A New Era Begins for AFT

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The introduction of Indian Motorcycle’s FTR750 flat track racer brought another manufacturer into the fray, but it isn’t without its issues. (American Flat Track/)

Those who have followed AMA racing policy development over the years have remarked on the contrast between the sensibilities of AMA’s Ohio-based management and those of the many “fixers” and “czars” who have been hired to transform US flat-track racing into a successful business. Czars have been told to clear their desks and be gone by noon when changes they made offended management or proved ineffective.

2015 was a departure, for in that year a very experienced motorcycle industry manager and promoter, Englishman Michael Lock, was hired to direct the future of what is now called American Flat Track (AFT). A five-year plan was put in place, of which a powerful element has been dirt-track TV coverage via streaming.

When I recently spoke with Lock he said, “At the end of 2015, beginning of 2016 we laid out a strategy for growth. We separated twins and singles. We want the classes to be clear to spectators—singles here, twins there.”

An overall plan was to implement NASCAR’s successful focus on putting as many brands on the start grid as possible. The goal was to base AFT’s premier class on modified production-based engines—breaking with the past dominated since 1972 by race-only designs such as Harley-Davidson’s XR750 and Honda’s RS750.

Related: AFT Acts to Level the Playing Field in Twins Racing

Honda exited flat track racing in 1988 after intake restrictors were imposed. (Drew Ruiz/)

Lock continued, “Back in the previous era there was utter domination by the XR and RS—very different from street.”

The goal looked practicable because there were now numerous mid-displacement mass-produced motorcycles—the Kawasaki Ninja 650, Yamaha MT-07, Triumph and KTM parallel twins, and vee engines from Harley and Ducati. These were modern designs capable of high performance. This would stoke the hot brand rivalries believed essential to achieving spectator engagement and partisanship, and would provide builders with fresh material.

Lock would achieve a breakthrough by persuading horse track operators near big cities to give flat-track motorcycle racing a try. That brought fresh spectators to the sport and opened new possibilities in TV.

While these plans were formulated, Indian got in touch with AFT. Lock continued, “Indian wanted to establish themselves versus Harley-Davidson in some kind of (competitive venue). They were desperately keen but had nothing suitable in production. The rule book still allowed a race-only 750 engine.

“We were delighted and it was a way to reintroduce flat track as an all-American sport [reviving the old and deep Harley-Indian rivalry]. We had that agreement with Indian—they wanted to have a two-year run with FTR [the race-only 750 V-twin they were building]. Indian said, ‘Look, this is a stopgap. Let us compete to 2019.’”

Indian won the AFT Twins championship in 2017 and 2018, after which a second and separate twins class—Production Twins—was added to events to allow teams to prepare for the planned future of just one twins class in 2023, powered by production-based engines.

“Freed from production’s restrictions, you can produce a real weapon,” Lock continued. “No one then knew how dominant it would be—Indians came to make up two-thirds of the grids. We hoped Indian would replace the FTR with something usable from the production side.”

Polaris, which owns the Indian brand, is an aggressive company with strong resources. It built what was required to win in AFT. Indian’s success was no surprise, given that Harley’s XR was stretched to its limit and that no other manufacturer was stepping up with a fully engineered AFT twins package. Remember that while the long-serving XR had an air-cooled pushrod engine, all the new engines running in AFT Twins are liquid-cooled (allowing use of higher compression ratio) and have double overhead cam valve drive (which makes it easier to achieve a controllable flat torque curve).

For private teams, relations with manufacturers are like what we’ve seen in World Superbike. Manufacturers not actively in that series quietly offer private teams factory parts or other help “in the near future.” The parts and help accomplish little beyond keeping hope alive.

Lack of factory commitment in AFT isn’t surprising—motorcycle sales in the US took a 60 percent hit in 2008 and the industry has since offered senior staff early retirement and moved operations out of California to lower-wage, lower-tax, lower-real-estate-cost areas. AFT is a national or even regional sport, limiting its sales leverage, making factory help hard to attract. Looking back, before Indian, only Harley-Davidson and Honda designed and built race-only dirt-track engines. Harley and contractor Vance & Hines have since 2017 fielded the XG750R dirt-tracker, based on the production Street 750 model (no longer sold in the US). The V&H role in that has now ended.

A long-serving Honda manager explained to me back in 2015 that there has been a culture shift within the industry. Managers used to be motorcycle people of long experience but today their replacements tend to have generic sales and public relations training, and racing is not something they understand.

We see this in the industry’s response to MotoAmerica’s efforts to rebuild US roadracing. At first people thought US roadracing had just been mismanaged and had stalled. Maybe all that was needed to revive it was to crank it over until it started. MotoAmerica has accomplished a lot but all their diligent cranking has yet to revive much of the former level of manufacturer support of racing.

