I've heard a lot of negativity about the bagger racing over the past few years: "Race tracks are for race bikes", etc. I was skeptical of the series too, until I witnessed King of the Baggers (KOB) in all its ferocity at Laguna Seca a few years ago. The problem today is the same as it was back then: How do you make the uninitiated understand how great bagger racing is?
For the longest time, all I had was the fact that these 620 lbs units were lapping a second off MotoAmerica Supersport bikes, which weigh roughly half. But recently, the bagger racing world has grown, and now we have the FIM Bagger World Cup, which many would consider to be the premier class of hefty-motorcycle racing. The Bagger World Cup has given us another angle to view how competitive racing is in this class, as ex-MotoGP race winner, Andrea Iannone, just finished fourth in the first-ever cup, aboard a Niti Racing Harley-Davidson Road Glide.
Iannone isn't some racing has-been; he's a 37-year-old Italian is a 125cc World Championship winner, a third-place Moto2 Championship finisher, and finished 7th in the 2016 MotoGP Championship, winning a race along the way. Unfortunately, a doping scandal destroyed his MotoGP career, but that takes nothing away from the caliber of rider he is. He has been competing again for the past two years, and this past weekend, he lost the Bagger World Cup title to Archie McDonald by 45 points. The 20-year-old Australian rider took a Joe Rascal Racing Road Glide to first place in the championship ahead of second-place finisher, Oscar Gutiérrez, by just nine points.
Speaking about the win and series as a whole, McDonald said, “This first season was about building the foundation and proving what this series could be, and the racing delivered beyond our expectations: five different race winners, every team on the podium, and four riders arriving at the final round still fighting for the title. At the same time, seeing Harley-Davidson shirts throughout the MotoGP paddock and grandstands, and watching two very different motorcycle communities come together around the racing, has been incredibly rewarding.”
If Iannone had won the title, I'd have been happy for him succeeding on his comeback arc. But I could already hear naysayers diminishing the series because of the fact an 30-something-year-old ex-MotoGP top ten Championship finisher strolled in and won it on his first attempt. Iannone finishing fourth has given the series more credibility. Now that the series runs alongside MotoGP, it's getting more and more difficult to ignore the caliber of riders on these machines and the lap times they're getting out of these absolute behemoths.
