A Wild and Surprising Season of Racing

The 2024 MotoAmerica motorcycle road racing season ended very differently than it began.

Jake Gagne and the Attack Yamaha Racing team were preparing to take a record 4th-in-a-row Superbike championship. Rahal Ducati Moto was predicted to claim the Supersport championship with a star-studded, three rider team all contending in the class. Early pundits were predicting Kyle Wyman would return the factory Harley-Davidson team to the top rung in the King of the Baggers series, with the other series (Twins Cup, Stock 1000, Super Hooligans, and Junior Cup) all up for grabs.

By season’s end, the landscape looked much different.

Jake struggled with hand and arm problems from the opening round, ultimately withdrawing from the competition in August to attend to physical rehabilitation, ending his quest for a fourth straight championship. Mathew Scholtz, who started the season in a very awkward and humbling place with an unfamiliar team, in an unfamiliar class, on an unfamiliar bike, clinched his second MotoAmerica national title, taking the Supersport championship. And the popular King of the Baggers series was won by three-time Australian Superbike champ, Troy Herfoss, which no one could have predicted at the season opener.

It was an exciting season of racing in every class, to say the least.

Ducati legend Eraldo Feracci on the winning 2024 Warhorse HSBK Ducati bike, while 2024 Superbike champ Josh Herrin sits atop the 1994 Feracci Ducati of Troy Corser, in the winners circle at NJMP. Photo by Tim Lester.

The Superbike class was rife with determined talent this year, all gunning for a weakened Gagne and the 2024 Championship. Josh Herrin, Cameron Beaubier, Bobby Fong, Sean Dylan Kelly, Frenchman Loris Baz and Mexico’s Richie Escalante all mixed it up with each other at every race round, making for some of the most exciting racing seen in the class for several years (Jake had dominated round after round for three years). Josh Herrin on his Warhorse HSBK Racing Ducati would ultimately take the crown at the closing New Jersey Motorsports round, giving Ducati their first North American championship as a brand since Australian Troy Corser won the title in 1994.

Herrin did it in dramatic fashion as well, battling his way through the pack to take the race 1 win from Bobby Fong by .403 of a second at the finish line. Herrin played wingman to teammate Loris Baz in race 2, as Baz took the victory and Herrin settled back in 6th. Loris’ victory made him the 7th rider this year to take a win in the class, and the first time a rider from France has ever won an AMA Superbike race.

#11 Mathew Scholtz leading #15 PJ Jacobsen and ultimately winning the 2024 Supersport championship. Photo by Tim Lester.

It was a season of many accomplishments- Honda’s first-ever MotoAmerica title with Hayden Gillim riding a CBR1000RR-R SP in Stock 1000, Ducati’s first Superbike title in 30 years, Herrin’s second Superbike title in 11 years, tying MotoAmerica founder/president Wayne Rainey on the all-time Superbike win list for 10th, with Saturday making Herrin’s 16th victory, as well as Baz on Sunday becoming the 68th rider to take a victory in the history of AMA Superbike racing. The talent on the Superbike grid gets deeper and more nationally diverse every season.

In Supersport, pundits were predicting a Rahal Ducati Moto season of domination, with PJ Jacobsen, Kayla Yaakov and Corey Alexander all riding in the class, the Rahal racing dynasty pouring everything they could into the 3-bike/rider team. Talk about stacking the deck, and in their first full year. Then up from impending obscurity and what some thought would be obsolescence, Mathew Scholtz and the Stark Racing privateer team staged one of the most outstanding comebacks in the history of the class. On a brand new team, in a race class and on a Yamaha YZF-R6 600cc race bike he’d not ridden in over a decade, Scholtz clawed his way from a difficult start to battle for the win in every race, eventually defeating Jacobsen and the Rahal triad for the class championship.

#17 S&S/Indian rider Troy Herfoss leading a train of three Harleys on his way to clinching the 2024 King of the Baggers title. Photo by Brian J. Nelson/MotoAmerica.

Troy Herfoss came to America after winning his third Australian Superbike title last year, getting the offer to ride an Indian Challenger bagger in the rapidly growing series. As odd as that seemed to a seasoned Superbike rider and champion, Herfoss rose to the occasion, battling the dominant Harleys of the factory and Vance & Hines teams all season to win the KotB title with the S&S/Indian Motorcycle by a mere 11 points over Kyle Wyman. The long-standing Harley vs. Indian rivalry is alive and well in MotoAmerica.

It’s been a thrilling season of racing in all classes, with Hayden Gillim claiming the Stock 1000 title in dramatic fashion on board a Honda CBR1000RR, and Matthew Chapin winning the final Junior Cup title before the series becomes the Talent Cup Championship next year.

For more on the 2024 MotoAmerica road racing series and the season results in each class, click here:

MotoAmerica

*Top feature photo: Josh Herrin and his championship-winning Warhorse HSBK Ducati. Photo by Tim Lester Images.