Troy Herfoss dominates in the wet on Sunday at Road Atlanta KOTB

2024 MotoAmerica Superbike Championship
Road Atlanta – Sunday

Mission King Of The Baggers Race Two

If those racing for the Mission King Of The Baggers Championship weren’t already worried about Troy Herfoss prior to the Road Atlanta round, they most definitely are now.

Herfoss rode his S&S/Indian Motorcycles Challenger to a runaway victory in Sunday’s race held on a wet but slowly drying track, beating his team-mate Tyler O’Hara by 13.887 seconds.

The two factory Indian riders’ choice of using slick tyres instead of full wets pretty much sealed the victory for Herfoss. The Australian took off from the start and motored away from the field, with O’Hara taking a bit more time to work his way to the runner-up spot.

Third place, and the first rider home using wets, was the ever-popular Max Flinders on his Mad Monkey Motorsports Indian Challenger. The New Hampshire resident putting in maximum effort to keep RevZilla/Motul/Harley-Davidson’s Hayden Gillim behind him to score the final podium spot.

“I was very confident it would be slicks, but I was unsure of the ruling whether I could start from pit lane,” Herfoss said. “We’ve got two bikes in Australia. I haven’t had a one-bike rule… Or one bike only. I don’t know if it’s a rule or not, but we’ve got one bike. So, that made me a little bit more cautious. But once we established we had a lot of time to change the tyres on the grid; I figured I was definitely going to go slicks but roll out in the wets. Take a nice slow lap, look at the track, get a bit of an idea of the guys going around pit lane. You can usually see what the confidence levels are like. It was slicks all the way. The only problem came with two laps to go there was a couple of specks of rain. So, if the skies would have opened one to go, a big gap can come down. It was a weird race for me. I got a really big gap in the first two laps. The first lap especially, three-seconds. Then it said five after lap two. I had already slowed down in my mind, and I assumed that everyone was on wets. Dane took the pit board down after the gap went out and just had the lap count. So, I was like, ‘Okay, the gap is going out a long way.’ Then when I hear Tyler’s (O’Hara) on slicks, I’m like, ‘Wow. I was way too cautious. He could have been coming fast.’ That’s what it was like. I’ve never been in that situation where I’ve literally gone off the start and in my mind, it was like, ‘Okay, I’ve won the race. Just don’t mess up.’ You’ve got no idea how nerve-racking that is when you’re in that position. How good is this? Indian one, two, and three. It’s a perfect weekend for me. I never would have dreamed that. A perfect weekend in this championship at all, let alone third weekend in the championship. So, it’s a real credit to the team that they can give me a bike that I can just concentrate on racing on and learning tracks. That’s the reason I’m able to be so competitive. So, I want to say thank you to them.“

Troy Herfoss ran away with the Mission King Of The Baggers race on Sunday at Road Atlanta and the win vaulted him into the championship points lead. Photo by Brian J. Nelson

The battle for the championship firmly looks like a Herfoss versus Kyle Wyman affair but the Australian’s dominance in the wet has given him a handy nine-point buffer over his primary rival. Harley-Davidson Factory Racing’s Kyle Wyman was fifth in this contest but will be hungry to claw that ground back when KOTB reconvenes at Barber Motorsports Park in Alabama on the weekend of May 19.

Troy Herfoss is now winging his way back to Australia to compete in this weekend’s third round of the Australian Superbike Championship at Queensland Raceway with DesmoSport Ducati.