Harley’s announcement last year that it was dropping sponsorship of the Screamin’ Eagle/Vance & Hines NHRA Pro Stock motorcycle team after nearly 20 years may have seemed as something of a blow to insiders, but don’t cry for Vance & Hines. It’s still going after two-wheel racing, seemingly with more gusto than ever. With an impressive second place finish in last year’s King of the Baggers race under its belt, the Vance & Hines Racing Team just announced it’ll be returning to this year’s three-race KOTB series, which starts on April 30.
Some reorganization was in order after the H-D news came through however, so V&H rebranded segments of the company and tapped resources at its new Racing Development Center (RDC) to build a racing machine for the 2021 bagger series. The bike in question is a Harley-Davidson Electra Glide running the 131ci V-twin motor, which is, of course, aided and abetted by a number of Vance & Hines add-ons, like a Fuelpak FP3 custom tuned map, intake via a Vance & Hines VO2 Cage Fighter, and exhaust gases handled by V&H’s Stainless Hi-Output 2-into-1.
At the controls again will be last year’s V&H bagger pilot Hayden Gillim, who will be leveraging his experience in MotoAmerica, MotoGP, WERA, and American Flat Track—as well as last year’s run in KOTB—to wring the best possible result from the bike. The fact that Gillim was essentially swapping the lead position with eventual winner Tyler O’Hara for the final laps in last year’s race should serve him well in prepping for the 2021 edition to boot.
Ironically, H-D is actually fielding a factory team for the three-race series, campaigning a Road Glide Special (also powered by a modded 131 engine) piloted by racer Kyle Wyman. So much for “refocusing racing efforts” by backing dealer programs, as Harley pronounced in its Hardwire plan earlier this year. In any event, it’ll be fun to watch two H-D 131-powered baggers bang bars (and fairings) when the MotoAmerica Mission Foods King of the Baggers series kicks off at Road Atlanta, April 30 through May 2.
That said, bagger racing isn’t the only two-wheel event on the docket for Vance & Hines; after all, the company is almost synonymous with NHRA drag racing, H-D support or not. V&H’s record-setting duo of Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec have been busy at the RDC in Indiana helping to develop a new motor made specifically for NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle drag racing. The new 160ci powerplant, dubbed the “VH160VT,” is a billet aluminum 60-degree V-twin with pushrod-driven valves capable of cranking out 400 hp and turning 10,500 rpm. The engine has since been approved by NHRA and will be offered to teams in NHRA Pro Stock Motorcycle racing through the RDC starting June 1.
(Earlier this year, Vance & Hines also launched a four-valve 1,850cc Suzuki-based racing engine; in its first outing at the NHRA PSM Gatornationals, Vance & Hines rider Angelle Sampey hit 200 mph in her second run and was the No. 1 PSM qualifier at the event.)
Don’t forget about flat track either; H-D had also said it would no longer be fielding a factory team in the American Flat Track series, but Vance & Hines will remain the sole licensee, manufacturer, and seller of Harley-Davidson XG750R Production Twin and Harley-Davidson XG750R Super Twin motorcycles (the racing variant of H-D’s Street 750 was the bike that won the AFT Production Twins championship in 2020). In short, it seems like V&H has rolled with the punches for 2021, regrouping solidly from a year that can only be described as disastrous for most of the moto racing world.