Kyle Wyman knows how to win races at Daytona International Speedway. Of his 28 career victories in AMA-sanctioned professional road racing, eight of those wins have been at the “World Center of Racing.”
In fact, his very first career win as an AMA professional road racer was in 2011 when he notched the season-opening victory at Daytona in the inaugural AMA Pro Vance & Hines Harley-Davidson XR1200 series.
He also won the big one. In 2019, he added his name to the record books when he won the Daytona 200.
Over the past three years, he’s won five consecutive Mission King Of The Baggers races at Daytona, along with the Mission King Of The Baggers Challenge in 2023 where he pocketed $5,000 in the three-lap, winner-take-all, dash for cash. Oh, and he won the Mission King Of The Baggers Challenge again this year, too.
Conventional wisdom, popular opinion, and sage advice from a lot of legendary riders who have won races at Daytona will tell you, “You can’t win at Daytona if you’re in the lead coming out of the chicane on the final lap.” On that final run to the checkered flag, the race leader often gets gobbled up by a rider (or riders) further back in the pack who rockets to the front courtesy of Daytona’s phenomenon known as “drafting,” “slipstreaming,” or “the slingshot.” We saw it happen in Mission Super Hooligan National Championship Race 2 this past Saturday when six-foot, four-inch Jake Lewis went from sixth place to first like he’d switched on a bottle of nitrous oxide aboard his Saddlemen Race Development Harley-Davidson Pan America. Nope, that was no bottle of nitrous, it was just the way a lot of riders win at Daytona.
But not Kyle Wyman. He not only wins from the front, but he also leads coming out of the chicane.
After doing the double at Daytona for the second year in a row aboard his Harley-Davidson Factory Racing Road Glide, he talked about it.
“I was confident because, in all five of these (Mission King Of The Baggers) wins, I’ve led out of the chicane,” Wyman said. “I also led out of the chicane when I won the Daytona 200 in 2019. And, in my two XR1200 wins at Daytona, I led out of the chicane in those races, too. So, I’m proof that you can lead out of the chicane and win the race. It’s more about how you get around the banking, where you position yourself on the track, and how you use the banking to your advantage to get a better run when the track flattens out.
“There are a lot of things I’ve learned during the 16 years I’ve been coming to Daytona. And also racing in flat track before that. Drafting on the Miles. It’s definitely where I’m in my element. It’s super fun to kind of just wait till the last lap, then figure out where each of us is going to try to do what. I think (second-place finisher Troy Herfoss and I) both tried to bite off a lap at one point or another. But then, we both realized nobody was really going to break away. I knew tire conservation was going to be a big deal. So, I tried to really chill out in the first half of the race. Tried to leave a little bit for the end, and it worked out.”
That, it did.
All told, Kyle Wyman has won seven races at Daytona aboard Harley-Davidson motorcycles, and his two wins last week were probably the most important victories of all for Wyman and the Motor Company.
Just prior to Daytona, Harley-Davidson introduced the ultra-limited-edition CVO Road Glide RR. It’s a fully street-legal version of the race-developed Road Glides that Wyman and his teammates race in the Mission King Of The Baggers Championship. The CVO/RR bristles with carbon fiber bodywork, a race-proven 131-cubic-inch Screamin’ Eagle engine, top-shelf Öhlins suspension front and rear, a full titanium Akrapovič exhaust system, and a $110,000 price tag. Plus, only 131 of the CVO/RRs will be built.
Wyman and his race crew fully participated in the launch of the CVO Road Glide RR just before turning their attention to the season-opening KOTB round last week at Daytona.
“I was exhausted going into this race weekend,” Wyman said. “We’ve been so busy leading up to Daytona. Bike Week is always such a big event for Harley-Davidson, and then, we added in the CVO/RR bike launch on top of that along with some press events. We did a live-stream launch of the bike on Monday night, so it’s been a heck of a week.
“For sure, to back it up and win both races in the same livery as the new motorcycle, if they’re not sold out already, I hope they are in the next couple days. I know there are a lot of customers who put deposits down on the new bike, and they were here with us this week, which has been really cool. I’m really happy to be doing my small part to sell motorcycles for Harley-Davidson. Racing is such an important part of the whole company. I’m really proud of my whole team for what they’re doing in that regard, and what this means for the company.”
Fun Fact: The Mission King Of The Baggers Championship is a uniquely American road racing series pitting riders aboard Harley-Davidson Road Glides versus riders aboard Indian Challengers. This year at Daytona, as a testament to the growing popularity of KOTB around the world, Kyle Wyman was the only American rider to finish on the podium in the two races. He was joined by his British teammate Bradley Smith and South African expatriate Cameron Petersen in Race 1, and by Australian Troy Herfoss and his French teammate Loris Baz in Race 2.
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