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What some of us (myself definitely included) would consider terrifying — a 620-pound bagger race bike out of shape and smoking the landscape with a rear tire that's used up and screaming for mercy — is when it starts to get "fun" for Troy Herfoss.
Not for the first time I realize: Professional motorcycle racers are a different type of people.
Even among racers, Troy Herfoss has had a somewhat unusual career. With an AMA Supermoto championship (2008), three Australian Superbike titles (2016, 2018, 2023), and a MotoAmerica Mission King of the Baggers championship (which he won in his first season riding that beast, 2024), Herfoss has proven his versatility. Now, the 39-year-old Australian is also proving his longevity, battling with his younger teammates as he pursues a second King of the Baggers title.
This year, Herfoss, is paired on the J&P Cycles/Motul/Vance & Hines Factory Indian team with Hayden Gillim, age 31, another former King of the Baggers champion, and Rocco Landers, 21. The team looked strong in the opening round at Daytona, despite Gillim and Landers each suffering mechanical setbacks in one of the two races, and Herfoss emerged with the points lead after a win and a second-place finish. But Daytona is so different from the other tracks on the MotoAmerica calendar, it's hard to know whether it will predict how the rest of the season will go.
That question was answered this past weekend at Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta as Gillim won both races, plus the non-points-paying two-lap sprint race, and the three-man team locked out the podium on Sunday.
"We've got a bike that works. We've got faith in the direction we're going. It's bangers. We're getting comfortable. But the thing is we're not going to stop working," Herfoss said.
A big part of the success, to hear Herfoss tell it, is how much fun he's having. I caught up with him to ask a few questions between races at Road Atlanta.
Common Tread: Over the last decade, we've seen many racers come from abroad to race in MotoAmerica with widely different results. Toni Elias loved it here and won a Superbike title. Danilo Petrucci never seemed to be happy here and left after one season. What's been your experience of racing and living in the United States?
Troy Herfoss: I fell in love with racing in the states from a young age. I grew up watching (fellow Australian and seven-time AMA Superbike champion) Mat Mladin on TV. One of his main mechanics was a guy named Reg O'Rourke and he lived in Goulburn, where I lived, in a small town. So Mat would come on holidays, at Christmas time, and I'd get to meet him. So I really took a lot of note of American roadracing.
And obviously, on the motocross side, the AMA Supercross series is the biggest series in the world. As a kid I always watched American racing and I was lucky enough to start my professional career here in Supermoto, 2005 through 2008, so when I left in '08, I wanted to get back here so bad. It took a lot of years, but I get to race here again now and I love it. People are very friendly here. I'm just so thankful I got the opportunity to come back here later in my career. I love America. It's very close to Australia living and I'm enjoying every part of it.
CT: You've won national championships on a lightweight supermoto, a full-fledged Superbike, and a massive King of the Baggers race bike, three very different motorcycles. If a young racer asked you about the key to your versatility, what advice would you give?
TH: What I'd say is, as a young, up-and-coming rider, ride a lot of bikes. You don't need to be on a brand-new bike or the latest technology. If someone's got a bike there for you to ride in a low-pressure circumstance, at a track day or on the farm or wherever it is, whether that bike is 10 years old or 20 years old, just learn as much as possible riding in as many different circumstances. When you're young, just ride bikes as much as possible. It makes it easier to adapt when conditions are out of your control or you get an opportunity to ride a King of the Baggers. I feel like I've been able to adapt quite well because I just rode bikes when I was a kid. Whatever it was. Whatever was available, I'd ride.
CT: When you moved from a Superbike to the Indian Challenger race bike in King of the Baggers, what was the biggest adjustment you had to make?
TH: The size of the bikes, it really exaggerates something like missing a braking marker by a few feet. You've got to be really careful with your braking markers and asking too much of the throttle, because the tire will spin quite easily. But in general, they handle so good. They really are a race bike. All the same problems you have on a Superbike, we have on a bagger, except now you don't have any electronic aids. It's really like the old days but you've got 200 horsepower. We do have a lot more grip now than we used to, but 200 horsepower without electronic aid, it's quite a lot of fun but it can get you in quite a lot of trouble. You've got to be careful. You've got to have your wits about you.
CT: You sound "old school" beyond your years. Just give me a bike that might kill me, not one that will save me with advanced electronics.
TH: Because I'm one of the few to race these baggers, I feel very fortunate, and I'd love for some of the best riders in the world to be able to come race and experience that, too, because they really are a lot of fun. Superbikes these days — it's not that they're not a lot of fun, they're always fun — but to get the most out of a Superbike you need the electronics to be working, you need a really fresh tire with a lot of grip, or otherwise it's not performing at its best. With a bagger, the tire wears out and you can start having more and more fun because nothing's holding you back from smoking that rear tire. So when we're at a track day or a test day, it's getting later in the day and we've used all our new tires, and we're out there testing, you can have a lot of fun. When the day's done and the lap time is irrelevant, you can just screw that throttle on and spin that rear tire so there's smoke pouring off the rear of it. It's just a pretty cool feeling you don't get from a lot of other bikes in this day and age.
CT: If you could ride any motorcycle that you haven't ridden, what would it be?
TH: I'd love to ride, like, a Rothmann's Honda GP bike, like a '91, somewhere around there, or Mick Doohan's Repsol NSR500 [from the two-stroke, 500 cc era]. When I was 16, I got to race the Australian flat-track championship on a KX500 with methanol fuel in it. I remember coming off a little bike to that bike and the feeling I had that day, wrestling around a half-mile circuit with all that horsepower, that was a pretty crazy feeling. Like the bagger, those bikes have got too much power for the grip you've got. The more chances of it hurting you, the more fun it is. The closer you are to the edge, the more fun it is.
