Harley-Davidson Shows Off Its Hooligan Side
Appeared in Cafe Racer Magazine's August/September 2024 issue.
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BY ANTHONY CONROY, Cafe Racer Magazine
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After a year of gaining experience and learning on the track, Harley-Davidson is proving itself to be a force in one of the world’s most diverse roadracing classes, and it’s doing so with, on paper at least, the unlikeliest of motorcycle platforms.
At Daytona International Speedway in March, riders aboard the Pan America 1250, a bike built to propel Harley-Davidson’s adventure-touring sales but with the “bones” needed to be competitive in a national race series, made a statement, and a not-so-subtle one.
In just its second season in MotoAmerica’s no-holds-barred Super Hooligan class, Pan America riders swept the podium in Race 2, proving to the field — and arch-rival Indian — that the Harley-Davidson is worthy and a serious contender to compete for the class championship. Propelling the Pan Am is Harley’s Revolution Max 1250. Introduced for the 2021 model year, the powerplant produces 150 horses and 95 foot-pounds of torque in stock form.
“The sky is the limit for that platform, so I wanted to be a part of making that grow — the Pan America and the Revolution Max platform as a whole in motorsports because the Pan America is a highly capable machine, but the powertrain and the bones of the motorcycle are so versatile,” said Kyle Wyman, who owns KWR, one of the teams running Pan Ams in Super Hooligan. He also rides a factory Road Glide in the King of the Bagger class.
“The Pan America is already so versatile and we have so much opportunity to turn it into what you’re seeing now. Guys are doing almost 170 mph with a stock Pan Am engine and it’s amazing,” he said.
The Super Hooligan class rules state that stock, liquid-cooled engines can make no more than 125 horsepower, so the Pan Ams were initially restricted by using the Sportster S airbox and velocity stacks. The Pan Am is still required to the use the Sportster S airbox cover, but during the off-season, MotoAmerica gave some power back by allowing the Pan Ams to use the stock velocity stacks, a move that seems to have breathed more life into the bike and new life into the rivalry between Harley-Davidson and Indian’s FTR 1200.
“The (Super Hooligan) class concept was sort of built around Indian, and you see what Indian has done with their product as a result,” said Wyman. “They came out with an FTR sport-kind-of-bike based on the class, so we’re just a little bit late to the party. The Pan Am didn’t originally fit into the rules package when the class came out, but the idea that it could be a good fit and have parity with the other manufacturers started to take shape … .”
Super Hooligan is the brainchild of custom bike builder, designer and ex-racer Roland Sands and began life in 2015 as a flat track series built around Indian motorcycles. It has since evolved into a roadracing series that now includes 12 manufacturers (although 10 were entered at Daytona) and 10 races at five venues as a support class in MotoAmerica, the nation’s premier domestic series.
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Super Hooligan Race 1, Daytona (2024)
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Super Hooligan Race 2, Daytona (2024)
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“I love naked bikes. I love roadracing, and I’m a fucking hooligan, so it all came together,” said Sands. “I knew I didn’t want to jump back into road racing as I’d done before, so it was important to have a lifestyle attached to what we do.”
Super Hooligan is tapping into an energy created by the marketplace, where ADVs and naked bikes are the fastest-growing segment in the industry.
“This is racing at the bold end of the spectrum: inappropriate, unruly and fast as fuck,” said Sands. “I think that means eyeballs and interest. Naked bikes with flat number plates carry a nostalgic feel to them and that’s just plain cool.”
H-D GETS ON BOARD
For Harley, the King of the Baggers and Super Hooligan series play right into the corporate strategy: race what you sell. That lesson is one the company learned more than two decades ago when it raced the VR1000, a bike Harley built to homologate for the racetrack and compete in the former AMA Superbike class.
“With King of the Baggers and the Road Glide that Kyle races, we are literally racing our top-selling motorcycle,” said Paul James, Harley-Davidson’s spokesman. “He’s riding a bike that, yes, it’s a racebike, and they’ve designed it to feel like a racebike, but it’s using a stock frame, it’s using stock cases, and it’s using a lot of other stock components that are on these bikes that we sell so many of. And that’s a huge change from when we raced the VR1000. Yes, there was a production version that was street legal. But it wasn’t based on anything we were really selling. It was a homologated special roadracer. … So to be able to race bikes that are production bikes sold in showrooms today, that means something.”
Unlike Indian, which backs true factory teams in King of the Baggers and Super Hooligan, Harley-Davidson has limited its factory ambitions to just King of the Baggers. James said H-D has no immediate plans to field a factory squad in Super Hooligan. Instead, two main teams — Team Saddlemen and KWR — are developing the race version of the Pan Am with close support from the factory.
“We got some more new things on the line,” said Cory West, one of Saddlemen’s three riders who won Race 2 at Daytona and finished third in Race 1. “The Saddlemen guys built a new exhaust for us, and I know we’re working hard with Harley-Davidson to try to get a quick-shifter that works on it. And we’re trying to get a better tune on it so the things a little more rideable right off the bottom in the low RPMs. If we can dial that thing in just the slightest little bit, it’s going to be real weapon on the racetrack.”
