DIRTY TRICKS CAMPAIGN
Indian are back and rattling Harleydavidson’s cage with an all new race bike
AS FAR AS motorcycle sport comebacks go yesterday will take some beating. The reborn Indian motorcycle company returned to flat track racing after 60 years, to resume hostilities with Harleydavidson. In less than a year, the Minnesota-based firm have committed to compete in America’s National Flat Track Championship with two race bikes built from the ground-up, and entered the final round of the 2016 season, with 47-year-old former champion Joe Kopp on board. In brutally dangerous conditions, on a heavily rutted track, Kopp won the Dash for Cash, a kind of Superpole for the six fastest qualifiers held over four laps of the milelong track here at Santa Rosa in northern California. He then got the holeshot in the
day’s 25-lap, 18-rider main event. Kopp eventually finished the gruelling final in 7th spot. This all played out in front of a nearly full grandstand of cheering fans at what is usually a horse racing track. Then, with exquisite timing, that night Indian announced their new ‘Wrecking Crew’ team for 2017 – they’ve signed three riders, Bryan Smith, Brad Baker and Jared Mees. Between them, the three have won every Grand National Flat Track Championship since 2012. It’s the US dirt equivalent of Norton returning to Motogp, setting pole with Fogarty at their debut race, then signing Rossi, Marquez and Lorenzo. That noise you can hear is foreheads hitting desks in Harley’s headquarters. If all that didn’t stretch credulity, the day after the bike’s competitive debut I’m stood in the parking lot pits at 8am, waiting for my turn to ride the new Indian Scout FTR750. An engineer picks up a remote starter, slots its half-inch socket drive through a hole in the lefthand engine cover into a recess on the end of the crank, presses a button and spins the bike into life. Twin high pipes, running under my left thigh, bark a hard-edged, high tickover. The FTR750 has the brake and gear lever both on the right side, one above the other. This is a flat track racer, so there is no front brake. The footpegs are also asymmetrical, the right being much lower than the left. I lift my right foot off the peg, to firmly stamp the bike into first and roll away. Short shift to second, then again to third while riding across the corrugation of ruts in the middle of the track aiming for the cleanest line at the bottom of the wide corner. The track is an oval, a mile long, big enough to have a nine-hole golf course in the middle. In places the inconsistent dirt offers the same level of grip as an eel dipped in Swarfega. At first glance the bike might look like something from 1971, but it has fuelinjection and featherlight pistons. Revs rise and drop more like a fit two-stroke than an American V-twin. It revs to 11,500rpm, 2500rpm more than Harley’s dated but still potent XR750, and has an incredibly flat torque curve, of around 60 lb.ft, from 6500rpm to north of 10,000rpm. Dirt track racers tend to run the whole race in one gear, usually top in a four-speed ’box. Unofficial but informed talk says this motor could deliver 125bhp, but, Indian’s development engineers point out, the rear Dunlop is a 70bhp tyre. Power isn’t the
crucial aspect of this sport, power delivery is. So, while the rest of bike racing is trying to lower the weight of their wheels and all other unsprung weight, Indian have designed heavier rear wheels to reduce wheelspin. They also designed the engine so it’s quick and easy to add weights to the crank to increase rotational mass, absorbing energy and increasing rear traction. The flat torque curve means that if the tyre does spin up, and revs rise, it doesn’t deliver more torque and compound the problem. In fact, just about the whole engine has been designed with traction as the primary consideration. Traction and reliability. The all-new race engine is designed for 30-hour service intervals. ‘Using the Scout production motor wasn’t a bad idea, but would it give us every single chance to win every single race? Every decision has to be made to aid winning races,’ explains Gary Gray, Indian’s Product Director. You could fit the total parts it shares with a road Scout in your shirt pocket. Even ten degrees of throttle twist has the rear tyre stepping out. The engineers, obviously new to letting journalists ride their hand-built race bikes, haven’t remapped the ignition to knock off some of the power. Fools. Today’s test bike, the spare race bike, is set up exactly the same as the one used in yesterday’s race, barring a one tooth different rear sprocket and a different design of rear wheel. The headstock of the bike I’m trusted with is stamped FTR0001. In this world, it’s the first Honda RC211V or Ducati 916 Corse. Everyone is very cagey about figures, but 100bhp is a reasonable guess for current rear wheel horsepower. It had the jump on every other bike off the line in yesterday’s race and led the first lap, before Kopp’s own fitness and self-preservation saw him overhauled by younger men and Championship contenders. I skim the steel shoe, strapped