In this climate, any offer of support from a manufacturer was welcome to AFT—even if it conflicted with their five-year plan. Indian was given the go-ahead for its race-only FTR dirt-tracker.

“Indian originally thought they’d build maybe a dozen FTRs,” Michael Lock said, “but they ended up making 50 or even 60.”

Such numerous FTR sales proved there was an equipment vacuum in AFT. People were willing to scrape up the cash to buy an Indian rather than tackle modifying a production engine. The FTR was so attractive because it was a turn-key competitive motorcycle.

Lock pointed out that there are two tiers of teams—those capable of doing their own engine development, and those whose budgets are stretched just to afford the basic equipment. The natural result is that most of the winning is done by that first tier. “Racing is now pointed at the top—maybe five guys doing all the winning,” said Bill Werner, former Harley-Davidson factory flat-track builder/tuner who helped Scott Parker win nine national championships between 1988 and 1998. “Harley pulled out, leaving one team. Now there’s just a handful of bikes. There’s better racing in 450.”

Production Versus Race Design

By the end of 2019 Indian had not released a production model capable of being converted into a bike for AFT’s Production Twins class.

Here it’s necessary to understand some differences between production and race design. Production engines are designed for low-cost manufacture, moderate performance, and to meet customer tastes. That means low parts counts (for example, single overhead cam rather than double, two cylinders rather than four, etc.) and often, high weight. Many V-twin riders like their bikes to look and feel big. When Vance & Hines took the contract to develop Harley’s Street 750 production engine (on the market 2014–2020) into the XG750R flat-track race engine, it was initially dumbfounded by the stocker’s sheer mass. Then V&H understood the weight that could be saved by redesigning many parts to be milled-from-billet on CNC machining centers.

Lest the reader get the idea that the Production Twins class is inexpensive, consider that the first such bike to win a championship in our era—the Kawasaki 650 Ninja—was profoundly modified with all the zeal and cleverness of the American hot rod. Indian’s vice president for racing, technology, and service Gary Gray said, “I’ve heard rumors that everybody else is welding and machining their crankcases. At the top, the intake tract doesn’t have to be production. The throttle bodies don’t have to be production. The valves, valve springs, seats, and cams don’t have to be production. Down to the cylinders—they don’t have to be production, the pistons, the rings, the connecting rods, the crank. They (Production) can run external flywheels and we cannot. Clutches? Not production. Transmission? Not.”

It’s possible that the Indian FTR at $50,000 is little more expensive (and perhaps less so) than what it costs to develop the winning combination for “eBay motors” like the Ninja twin. The hope, naturally, is that there will be enough demand for the necessary “trick parts” to interest an aftermarket in tooling and producing them.

Such extensive modification brings us to a question that may become important in future: How does AFT define “production”? In its rules I see expressions such as “mass production” and “street” but nothing close to the precision of FIM rules for production homologation. How many machines must be produced to be homologated? Is there a price limit? Which parts must remain as-produced?

Although AFT’s tech director David McGrath says, “The best rule book is a skinny one,” the tendency of modern sanctioning bodies is to continually adjust their rules. This is practical in F1, where the top teams each spend over a quarter billion dollars annually, and it may work in MotoGP at one-tenth of that. But in a national series like AFT, the teams can’t just assign an engineer group to each week’s rules changes. Rules changes cost teams money.

How to deal fairly with Indian’s success in Super Twins and transition during 2022 to just the Production Twins in 2023? “We’d rather make parity than kill the Indian,” Lock said. “We’ve had very delicate conversations with Indian on how to do it.

Related: American Flat-Track Racing Revival

For 2022, AFT has mandated 34mm intake restrictors for race-only engines. (Indian Motorcycle/)

“In addition to intake restrictors we looked at weight, flywheel weight limits, a rev limit, and weight of rear wheel assembly.”

No team that has paid $50,000 each for one or more Indian FTRs can afford to have that value destroyed. Realistically, AFT can’t afford to potentially lose Indian’s existing 50 or 60 track-ready motorcycles. One way to keep the Indians in the series is therefore to reduce their performance to achieve parity with Production Twins this year. Another way is to create a spec class for the Indian.

Spec racing has grown worldwide because it eliminates the heavy cost of engine R&D from team budgets in an era when fewer and fewer people have the necessary skills. Think of NASCAR and their standardized “Car of Tomorrow.” In that world, performance parity is the holy grail, so it’s tempting to freeze technology to prevent “destabilization” of a class by a technologically superior car.

With respect to AFT’s Production Twins class and its uncontrolled engine modifications, some are now asking, “What happens if KTM comes in with something destabilizing?”

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