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You'll see things in the MotoAmerica paddock this season that you may never have expected to see. A new team with a world champion as manager and more roots in IndyCar than motorcycles. A three-time national Superbike champion and a World Superbike race winner racing Baggers. A World Superbike racer coming to MotoAmerica Superbikes for the second time and a surprise Superbike race winner from last year returning from American Flat Track. Two Superbike veterans moving to the Supersport class.
Other surprises will be things you don't see, such as dominant 2023 Supersport champion Xavi Forés, who doesn't have a full-time ride in 2024. And a familiar fixture in the Superbike paddock, Westby Racing, will also be missing.
While some things, including many of the top contenders in the Steel Commander Superbike class, will be similar to last year, there will also be changes that will surprise anyone who hasn't been paying attention in the off-season. While a few points-paying races have already been run, the MotoAmerica tour gets serious beginning this weekend with five classes running at Road Atlanta. Here's what to watch for in the season ahead.
Steel Commander Superbike: Usual suspects, returning challengers
The top line remains the same: With three straight championships behind him and comfortably embedded in Richard Stanboli's Attack Performance Yamaha team, Jake Gagne is the presumed favorite until someone can prove otherwise. In the last three seasons, Gagne has won three titles and two thirds of the Superbike races and set a record for most consecutive wins. Now 30 years old, there's no reason to think he won't be in prime form.
More questions surround some of the other contenders, starting with Gagne's teammate, Cameron Petersen, who missed part of last year to have surgery on his right wrist, which had so little mobility, due to old injuries, that he couldn't twist the throttle normally. Petersen also reportedly suffered a training injury in the off season. He raced in the Daytona 200 in recent years but sat out this year, replaced by 2023 Supersport champion Forés, to have more time to recover and try to be ready for Atlanta.
Questions also surround five-time Superbike champion Cameron Beaubier. After two years racing internationally in Moto2, Beaubier returned to MotoAmerica last year to ride a Tytlers Cycle Racing BMW M 1000 RR and surprised everyone by beating Gagne in the first race of the year at Road Atlanta. But several crashes (many due to the bad luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong time) and a concussion in the second half of the season ruined his title chances and he ended up sitting out the last races, once Gagne clinched the championship, to recover. Will he be fit and fast in 2024?
Meanwhile, after five seasons racing in American Flat Track for Estenson Racing, two-time MotoAmerica Supersport champion J.D. Beach is returning to the roadracing paddock as Beaubier's teammate on a Tytlers M 1000 RR Superbike. Beach showed his ability to handle sketchy traction conditions when he surprised the regulars and won the last Superbike race of the 2023 season by more than five seconds on a damp track at New Jersey Motorsports Park as a replacement rider for Petersen on the Yamaha.
Like Beach, another rider is returning to MotoAmerica, but from a very different place. Loris Baz came to the United States to race Superbikes in 2021, finishing fourth in the series, and then returned to the Superbike World Championship. Now he's back for a second shot at the domestic series with the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati team. His teammate, 2013 AMA Superbike champion Josh Herrin, finished second in the series last year and Herrin, Baz, and the Ducati Panigale V4 R have to be considered contenders.
The Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki team returns with Richie Escalante and Brandon Paasch. Escalante finished in the points in every race in 2023, his second year in the Superbike class, and finally got his first Superbike podium with a second-place finish in race one at Circuit of the Americas. The next milestone is getting his first Superbike win. Paasch was drafted into the team in mid-year in 2023 when Toni Elias abruptly retired and, despite that disadvantage, put in some solid results with a best finish of fourth place.
One more wildcard is former Supersport champion Sean Dylan Kelly, who returns to MotoAmerica from Moto2. He will be riding a BMW M 1000 RR for TopPro Racing.
With nine rounds again this year, the Superbike class will maintain its customary 20 races by running tripleheaders at Barber Motorsports Park in May and Circuit of the Americas in September.
A super strong Supersport field
Is it possible that a class can lose its defending champion, who won nine out of 15 races last year, and still have a stronger field this year? Yes, it looks like it is possible.
Some of the biggest news in the off-season has to do not with the Superbikes or the Baggers, but with the Supersport class. And the developments could result in some extremely fierce competition and interesting racing.
As MotoAmerica sees it, the biggest off-season news was the arrival of the Rahal Ducati Moto team owned by IndyCar racer Graham Rahal and his father, IndyCar champion and Indy 500 winner Bobby Rahal. Not only does the Rahal team bring new blood into the sport, but it also brings in a new title sponsor, XPEL, which represents a coup in attracting another sponsor from outside the motorcycle industry. To show they're serious, the Rahal team hired fhree-time AMA Superbike champion and 2009 World Superbike champion Ben Spies as team principal. Then they added a serious stable of three riders.
The veteran on the team is P.J. Jacobsen, who won one race and finished on the podium eight times last year in the Superbike class on the Tytlers Cycle team. Moving down to Supersport gives him a chance to address some unfinished business. Jacobsen finished second in the World Supersport class in 2015 but never won that title. The move to Supersport could also be seen as a route back to the Superbike class, as the Rahal team plans to move up to Superbikes next year.
The other two riders on the Rahal team are 16-year-old Kayla Yaakov, the most promising female racer to come along in years, and 2022 Stock 1000 champion Corey Alexander. Yaakov has already demonstrated a maturity beyond her years and she has two more experienced teammates to help her learn the class and the Panigale V2. It's normal for a new team to need some time to get up to speed, and in the Daytona 200 the Rahal bikes were a little off the pace of the frontrunners. But Daytona is like no other track on the schedule, and considering its leadership, backing, and talented riders, expectations are high for the Rahal Ducati Moto team.