‘Headstock stamped FTR0001. Like riding the first RC211V or 916 Corse’
to my left foot, firmly on the ground, ready to push down if the rear wheel lets go through the wide corner. The FTR750 weighs a few kilos more than the class’s lower limit of 136kg, but somehow, the weight has disappeared. At odds with current road racing theory, the alloy 9-litre tank fills the front half of a carbon-fibre cover. Behind it is a filter for the downdraft intakes, no fancy airbox. The wheelbase is short, rake steep. The FTR750’S looks inspire dreamers to yelp, ‘Why don’t Indian put lights on this and sell it?’ The answer is it’s so twitchy it would make a disastrous road bike. Design cues might make it through to production in the future though. Under acceleration the front wheel hits barely visible ripples and the bars wiggle , threatening a tankslapper. This bike is set up on the edge of stability. I fight the natural reaction to hold on tighter and wind the throttle further than the last lap. Knobbers like me on brutal machinery are a disaster flirt, like cage-diving off Cape Town. Stick your arm through the bars and you’ve had it, but stay inside and you’re still getting a visceral thrill and an unblinking glimpse at the sheer potency of an apex predator. Where Casey Stoner’s Desmosedici felt like it would make an incredible road bike, flattering the ordinary with its grip, brakes and speed, the FTR750 is the opposite. We’re not in this together. Yes, it will pootle around at 30mph, but using even two-thirds throttle makes it misbehave in all kinds of ways. It is geared to reach 127mph at the end of the quarter-mile straight, with the right man on board. Outright top speed is irrelevant to the job in hand. Still, if I ignore the squirrely twitchiness the rest of the package is remarkably civilised. Fuelling is as perfectly usable as the very best road bikes and it pulls from low revs without a hiccup. I don’t notice any harsh vibrations. The liquid-cooled, 53-degree V-twin has counter-rotating balancers. The chassis is tubular chro-moly, with a direct (no linkages) Racetech rear monoshock. At the front RWU Yamaha R6 forks, that date back to 1998, are chosen because they’re widely understood by flat track suspension specialists. The swingarm pivot position is adjustable. Yokes are adjustable for rake and offset. Long chain adjusters give wheelbase options. I have two sessions on the Indian and after the first I can feel the adrenaline wash through my torso to my feet like a toilet cistern emptying. My hands start shaking as I pick up my pen. In the next session I have both tyres moving through the turns. The outside of the corners is deep sandy dirt, the inside looks hard-baked mud with a morning dew of powdery dust. The wide, mile-long horse racing oval took a beating yesterday. It is a rutty pot holed mess and two promising GNC2 riders (flat track’s Moto2) crashed and died here less than 24 hours ago. I raise my head and look down the track, aiming into the black shadow thrown by the huge grandstand and wind on the throttle. At perhaps 7000rpm, the pot holed corner entry is approaching fast. The brake lever is much further forward than I’d like so I rely on engine braking before accelerating through the wide, gently cambered corner and onto the back straight for the last time. I would love to ride it for the rest of the day, allowing myself to steadily increase speed and confidence, but that’s never going to happen. Bryan Smith, the newly crowned 2016 champion, is coming to test the bike ten minutes after I’m finished experiencing it. Indian have re-entered a sport that is underfunded, but still has cachet and relevance to their brand. They won’t talk budgets, but say it’s less than people would think. They’re hoping race success will drive people to dealers to test ride Indians, and they think their road bikes will do the rest. Few are doubting they can win. Indian dealers will have to do the rest.
‘You’re getting a visceral thrill and an unblinking glimpse at the sheer potency of an apex predator’