FROM ADV TO RACEBIKE
First, let’s get past the idea that Harley-Davidson is racing an adventure bike, not a naked bike or streetfighter, such as the BMW R nineT, KTM 890 Duke R, Yamaha MT-09 SP, or Aprila Tuono, which are some of the other bikes running in Super Hooligan.
“If that’s the only thing we did, was race a Pan Am, then maybe people would think, ‘Oh my, God, what is this?’ said James. “But since we’re already racing Road Glides, they’re like, ‘Well, of course they’re going to race that.’ ”
The heart of the Pan Am is the Rev Max 1250 engine, whose characteristics make it one of the most formidable engines the company has ever built. Take for instance, the XR1200, which Harley raced in a single-manufacturer class. Its engine was an air-cooled, pushrod, 45-degree V-twin that produced around 80 horsepower. The Rev Max 1250 is a liquid-cooled, 60-degree twin that couldn’t be more opposite in character and performance.
The difference is “night and day,” said James. “In terms of architecture and the way it builds power.”
Of the Rev Max, Wyman said “it’s not designed for racing, but it’s more appropriate for racing in that it’s a modern-architecture, 60-degree V-twin, and … it’s a lot more appropriate than the pushrod, 131 Milwaukee-Eight that we use in King of the Baggers. So I think from a base package, it takes a lot less for the Revolution Max engine to be a viable racing platform.”
In Super Hooligan, teams are forbidden from modifying the engine’s bore (105 mm) and stroke (72.3 mm), so converting the big twin for racing means more than just removing the headlight and mirrors. In an effort to shed mass and increase performance, just about everything on the bike has been scrutinized.
At Saddlemen, that’s meant a customized exhaust system, a carbon fiber subframe, and shortened suspension. They are also pursuing ways to take some length from the swingarm and shorten the stock 62.4-inch wheelbase. According to the rulebook, all water-cooled motorcycles “must maintain stock frames with no fabrication allowed.” While Pan Ams have no frame and use the engine as a stressed member, its teams need to be careful with any modifications that link directly to the engine.
“We are looking at (the swingarm),” said Saddlemen president and CEO David Echert. “We potentially have a shorter swingarm that we would have to adapt a bracket in order to make it work onto the engine because the engine works as a part of the frame. I’m really not at liberty to talk about the swingarm right now, but we do potentially have something in place that could replace the longer one that’s on right now.”
KWR has made similar modifications, but Wyman said a big change started with the wheels.
“For one, we went to 17-inch wheels, and that’s a big deal,” said Wyman. “We run an Ohlins cartridge kit in the front forks and an Ohlins TTX rear shock. From there, it’s just stripping off everything that’s not needed. So you have (to remove) that whole front fairing, and you got the crash bar. We took the whole tail section and customized it to chop it, not only to save weight but to (eliminate) bulkiness.”
Wyman said his bikes rolled across the Daytona scales at 449 pounds. That figure is more than 100 less than the 569 pounds the Pan Am weighs in stock trim but a whopping 72 pounds from the class minimum of 377 pounds for water-cooled bikes.
“We could literally try to get 80 pounds off the bike and still be legal, so we’ve got a long way to go to reach the ceiling for this bike,” said Wyman. “The rules package allows you to do a lot of things that we haven’t even scratched the surface on.”
With a few exceptions, pretty much anything goes in Super Hooligan, which Sands says is by design.
“That’s what it’s all about,” he said. “Giving people the opportunity to race what they want to race with somewhat loose rules and lots of room to be creative. It’s a builders class through and through.”
James said the secret to the Pan America’s competitiveness began long before any modifications were made.
“Having the bones be as good as they are, then you’re not that far off from Super Hooligan competitiveness,” he said. “Just lower the bike and take that suspension that’s not the long-travel adventure bike suspension — but still enables that desired lean angle but controls it better because it has shorter travel — and you’re halfway there immediately.”
STEADY IMPROVEMENTS
Building a racebike is a fluid process, and Saddlemen and KWR have both gained experience from last season when Pan Ams finished just twice on the podium all season — and that’s not counting a win by West that was disqualified due to the team running the wrong airbox. With each lap and each race, the teams are figuring out how to harness the Pan Ams strengths and improve its weaknesses.
“At the moment, we’re just running all stock components,” said Wyman, “so what this evolves into is going to be really interesting.”
As Wyman’s team continues to develop its bikes, he said managing the electronics has been their biggest stumbling block. After Daytona, the team put each bike on the dyno and found they were making different levels of power.
“We’re still in the early, early stages of fuel mapping,” he said. “We showed up at Daytona and pretty much let the computer tune itself. The electronics is the biggest thing to refine — the mapping and the fueling.”