Jacobsen won't be the only Superbike race winner in the Supersport class in 2024. One of the downbeat announcements of the off season was that Tryg Westby, owner of the Westby Racing team that has been a pillar of the paddock for years, was closing down the team due to his personal health. That left last year's Superbike fourth-place finisher Mathew Scholtz a free agent, after racing for Westby for more than seven years. But he found a ride in Supersport when the team formerly known as Squid Hunter Racing reorganized as Strack Racing and brought aboard Scholtz and his long-time crew chief, Ed Sullivan. After years of racing a Yamaha YZF-R1 in Superbike, Scholtz will ride a YZF-R6 in Supersport.
In addition to the Superbike race winners Jacobsen and Scholtz, the Supersport field will still have Vision Wheel M4 ECSTAR Suzuki's Tyler Scott, who finished second in the standings last year, and his teammate Teagg Hobbs, on Suzuki GSX-R750s. it's going to be an unusually stacked field in Supersport.
It's unfortunate we apparently won't see defending champion Forés in that strong lineup. Despite coming to America and instantly making a statement by winning the first eight Supersport races of the year in 2023, the Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati team and Forés are not reuniting for 2024. Filling in for Petersen in the Daytona 200, Forés qualified on the second row but dropped out early with a technical problem. Will we see more of Forés as a substitute this year?
Last year's Supersport Extended Races, which involved a mandatory pit stop, apparently will be a one-year-only experiment. This year, the Supersport class will run its usual two races per weekend for a total of 18 races.
Mission King of the Baggers: Bigger than ever
Even the biggest fan of Baggers racing, watching the first builds lumbering around WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca and blowing their engines in 2020, couldn't have been optimistic enough to imagine that it would grow into an 18-race series by 2024. Or that the 620-pound Baggers would be hitting higher top speeds on the banking at Daytona International Raceway than the highly developed Supersport bikes racing in the Daytona 200. Or that the Baggers would be the MotoAmerica class chosen to share the MotoGP spotlight at the Red Bull Grand Prix of the Americas.
If you've been ignoring the King of the Baggers series and you're just now realizing it's for real and you want to get a taste of what it's all about, check out the trailer above for Harley-Davidson's video series, "Push the Limit," or follow the series on YouTube, and read Zack Courts' account of riding one of these race bikes.
With two races in conjunction with the Daytona 200 and two races (and a two-lap dash) along with MotoGP at COTA, the Baggers are already well into their season. After those four races, the four factory riders for Indian and Harley-Davidson are unsurprisingly atop the points standings. With three wins and a second-place finish, Harley-Davidson Factory Racing's Kyle Wyman is in first place with a 10-point advantage over a surprisingly fast-starting newcomer to the series. Three-time Australian Superbike champion Troy Herfoss, who has long wanted to race in the United States, has three seconds and one win on his S&S Indian Challenger. James Rispoli, on the other factory Harley-Davidson Road Glide, is in third, and former champ Tyler O'Hara on the other factory Indian is in fourth.
RevZilla is along for the ride in King of the Baggers this year on the bike with the number-one plate. You'll see the orange and black on the RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson Road Glide ridden by defending champion Hayden Gillim, as well as a second V&H Road Glide ridden by former Junior Cup and Twins Cup champion Rocco Landers. Gillim and Landers are currently fifth and sixth in the standings, right behind the factory teams, cementing Vance & Hines' position as the top independent team.
Both Gillim and Landers will be busy, because after getting off the Bagger, Landers will ride the RevZilla/Mission/Vance & Hines Suzuki GSX-8R in the BellissiMoto.com Twins Cup series and Gillim will ride a Real Steel Motorsports Honda CBR1000RR-R SP in the Superbike class. The Twins Cup series also started earlier, with two races at Daytona, and Landers currently sits in second place in the standings behind Gus Rodio on the Rodio Racing Powered by Robem Engineering Aprilia RS660.
Then there's the most unexpected story in King of the Baggers.
When I spotted 10-time World Superbike race winner and 2004 MotoGP rookie of the year Rubén Xaus chatting up people in the MotoAmerica paddock at Pittsburgh International Race Complex last summer, I briefly wondered if it was just a vacation or something else was afoot. What I didn't expect was to hear that Xaus would be coming out of retirement as a racer to ride a KOTB Harley-Davidson for the Feuling Parts team.
Or is he? After scoring just one point at the two races in Daytona, Xaus did not make it to the second round at COTA. Instead, he posted on Instagram that he was "in Italy to arrange things & create" and showed a photo of him having dinner with Jorge Lorenzo, Max Biaggi, and others. So will Xaus be racing a Bagger or will he be packing his bags and skipping out to Europe to do something else in racing?
Other classes and how to watch
Beyond those three top classes, Junior Cup and BellissiMoto.com Twins Cup will run 12 races at six rounds, Stock 1000 and the Mission Super Hooligan National Championship in conjunction with Roland Sands Design will run 10 races at five rounds, while the Royal Enfield BUILD. TRAIN. RACE. class for women racers will run eight races at four rounds. That means some race weekends will include as many as 13 races and feature a truly wide range of motorcycles.
There are more options than ever for watching the races. Various races will be shown either live or delayed on the MAVTV network, MTRSPT1 streaming service, or the MotoAmericaTV streaming service. Selected races are also shown live on MotoAmerica's YouTube channel. MAVTV and the YouTube channel also show episodes of Pressure to Rise, the series that is a great way to see highlights of races you missed, see what goes on behind the scenes, and get to know some of the personalities in the paddock.
For full access to all practice sessions and races, the MotoAmerica Live+ streaming service costs $109.99 for the season or $12.99 for an individual event.
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