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/1454376
FEATURE I STATE OF AMERICAN FLAT TRACK PART 2 P104 more expensive and difficult to maintain should Indian ever decide the sport no longer deliv- ers a worthwhile return on its investment and shut down the program. >THREE SIDES TO EVERY STORY If the current dilemma that resulted by the introduction of an all-new race-only machine just as everyone else committed to production-based equipment seems obvious in hindsight, the desire to welcome Indian back to the scene was such that AMA Pro Racing was more than will- ing to take on that risk. It's also worth noting that very few viewed the FTR750's instantaneous dominance as a realistic possibility until it actually happened. In fact, the FTR750 narrowly avoided a fate as a much more pedestrian race bike. The devel- opment team at Swissauto initially leaned on the lessons learned via its expansive Grand Prix racing history. The result was a quick- revving, twitchy monster with a light crank and low inertia. Fortunately for Indian, it had hired multi-time Grand National Champion Jared Mees and legendary tuner Kenny Tolbert to test the bike in 2016. The engineers were confused when the two told them they had it all wrong. However, they wisely relied on the judgment of their subject-matter experts and tried it another way, even if it didn't seem to line up with what they knew worked in high-perfor- mance motorcycles. Despite that radical develop- mental audible, the FTR's ultimate success or failure would still need to be proven on the track before anyone truly understood what Indian had on its hands. Smith said, "I was one of the riders they hired and I had no clue—nobody did—that it was going to be anywhere near this successful. Me and Mees, first and second in the champion- ship the year before, got hired by Indian. And we were sitting in Daytona the night before the first race in 2017, going, 'Man, do you think we can run up front? I think we should be able to win at least one race this year…' "Indian didn't have any idea either. They didn't expect to have to pay all those bonuses. I never thought I'd make that much money in my life as I did those two years!" Here's the twist: it might not have been entirely unforeseen by everyone. The rumored exis- tence of an agreement between AMA Pro Racing and Indian Mo- torcycle dating back to the very start of the FTR's development repeatedly surfaced in conversa- tions for this three-part series. As the rumor goes, Indian was allowed to compete with a race- only machine built to the rulebook as it existed for legacy XR750s even as the series was transition- ing to a production-based future, but only for a limited time frame consisting of three seasons – 2017, 2018 and 2019. After that time, Indian would be expected to race a production-based ma- chine like everyone else. Despite the rumors, when the start of the 2020 season came