Dear American Flat Track.

I have a dare for you, in fact I double dog dare you.  Invite owners of original 1980s vintage Honda RS750s to pull them out of mothballs, remove the damn restrictor  plates and race mano-mano against the Indians.

Honda RS750 Flat Tracker

Harley couldn’t beat them without the AMA crippling them. Guess why I’m not an AMA member & never will be. Damn straight I hold a grudge forever. I had actually quit following flat track racing after I realized that I really wasn’t the Harley fan boy that I was pretending to be, and realized just how harshly & unfairly the Honda teams were being treated so I kind of just said, “fuck this bullshit,” and walked away. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because the series ratings tanked and it changed hands a few times, and quite frankly became minor league single brand racing.

Then I think it was in 2010 when I opened up a copy of Cycle World & read that Joe Kopp had won a major flat track race on a Ducati of all things. Digging into the story it turns out the new owners of the series were allowing motorcycles built around street bikes to compete against the ancient but well developed XR750 Harleys. And even better than that the competition was fairly equal, well as equal as it could be with street based motorcycle engines & frames racing against purpose built factory racers. Even Bill Werner the famous Harley racing tuner was running the Monster Energy Kawasaki team tuning a Ninja 650R. Flat track was worth following again! I actually have to give Harley Davidson credit for moving to the Street based XG750 race bikes and retiring the outdated old XR750.

But then along came Indian and now Harley like all of the other manufacturers is stuck using a true production based engine to compete against what is a completely custom built factory racing only machine. For a while I enjoyed their misery but I still have to give them credit for using XG engine.

Now let me stick the cold hard knife of truth deep into the back of the entire motorcycling press and the American Flat Track advertising staff. Everyone of you keep pushing this whole thing as an Indian versus Harley rivalry. Not really. This is an Indian walkover and in the majority of races the first bike behind the Polaris single purpose factory built racer is usually a Kawasaki Ninja 650, with the occasional KTM LC8, Ducati or Yamaha FZ07 taking it’s place.

I realize you guys think playing up this ancient history will help your rating and magazine sales. How’s that working out for you? We watch Fans Choice or read the results on the web or in the magazines. We see the truth. You keep writing headlines like Harley & Indian are running neck & neck when nothing could be further from the truth. All the other bikes are just competing to see who has the fastest production bike based racer behind the Polaris Indian factory race bikes. All of you have lost credibility with us because the race records never match your stories.

A perfect example of this is in Cycle World issue 1 2018. Kevin Cameron interviewed Bill Werner about his time as a flat track tuner & never once mentioned his time tuning the Kawasaki 650 Ninja. No wonder the rag has morphed into a quarterly hipster art rag like Iron and Air. Same for the rest of the once great publications, no loyalty to their fan base and a marketing strategy stuck firmly in 1994.

Here’s a hint for you, the Boomers are checking out and Gen X is taking over. In high school we didn’t drool over Harleys, for us it Interceptors, GSXRs, and Ninjas that we dreamed of. We expected our Jap bike magazines to be Jap bike magazines. We didn’t mind you reporting on the heavy cruisers but leave the serious “Murican Motorsickle” propaganda to publications like American Iron & Easyrider. Also no more headlines about Indian Versus Harley where you don’t even mention the Kawis, KTMs, & Yamahas that usually come in between the two. It just makes you into liars plain & simple.

Here’s my final statement; I’d pay good money to see an old Honda RS750 pulled out of mothballs, the restrictor plates removed, tuned by the best mechanics & ridden by the best riders the Honda Racing Corporation can provide, running a few races just to show the world how it’s really done. I bet you a hundred bucks it would win.

American Flat Track meet the The Mighty RS750

PS Dear American Flat Track, I don’t want you to make the Indians slower, you just need to let the other teams make their bikes faster. Oh yeah the Fans Choice TV broadcasts are terrific. Thank you for them. Please don’t let it get too boring again.