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/1541594
The factory Indian FTR750 never lost a GNC title during its eight years of existence. Its last title before the AMA banned factory race bikes in AFT came just last year (2024), when Jared Mees took it. P80 FEATURE I AFT HARLEY-DAVIDSON XG750R XG, I knew that was the bike I was going to ride. "As soon as I rode it again, it felt like home." Again. The fact that the Mission Roof Systems team elected to go with a Vance & Hines-built Harley-Davidson XG750R was simultaneously shocking and obvious, given Robinson's past history with the bike. Indian made a huge splash by signing the 2016 champion, Bryan Smith, and runner-up, Jared Mees, to front its three- rider full factory effort for the team's first full season in 2017. Harley responded with a three- rider team of its own, fronted by 2016's third-ranked rider, Robinson, who won at Lima that season aboard an XR750. While Mees and Smith went 1-2 in that first season to set the stage for eight consecutive Indian titles, Robinson struggled mightily in his two-plus years on the XG. He finished seventh and And Daniels was in a com- manding position to finally accomplish that goal in 2024. However, that last, best chance was cruelly extinguished due to a training accident. While most agreed that the all- production-based future would be a net positive for the series over the long term, there were widespread fears that, with Mees and the Indian out of the picture, Daniels and Yamaha would run roughshod over the competi- tion in 2025 while everyone else struggled to play catch-up. Robinson said, "Once the an- nouncement was made that the Indians were going to be outlawed for '25, we immediately went into trying to figure out the game plan. We already had a couple of KTMs, but I wasn't sold on them personally. So, I was like, 'Let's try a couple different brands.' "So, we rode a few different bikes in a test and had the Indian there to compare with back and forth. Within 10 laps of riding the a new bike was one Briar Bau- man, who had previously earned a pair of Grand National Champi- onships with Indian before mak- ing the jump to KTM in 2023. However, despite taking KTM to its first-ever premier-class twins win (and backing it up with three more), Bauman never could find a direction on the Duke and was more than open to change head- ing into '25. Their respective decisions were bound to have massive implications. While removing Mees and Indian from the equation cre- ated a wide-open playing field in theory, the ground truth was anything but. Over the previous several seasons, Estenson Yamaha put forth a Herculean effort to de- velop its Yamaha MT-07 DT into a machine that could take down the FTR750, pairing it with one of the most promising young talents to emerge in decades, Dallas Daniels.