MONTEREY, Calif. – Broken elbow, be damned.
Kyle Wyman did what was needed to do to earn the MotoAmerica Mission King Of The Baggers title on his factory Harley-Davidson Screamin’ Eagle Road Glide as the three-round series culminated on a sunny Sunday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca.
Wyman left no doubt, from the beginning of the race, that he would not only win the race, but clinch the title in dominant fashion.
Wyman started from the pole and was never headed in the eight-lap race. He gained more than a full second on second-place finisher and Mission Foods S&S Cycle Indian rider Tyler O’Hara on almost every lap of the race until he decided to slow his pace just a bit towards the end. At the checkers, he took the win by just under four-and-a-half seconds over O’Hara. Third place went to DTF Performance/Hoban Brothers Performance Racing Harley-Davidson’s Michael Barnes, who added yet another podium finish in yet another motorcycle road race class on yet another brand of motorcycle.
Wyman, who had broken his elbow in a crash last month at Road America, made a miraculous recovery from his injury, and he talked about it after the race.
“Those guys are world-class doctors and surgeons, putting me back together, knowing exactly the timeline and how he needed to fix everything for me to be able to get what I needed to get done,” Wyman said. “Honestly, we didn’t make any changes to the bike ergonomically for me to ride it. It was just a matter of Friday it was like, okay, this is the lap time I can do without braking so hard that I’m screaming in my helmet. Then here’s a lap I can do when it really sucks. Then just decided from there how hard I wanted to push. I pushed pretty hard in the beginning of the race and saw the board grow pretty quickly, so I was pretty happy with that. I could kind of keep a steady rhythm from there and not have to brake too hard. That’s all it was. It was just more brake force and the more I have to hold my body weight, especially these downhill left-handers in 2 and 11 and stuff like that. Structurally it’s been good. It’s been a very fast recovery. If I was only racing Superbike this year, I probably would have ridden the Superbike, but both would have been a lot. I would have jeopardized both. So, my plan was just to focus on this. Pretty minimal laps for a race weekend. After doing double duty riding on the Harley only is like a vacation, so it was pretty awesome. Got it done.”
Sunday at WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca started off with a bang as MotoAmerica’s literbike riders put on an amazing show in their only Stock 1000 race of the weekend. Motul Travis Wyman Racing BMW rider Travis Wyman showed his tenacity when he started from back in seventh on the grid and methodically worked his way to the front. Meanwhile, HONOS HVMC Racing Kawasaki’s Corey Alexander was in the lead and heading for the win…until Wyman descended upon him from seemingly nowhere with four laps to go in the 14-lap event. Wyman stalked Alexander, and then, on the final run to the checkers, he nipped Alexander at the finish line by a scant .032 of a second. Altus Motorsports Suzuki’s Jake Lewis also emerged from way back in the pack – a victim of a bad tire choice – to take the final spot on the podium just .286 0f a second behind Alexander.
Round one of the Roland Sands Design Super Hooligans QuaTTro Championship took place on Sunday with the road race portion of the multi-disciplinary series. Two KTM-mounted riders battled at the front with Chris Fillmore prevailing over his teammate Andy DiBrino by just .045 of a second. SportbikeTrackGear.com Junior Cup regular David Kohlstaedt rode his Indian to third place.
M4 ECSTAR Suzuki’s Sean Dylan Kelly and HONOS HVMC Racing Kawasaki’s Richie Escalante continued what has been a season-long, round-by-round and race-by-race battle in Supersport, but as has been the trend this season, Kelly, who started from the pole, prevailed with his seventh race victory of the season over Escalante.
The two riders had their usual paint-swapping skirmishes during the 19-lap event, but they were joined this time by CV28 Racing Yamaha’s Cory Ventura, who followed up his podium finish from Saturday’s race one with a turn in a lead for at least a brief few moments. As the race approached its conclusion, things became processional with Kelly beating Escalante by a little over four seconds, and Ventura just under two-and-a-half seconds adrift of Escalante.
The final race of the weekend was in SportbikeTrackGear.com Junior Cup, and Saturday’s winner Tyler Scott did the double aboard his Scott Powersports KTM despite facing a very strong challenge from Landers Racing Kawasaki’s Ben Gloddy. Scott started from the pole, but Gloddy was undeterred and kept Scott in his sights throughout the race, which included overtaking Scott on lap eight. Scott was equally undeterred, however, and he quickly took back the lead and maintained all the way to the checkers. Veloce Racing’s David Kohlstaedt, who was third in Saturday’s Junior Cup race one and third in Sunday morning’s Super Hooligans race, finished third in Junior Cup race two to record his third podium finish of the weekend.