Indian has announced its factory racing programme for 2023, with Jeremy McWilliams returning alongside Tyler O’Hara in the King of the Baggers and Super Hooligan classes of MotoAmerica.
2022 was an historic year for Indian Motorcycle Racing, as it secured three titles across three different circuit racing series. Tyler O’Hara won the King of the Baggers class of MotoAmerica, as well as the Super Hooligan category; while Jared Mees took home the American Flat Track SuperTwins title.
For 2023, there is continuity for Indian, with O’Hara and Mees both returning to defend their respective #1 plates. There is also the return of Jeremy McWilliams, who is confirmed to race full-time in both the Super Hooligan and King of the Baggers championships alongside O’Hara.
McWilliams won the King of the Baggers race at Daytona last year, on the Daytona 200 weekend, which went some way to exposing the series to a larger international audience - partly thanks to McWilliams’ non-American nationality but also because of his previous experience racing Grands Prix in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The King of the Baggers series and bikes are almost comparable to NASCAR in some aspects. When you get an idea for the performance and effort involved in producing these bikes, the appreciation for both the machines and the people behind them increases dramatically, as Visordown found out at Motorcycle Live last year, but from the outside it can seem like a simplified form of racing with a totally laid back approach and little seriousness. At the same time, that more casual surface-level appearance can make the ‘Baggers series quite appealing compared to something like MotoGP, or even the Superbike class of MotoAmerica.
Something which is more common in the US than in Europe is contingency money for privateers. In AMA Supercross, it is easy to see from the amount of Kawasaki KX450s in the unseeded practice sessions which manufacturer gives the best contingency in the SuperMotocross World Championship classes. In its own racing efforts, Indian has announced it is putting forward over $405,000 in contingency for privateer racers for the 2023 season.
$83,000 will cover the King of the Baggers class across its 14-round series, and the Super Hooligans class gets $41,000 for the season.
In American Flat Track SuperTwins, over $280,000 is put forward by Indian in contingency, covering the top 10 Indian-mounted riders in each race, with the top-placed Indian-mounted privateer set to earn $7,500.
On the announcement of Indian’s 2023 factory racing programme, Tyler O’Hara said: “The odds were definitely against us in 2022, and that’s what made climbing that mountain and ending up on top all the more special to our entire Indian Motorcycle-S&S team. We grinded week in and week out to rise to that challenge and in the end, we got the job done.
“But now we start over and the climb begins again. This team is truly a family, and we could not be more motivated to defend the championship and successfully rise to the challenge again in 2023.”
Gary Gray, Vice President – Racing, Technology and Service for Indian Motorcycle, said: “Racing and an overriding spirit of competition has been a driving force for Indian Motorcycle for more than a century, and that competitive fire continues to drive us forward to this day.
“We’re incredibly proud of the success we had in 2022 with three different championships, but it’s only going to get tougher in 2023, with our competition gunning for us more than ever. But that challenge is what motivates us and pushes us to get better every day, and we’re chomping at the bit to go racing in 2023.”
The 2023 King of the Baggers, Super Hooligan, and American Flat Track seasons get underway on 9 March in Daytona.
