King of the Baggers is a new race series based in the United States that’s quite frankly brilliant. All American’s want just three things in a motorcycle – ridiculous mass, capacity to carry large quantities of food and a very poorly engineered v-twin engine.
King of the Baggers takes that ‘Holy Trinity’ of American motorcycling and forms it into a bizarre yet relatable race series. But should Dorna follow suit? Given the rule book is due for a change in 2027 should the Baggers format be adopted to replace the existing boring snoozefest we’re currently enduring? We think yes! And here are our top 8 reasons why…
Aero
Stupid bits of daft carbon fibre, also known as aero, have essentially ruined our once great sport. We should have seen this coming when F1 engineers started to crop up in the MotoGP paddock like a batch of unwanted knotweed. If there’s one thing F1 engineers know how to do it’s ruin the racing and drive up the costs…so that’s actually two things.
The main aim of aero is to create downforce – but why would you need that when the bike already weighs more than Lizzo stuck in a Ford F150? In one fell swoop the stupidity of aero would be banished to the history books leaving us with better looking bikes and a lot less failed F1 engineer pillocks hanging around.
Heavyset riders not at a disadvantage
It’s a little-known fact that currently all MotoGP riders are less than four feet tall and weigh less than an average sized domestic cat. Dorna try to hide this embarrassment on live TV by ensuring all wildlife around the tracks, such as fat pigeons, are shot to avoid any curious size comparisons.
But why the use of little freaks? Because smaller riders have a better power-to-weight ratio on today’s lightweight machines. And it’s the reason all upcoming GP riders are forced to sleep in compression shackles so they don’t ‘sprout up’ unexpectedly. It might look funny but in later life (should the HRC riders make it that far) there will be all manner of complications.
Baggers would solve this problem in a cholesterol-fuelled heartbeat. There would be no point in being a diminutive squirt, like Alvaro Bautista for example, if you’re then not even man enough to push the bike off the centre-stand. Furthermore it would give ample opportunities for pie-loving riders like the late, great David Jefferies, to showcase their talents in MotoGP.
Cheap to run
The Baggers use an engine from the blueprint of every single Harley Davidson built since 1956 with the motto “if something’s this dated it’s not worth changing”. This means expensive technology wars are conveniently sidestepped allowing for a cheaper, albeit awful power units.
Better still all American motorcycles are built with parts readily available from any branch of Home Depot – again keeping costs to a minimum with the only real investment being in fabricating springs strong enough to hold the average American lard-arse for their once-a-month 4 mile trip to the coffee shop.
America will be made great again
Back in the early 2000s we had great American racers like Kenny Roberts Jnr, Nicky Hayden, John Hopkins and Colin Edwards. Kurtis Roberts also rode. But the talent dried up quicker than a dead pensioners’ cactus collection leaving MotoGP now without a top American rider…or even a rubbish one.
Added to that there hasn’t been a real American manufacturer. Ever. And that may seem a little surprising until you look at the time in 1994 when USA’s greatest motorcycle producers, Harley Davidson, attempted to enter World Superbike with this belter:
Baggers would change all that. Harley and Indian would suddenly be at the forefront once more – along with the current crop of America rider. The format would also resonate more to the average inbred American racing fan who struggles with the alien concept of motorcycles having more than two cylinders and no pushrods.
Awesome crashes
Watching a Bagger crash is epic. Like seeing Lizzo roll off stage it will be a slow-moving event with an impressive array of debris sent arcing in all directions. And because the crashes are generally slow the fallen rider will have ample time to get up, hop over the barrier and watch the rest of the crash whilst enjoying an overpriced offal-burger from a local vender.
Baggage possibilities
An underused element of the King of the Baggers is the humungous panniers the bikes have. A simple tweak of the rules could see an online voting system nominate various hazardous cargo for certain riders to race with – like angry wasps or vicious monkeys stolen from their native homeland. If the rider carrying such cargo then falls the purposefully weakened pannier clasp could break allowing the contents of the baggage to be set free onto a live racetrack allowing for an infinite amount of hilarious outcomes.
It will take years for Ducati to cheat their way to the top
Ducati are masters of the skilled art of bending the rules. Also known as cheating. Whereas the Japanese manufacturers still strictly stick to the rules and a stricter noodle soup diet the free-thinking anarchists from the Bolognaise factory have set a course of unfairly breaking as many rules as possible with the aim of gaining an advantage when something is overlooked by the FIM. Meanwhile the other European teams, themselves not adverse to cheating but not nearly as skilled, quickly follow suit.
But cheating takes time. It involves searching through the rulebook to locate ‘grey areas’ to manipulate. Then, once a way of cheating is found, it then still involves the boys from Sicily to visit some poor guy who’s in charge of supervising the rules to look the other way at the correct time.
Even with Ducati’s huge team of rule-benders starting afresh would set the Italians back and allow for some other manufacturer to win for a while.
Slipstreaming will really work
Thanks to aero (i.e. Ducati) slipstreaming is now as useful as Anne Frank’s drumkit. Following another rider causes a massive increase in the front tyre pressure which then has a negative effect on braking and cornering.
With a frontal area wider than Lizzo’s face when in anaphylaxis shock Baggers can create such an impressive hole in the air that riders caught up in a slipstream can lap up to three minutes a lap quicker – and that’s even if they’ve broken down. Classic slipstream battles, usually reserved for Moto3, will once again become commonplace.
Jeremy McWilliams could return
As a current Bagger front runner in USA it only stands to reason that the ancient leprechaun Jeremy McWilliams would be on the top of many team’s list to hire. And who wouldn’t want see more of this?