American Road #5: A Saturday Settled by 0.325 Seconds — Only One American Machine on the Peoria Podium

0.325 seconds. August 22, Peoria, Illinois. That was the gap still separating winner Dallas Daniels from runner-up Briar Bauman at the end of the 79th Caterpillar Peoria TT. This is the one round I circle on the calendar every year, because Peoria is the odd one out in flat track. It isn't a mile and it isn't a short track. There's a jump on the lap, and you turn right as well as left. You launch off a dirt bank, land, and lay it over again. You never get to hold one posture for long, so what's left in your body at the end comes out differently than at any other track. Back home people still say that whoever wins Peoria is the real deal. Daniels himself said afterwards it was probably the toughest Main Event of his career. Seventy-nine runnings in, and the track can still get that out of the guy leading the championship. This year it also landed as round 14 of 16, with two to go — a race you watch less for the finishing order than for who drops something they can't get back.

So look at what lined up on that podium. Daniels won on a Yamaha MT-07. Bauman was second on a Harley-Davidson XG750R. Davis Fisher was third on a KTM 790 Duke. On the podium of the most American race in America, exactly one machine in the middle is American-built. And all three trace back to twin-cylinder engines out of production road bikes. The era when purpose-built racers owned the dirt is long over. I'd rather state that as a fact than as a preference. AFT SuperTwins today is a contest over how you package a street engine in a frame and how you get its torque into the dirt. That's part of what I mean when I say it isn't just Harleys. Bauman closing to three tenths on the XG750R wasn't a factory decree — it was setup a team stacked up one round at a time. And the bike Fisher took to third is a sibling of the 790 Duke you can buy downtown. I don't read the scattered origins of those engines as a weakness in this sport. I read it as proof the door is still open to whoever wants in.

That day, Estenson Racing's Yamahas took all three classes. In Singles, Tom Drane scored his eighth win of the season — matching the record for a single year — and locked up back-to-back titles in the same ride. Drane sits on 264 points to Chase Saathoff's 215. With two rounds left and 49 points between them, the math is already closed. Max Whale took second on a KTM 450 SX-F and Tarren Santero third on a Honda CRF450R. What sticks with me is that the outfit sweeping all three classes isn't a factory team but an independent one. Back home, a year like that changes how the young guys look at the sport, because it shows there's a way to win without being picked up by a factory. When I was racing dirt track, that door was narrower. The contracts went to the fast guys in order, and if you weren't in that group, realistically you were done. I'd also note that Drane is Australian — in 2025 he became the first foreign rider to win an American Flat Track championship. Dirt track was born here, and it's now where riders from outside come to measure themselves. Does that sting? Honestly, not much. It's proof the gate is open.

Last time in this column I wrote about inventory — dealer stock down 17 percent, and bikes still selling. Showroom health and finishing order in the dirt don't connect directly. But I think both show the shape American motorcycling actually holds right now. On the sales floor the axis is cruisers; in racing the axis is modified production twins. Neither is something purpose-built for the job — both are contests over what you do with what already exists. Whether you read that as shrinkage or as being grounded probably depends on the person. I read it as the latter. A sport decided by whether you can afford purpose-built equipment doesn't last as long as one decided by what you can do with what's on the bench. In Oakland at least, the guys who worked that way were the ones still around years later. The championship gets decided September 5 and 6 at the Springfield Mile doubleheader. Daniels 272, Bauman 252, and Kopp third on 249. Twenty points at a mile is the kind of gap that disappears in a single day.