Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/1398574
RIDE REVIEW I ROLAND SANDS DESIGN INDIAN CHIEF BUILD P98 getic. It ended up working better than the field. So, I think to go out and to smoke 22 or 21 Harleys and have one Indian in there and show everybody what this bike is capable of, with a fairly stock motor, too, [was cool]. There's barely anything done to the thing motor-wise. So, the fact that we were so much faster than everybody else at the first BRL race, it says a lot about the rideability of the bike, the fact that you could jump on it and go fast, and you felt comfortable. When you think about how big bagger racing is now, it's gone from nothing to pretty much the biggest thing in racing in the last two or three years. It arguably is the biggest thing in road racing in the States, for sure. Baggers have cracked the seal on road racing for Americans. I think it's helping bring American eyes to road racing. It's a crazy idea, racing these bikes, but you can see that it's the challenge. How hard is it to make a superbike go fast around the racetrack? Anyone can jump on a su- perbike and go quick. But to jump on one of these things and run a decent pace, it takes some ingenuity. Do you think it's the fabrication aspect that's bringing them in? It was the same thing as hooli- gan racing. None of the bikes are the same. All the bikes are different. Everyone takes a completely differ- ent approach. You can line up any of these hooligan bikes on the grid and they're all completely different. Even the exact same bike will be built com- pletely different, and that's something that I think is just very interesting. That is what is missing from super- bike racing. You can order the parts, bolt them on the bike. The Kawis on the grid are all the same. The Yama- has are the same. The Suzukis to the normal eye are the same. The Ducati is probably the one bike on the grid that is just mind-blowingly techni- cal, but unfortunately, it's always got bodywork on it so you can't see it. Are you seeing a lot of people coming from the dirt track side, the hooligan dirt track now getting into road racing? That's what we're seeing. We're hoping that that is happening. In the end, if we can just make better riders out of people, get them a much larger group of riding experience, I think that's pretty special and cool. The Super Hooligans rip it at Laguna Seca in front of MotoAmerica. Who would have thought?