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Harley-Davidson Factory Racing’s Kyle Wyman won a game of cat and mouse with S&S Cycle/Indian Motorcycle’s Troy Herfoss in Friday’s Mission King Of The Baggers battle at Daytona International Speedway with Wyman crossing the finish line just .018 of a second ahead of the Daytona first timer.
The win was the 13th of Wyman’s Mission King Of The Baggers career, which extended his mark as the winningest rider in the class.
Herfoss, meanwhile, finished second not long after earning his first MotoAmerica victory in the Mission Super Hooligan National Championship race earlier in the day. In that one, Herfoss successfully broke away from the pursuing pack in the infield and held on to the finish line. In the Baggers race, Herfoss couldn’t get away and he led going into the chicane. At that point, Herfoss slowed his pace dramatically, forcing Wyman and his teammate James Rispoli to check up. The move almost worked with Wyman just managing to draft past the Aussie and his Indian.
Rispoli looked to have lost the draft to the first two in the closing stages, but a quick last lap brought him back to the draft. He was slowed a little on that final lap when Herfoss’s S&S Cycle/Indian Motorcycle teammate Tyler O’Hara crashed in front of him. Still, Rispoli was able to work himself into the draft on the backstraight and into the chicane where the Herfoss/Wyman battle baulked in front of him.
Rispoli was just .137 behind his teammate Wyman as the three crossed the finish line in formation. Fourth place, and less than a second behind, was RevZilla/Motul/Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson’s Hayden Gillim, the defending series champion blowing turn one late in the race to lose the draft of the top three.
Fifth place went to Gillim’s new teammate Rocco Landers with the 19-year-old making his King Of The Baggers debut.
“I’ve never really been in that kind of game exactly like that here, and I always wondered how it would go and how stressed I would be,” Wyman said. “The last two laps were pretty slow. I was just trying to sit there and wait and preserve the tire. I was worried that he was going to slow it down enough that we were going to have a four-rider group again, and anything can happen at that point. I was like, ‘just go just enough so we can at least make it a one-on-one fight here.’ It kind of turned into that. I was just playing off of Troy (Herfoss) at that point. Wherever he’s going to go, I’m going to try to get a run somewhere, somehow. When he went into the chicane on the last lap, we were going 15 mile an hour slower down the back straightaway than we were the rest of the race. I just refused to go by. He parked it so hard in the chicane that I thought I was going to have to take another downshift to be able to get out of there. I just kind of timed where I thought he was going to end up and try to get a run where he kind of got out of my way as soon as I went by. I might have touched the dirt on the inside there, but I think at that point that was just the only chance I had, and fortunately it was the right one. We all know you can do all the right things here and lose, and sometimes do a lot of things wrong and win. I’m just happy to be on the right side of this one. Try to keep it going. I’ve never won the first race of the year, so it’s a big deal for me to start off the season like this. I’ve always left the first round on the back foot, whether we came here and had mechanicals or had a problem at the first Atlanta race. It just feels amazing to get the win to start the year.”
Photo courtesy MotoAmerica Brian J. Nelson