The complexity of the electronic system led to some inadvertent issues at Daytona, where James said some of the bikes went into “some type of fail-safe mode.” With racing being so different from adventure touring, some of the sensors weren’t coping with the information they were receiving because “that’s not how they were intended for production.”
West said a better tune and quick-shifter, which the folks at Harley-Davidson are currently working on, would go a long way in making his life easier. “If we can dial that thing in just the slightest little bit, it’s going to be a real weapon on the racetrack.”
STACKING UP
Despite the diversity of the Super Hooligan class, the obvious measuring stick for Pan America riders is how well the Harley-Davidson performs head to head with Indian. The verdict so far? The Indian FTR 1200 may have a bit more grunt down low and in the slower corners. And with its shorter swingarm, the FTR has an edge in the sharpest turns.
The Pan Am’s strength, in addition to top-end speed, seems to be its overall rideability right out of the box.
“I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to ride at the pace needed to run up front and ended up qualifying on the front row, right next to the factory Indians — and those guys have had years of development,” said Travis Wyman, who races for Saddlemen and is Kyle’s younger brother. Travis added that he never even sat on the bike until the Daytona weekend.
“From a team standpoint, I think there’s a lot of improvements that could be made just to make me more comfortable on the bike, but straight out of the gate, with the way they had it set up, we were fast,” he said. “I’m pretty sure, in the first race, I would’ve won the race if I didn’t run out of fucking gas on the last lap. Overall the package is good. For what it is as an adventure bike to be running around a racetrack at 160 mph is pretty impressive.”
Daytona is a track that rewards top-end speed — in this case, the Pan Ams — and minimizes Indian’s advantages. The next stop on the Super Hooligan calendar is The Ridge Motorsports Park outside Tacoma, Wash., in June. It’s a technical track that plays more to the FTR’s capabilities and last year exposed some of the Pan Am’s weaknesses.
“(The Pan Am teams) have made progress with the bike and it’s not crazy developed, so they have a bike that will do the job,” said Sands, whose own team, Roland Sands Design, is running an Indian FTR in the Super Hooligan class. “But we’ll see how it goes at a track like The Ridge where (horsepower) alone won’t get it done.”
Echert, the owner of Saddlemen, acknowledged that going from Daytona to The Ridge will be a challenge for his bikes.
“The Ridge is an interesting track,” said Echert. “Indian ate our lunch last year at The Ridge. They were so fast. They happened to be running a different configuration on their FTRs, so the jury’s out. We’ll see how we do. We’re hoping for a good finish, and I think we have the bike to do it this year.”
So far, West said the two brands match up well. He should know, as he’s now won races aboard a Harley and an Indian, which he rode two years ago. He said the Pan Am may have better overall handling compared to the FTR 1200.
“It’s a more modern setup as far as the suspension goes with the linkage,” he said. “The Indian doesn’t have linkage in the rear for the rear shock, so that thing’s a little more of a handful than the Harley. The Harley’s got some pretty sweet handling. It’s just got a pretty long wheelbase ’cause it’s built to be an adventure bike. So there’s a sweet spot where the thing works pretty dang good, and I feel like we’re in that sweet spot. But we’re trying to get a little more performance out of the bike. It’s in there, but I just haven’t dug that deep yet.”
Competing — and winning — on a bike built for adventure touring is still a bit surprising to West.
“The geometry is crazy, but we’re making it work and going fast on the thing,” he said. “What’s cool is the lap time dropped quite a bit at Daytona from last year to what we did this year.”
Sands said the Pan Am has made strides since last season and isn’t surprised that a racebike with adventure-touring roots is performing so well.
At first, it might seem (surprising), but the Pan works really good on a racetrack and is suited to going around corners well,” he said. “It’s fast and doesn’t weigh a lot vs some other ADV bikes, so I think it’s not so surprising. And seeing what the Wymans … and the Saddlemen teams are doing with the bikes, I’d say they are getting it figured out.”
Just like the old Superbike days when bikes matched up well and electronics and other rider aids were not yet a part of the conversation, Echert said the series will ultimately be decided by who’s riding what. With the 39-year-old West, Echert has “a very calculated rider. We’re very fortunate to have him on our team.”
Along with West and Travis Wyman, Jake Lewis rounds out the Saddlemen trio. KWR’s hopes hinge on riders Hayden Schultz and Cody Wyman — the youngest of the Wyman brothers. All are going up against the factory Indian duo of Tyler O’Hara, the series’ reigning champion, and Troy Herfoss, a three-time Australian Superbike champion who won Race 1 at Daytona in his American debut.
“We raced FTRs a few years ago,” said Echert. “It’s a fast bike. It’s a good bike. I think right now they’re pretty matched up as far as the bikes, so I think it’s all on the rider. And I gotta tell you, Troy (Herfoss) is a fast rider. I’m absolutely floored at how well he’s done at the first couple races for never having raced at these tracks before. So I think it really depends on the rider and where their head is.”