Battling baggers
Whatstartedasadaftideahasblossomedintothemostentertainingracinginages
The Indian Challenger you see here thrashing its way to victory in the first ever King of Baggers race lapped Laguna Seca in 1m 36sec. That would have put it in the middle of the AMA Supersport 600 grid that raced on the same weekend.
It’s an indication of how seriously the teams entering King of Baggers took the new race series. With factory squads from Indian and Harley plus top class riders including EX-WSB star Ben Bostrum, the racing was a surreal shock to sceptics who predicted it would be a lumbering embarrassment. The leaders were drifting the tourers into corners, doing the Rossi leg dangle under braking and generally behaving exactly as they do on their AMA Superbikes.
‘It’s breaking the internet over here,’ race winner Tyler O’hara tells Bike. ‘People are going nuts about it. They were not expecting us to do the lap times we were doing, and there’s the potential to go even faster.’
Tyler’s factory Indian team is run by V-twin gurus S&S, while the other Indian team in the series is run by ex-racer Roland Sands. Harley are throwing serious cash at several teams among the 11 Harley crews to try and stop Indian humiliating them as they have in AMA flat track, but they’re struggling – Indian came first and third at Laguna.
Much work has been done to the bikes to lose weight, gain ground clearance and add raciness. ‘The S&S team modified the exhaust to tuck it in tighter and higher,’ says Tyler. ‘We’ve added rear sets off the pillion pegs, there’s a quickshifter with race shift, the seat is raised by 4in and we’ve added a lot of swingarm angle to give more ground clearance and edge grip.’ Naturally the panniers and all fairings are carbon fibre. Even so, the bikes are a handful. With monstrous torque from low down, it’s tricky to tap the throttle mid-corner and race starts are made even more perilous by the addition of race clutches with minimal lever movement – Frankie Garcia looped his Indian doing a practice start and ended up underneath it. Fortunately he suffered no more than bruises.
Though he looked commendably under control for most of the race, Tyler wasn’t immune from mishaps – he ran into a gravel trap while leading. ‘I ended up spinning the front tyre on the rim under braking,’ he says. ‘It tucked the front and
I had a big moment.’ He then had to fight back from third, eventually overtaking Harley rider Hayden Gillim going into the corkscrew. ‘Once I had a clear track I could pull away – the Indian was so much stronger mid-corner. It was funny because we had the least performance [the Harleys were allowed to bore out the engines and one even had a turbo, while the watercooled Indians had to keep the stock capacity]. But getting into the corner, midcorner and getting out, it was really strong.’
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‘People were not expecting us to do the lap times we were doing’