time. They were told, look, this is racing. You don’t punch out at 5 o’clock. Those guys are putting in the hours and putting in the extra time, and it’s all paying off. It’s amazing also to have my brother finish second. I don’t know what happened to Tyler (O’Hara). I was trying to just put the pressure on him. I don’t know what happened. Just really glad I could execute and put those first few laps down. I think the third lap of the race for me was my best lap. I think like a 27.4. That was about everything. At that point, I looked back out at the chicane and didn’t say anyone. So, from there I could kind of cruise it home.”

WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca

Wyman started from the pole and was never headed in the eight-lap race. He gained more than a full second on second-place finisher and Mission Foods S&S Cycle Indian rider Tyler O’Hara on almost every lap of the race until he decided to slow his pace just a bit towards the end. At the checkers, he took the win by just under four-and-a-half seconds over O’Hara. Third place went to DTF Performance/Hoban Brothers Performance Racing Harley-Davidson’s Michael Barnes, who added yet another podium finish in yet another motorcycle road race class on yet another brand of motorcycle.

Wyman, who had broken his elbow in a crash last month at Road America, made a miraculous recovery from his injury, and he talked about it after the race.

“Those guys are world-class doctors and surgeons, putting me back together, knowing exactly the timeline and how he needed to fix everything for me to be able to get what I needed to get done,” Wyman said. “Honestly, we didn’t make any changes to the bike ergonomically for me to ride it. It was just a matter of Friday it was like, okay, this is the lap time I can do without braking so hard that I’m screaming in my helmet. Then here’s a lap I can do when it really sucks. Then just decided from there how hard I wanted to push. I pushed pretty hard in the beginning of the race and saw the board grow pretty quickly, so I was pretty happy with that. I could kind of keep a steady rhythm from there and not have to brake too hard. That’s all it was. It was just more brake force and the more I have to hold my body weight, especially these downhill left-handers in 2 and 11 and stuff like that. Structurally it’s been good. It’s been a very fast recovery. If I was only racing Superbike this year, I probably would have ridden the Superbike, but both would have been a lot. I would have jeopardized both. So, my plan was just to focus on this. Pretty minimal laps for a race weekend. After doing double duty riding on the Harley only is like a vacation, so it was pretty awesome. Got it done.”

six-round King Of The Baggers Series for the 2022 season

Fittingly, the 2022 MotoAmerica King Of The Baggers Championship will kick off during Bike Week in Daytona Beach, Florida, with the Baggers taking to the High Banks of Daytona International Speedway for the first time, March 10-12, in conjunction with the Daytona 200.

From there, the series will head to Georgia and Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta in Braselton, April 22-24, the site of last year’s thrilling opening round that was won by Indian Motorcycles Tyler O’Hara. The championship will then revisit Road America, the site of last year’s second round, June 3-5, in Elkhart Lake, Wisconsin, a stone’s throw from Harley-Davidson’s headquarters in Milwaukee.

WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca is where Kyle Wyman wrapped up the 2021 MotoAmerica King Of The Baggers Championship for Harley-Davidson, and the iconic track in Monterey, California, will play host to round four of the series, July 8-10.

The final two rounds of the 2022 series will take place at tracks that are new to the King Of The Baggers – Brainerd International Raceway in Brainerd, Minnesota, the home state of Indian Motorcycles, July 29-31, and New Jersey Motorsports Park in Millville, New Jersey, September 9-11.

The three-round 2021 MotoAmerica King Of The Baggers Series generated more than 19 million impressions and an engagement of 1.2 million on social media with the races delivering over 1.1 million views and 43,000 total hours of viewing time on YouTube.

“The popularity of last year’s three-round King Of The Baggers Series was such that it left our fans, teams, sponsors, and racers wanting more,” said MotoAmerica President Wayne Rainey. “So, we are giving them what they want – a six-race championship held at the three tracks that the Baggers competed on last year with an additional three rounds, including our first visit to Daytona International Speedway, added to the series. We know the 2022 season, which will be MotoAmerica’s eighth as the home to the AMA Superbike Championship, will be as exciting as ever and the expanded King Of The Baggers Championship will be a huge part of that.”

Last year’s King Of The Baggers Championship came down to a fierce battle between Harley-Davidson’s Wyman and Indian’s O’Hara with Wyman winning the decisive final round at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca to take home the title. Those two will again spearhead the efforts of the Harley-Davidson and Indian factories on their H-D Screamin’ Eagle Road Glide and Mission Foods S&S Cycle Indian Challenger, respectively.