VOLUME ISSUE MARCH , P125
Bauman on equal machinery.
While ultimately beyond the
series' power, all it could do was
prime the conditions and pray to
the racing gods. And already in
2023, those prayers have been
answered.
Even though its factory pres-
ence has been scaled down
to a single entry, Indian is still
officially involved and backing
Mees' title defense.
Meanwhile, it was recently
announced that Briar Bauman
was signed to headline an all-
new Mission SuperTwins effort
from Rick Ware Racing—who
already fields entries in NAS
-
CAR, IndyCar, NHRA, IMSA,
AMA Supercross and FIM World
Supercross, along with even
more motorsports ventures built
around the KTM 890 Duke R
platform.
This development injects
excitement and intrigue to a
championship already laden
with both. And while it would
be unfair to not expect some
teething issues as they break
in a new race bike, provided the
balance of power hinted at in
2022 is effectively maintained,
the announcement also teases
a prospect of a three-manufac-
turer title fight.
Simultaneously, this would
(further) legitimize the past and
future accomplishments of Dan-
iels, Beach et al., while setting
the stage for a third-wave influx
of production-based entries
from teams and riders who may
be tempted to follow a potential-
ly lower-cost path themselves
once proven viable.
By contrast, if the balance is
instead upset as a result, the
long history of Mees vs. Bau-
man provides plenty of already
accumulated data regarding
how things should look, which
could make further fine-tuning
easier to gauge.
GIVE AND TAKE
No team capitalized on last
year's initiatives quite like Esten-
son Racing, which leveraged the
new rules to launch its once-
struggling Yamaha MT-07 DT
showcasing the speed to do the
same at Half-Miles and Miles in
the near future.
The two combined for six
victories on the year and both
riders carried realistic cham
-
pionship hopes into the finale.
And either one of them might
have actually pulled it off if not
for some misfortune suffered at
various points in the season.
While the entire Estenson
operation will do everything in
With Indian choosing to
support just one "factory"
rider in 2023, Briar Bauman
was left searching for a
new home. He found it at
Rick Ware Racing aboard a
KTM 890 Duke R.
its power to build on this mo-
mentum, the series is proac-
tively making moves to ensure it
doesn't transform into a freight
train of its own.
Arguably the most significant
rulebook adjustments added to
the equation in '23 have taken
away the ability to modify the
stock machine's firing order,
eliminating any further "twing
-
ling" efforts, while also reducing
throttle-body diameter to 38mm
into full-fledged title-contender
status in the hands of Daniels
and Beach.
Daniels only enjoyed one of
the great rookie seasons in the
championship's storied his
-
tory. Beach, meanwhile, took a
big step toward becoming just
the fifth rider ever to win an
old-school Grand Slam, adding
a pair of Short Track victories
to his preexisting TT and Mo
-
toAmerica Superbike wins, while
