Harley-Davidson Built A 127-HP Bagger With Track Modes And Absolutely No Chill
Harley-Davidson racing has traditionally been associated with flat tracks, typically involving stripped-down Sportsters and motorcycles that look very different from the company’s touring lineup. That changed when full-size baggers started showing up on American road courses. Now there’s a reason for a motorcycle with a fixed fairing, saddlebags, and a big V-twin to contend with braking, cornering, and hard acceleration on a real track.
Harley has spent several seasons developing the bikes around exactly that kind of racing. The factory program has produced championships, increasingly specialized hardware, and a much clearer connection between Harley’s competition bikes and some of its production models. The result of these developments has led to touring motorcycles with 127 horsepower, fully adjustable suspension, and riding modes specifically intended for track use.
Harley-Davidson Has Turned Bagger Racing Into A Development Program
King of the Baggers didn’t begin as a conventional national racing championship. MotoAmerica staged the first race as a one-off invitational at Laguna Seca in October 2020, putting modified American touring motorcycles onto a circuit better known for Superbikes. The idea worked well enough that it returned in 2021 as a three-round championship, with Harley-Davidson, Indian, established race shops, and private teams building increasingly serious motorcycles for the class.
The rules are part of the fun of the event. Current King of the Baggers motorcycles must be based on eligible production touring models, and the class has a 620-pound minimum weight. The bikes retain the basic visual ingredients of a bagger, including a touring fairing and hard side cases, but the cruiser appearance you’ll find race suspension, revised ergonomics, substantially modified engines, and extensive use of lightweight materials. In a way, King of the Baggers is a return to an older racing experience similar to original stock car racing.
The Road Glide Has Become The Center Of Harley’s Factory Racing Effort
Harley committed its own factory effort to the series early. Kyle Wyman joined the program in 2020 and won the first full King of the Baggers championship for Harley in 2021, taking pole and winning the deciding race at Laguna Seca. The program has continued through several generations of increasingly specialized race bikes, with Harley and its technical partners developing the engine, chassis, suspension, and setup specifically around the demands of racing a heavyweight V-twin. Wyman returned to the top in 2025, winning seven races and securing his second championship at Circuit of the Americas.
The connection to production motorcycles has also become more deliberate. Carl Vandervort, who leads Harley-Davidson’s factory racing program, describes part of his job as bringing technology developed on the track back to street motorcycles, and he led the CVO Road Glide RR project from concept to production. After several seasons of learning how to make large V-twin touring platforms brake harder, corner faster, and remain controllable at racing speeds, Harley now has somewhere to apply what it has learned.
The 2026 CVO Road Glide ST Brings That Thinking To The Street
The 2026 CVO Road Glide ST clearly reflects this engineering approach. Harley describes it as being inspired by its factory King of the Baggers motorcycles, and the changes go considerably further than paint and carbon-fiber trim. The ST gets a more aggressive riding position, adjustable suspension, radial-mounted brakes, lightweight components, and electronics that would have sounded strange on a factory Harley bagger not very long ago.
It is still unmistakably a Road Glide. The frame-mounted Sharknose fairing remains, as do hard saddlebags, a 6-gallon fuel tank, and a wheelbase measuring 64 inches. Running-order weight is 838 pounds, so this is not a lightweight sport bike. Instead, Harley has concentrated on giving a very large touring motorcycle the hardware to deal with its weight more effectively.
Its 121ci High Output V-Twin Makes 127 Horsepower
Power comes from the Milwaukee-Eight 121 High Output, a 121ci V-twin with an 11.4:1 compression ratio. Harley rates it at 127 horsepower at 4,900 rpm and 145 lb-ft of torque at 4,000 rpm. A Heavy Breather intake and Screamin’ Eagle titanium-capped mufflers are part of the package, while a lower final-drive ratio favors harder acceleration. The engine’s redline is also raised to 5,900 rpm.
The High Output engine also drops the variable valve timing used on some of Harley’s other 121ci touring engines. Harley says eliminating VVT supports the engine’s top-end focus while saving two pounds, making this a fairly large departure from the standard 121. Peak torque and peak horsepower are separated by only 900 rpm, concentrating the strongest output toward the upper end of the engine’s operating range.
Track And Track+ Change How The Electronics Intervene
The CVO Road Glide ST has eight selectable riding modes: Road, Rain, Sport, Track, Track+, and three Custom modes. Road, Rain, and Sport cover the conditions most riders are likely to encounter away from a circuit. Track and Track+ are the unusual additions, changing throttle response and the amount of intervention provided by the motorcycle’s electronic safety systems.
Those systems include cornering ABS and traction control, which account for lean angle when managing braking or rear-wheel slip. Harley also equips the bike with drag-torque slip control to manage rear-wheel instability caused by excessive engine braking. Track settings allow those systems to work with less intervention when appropriate, rather than simply switching everything off. The electronics are therefore being used to make the Road Glide more adjustable as the pace increases, not just to protect a touring rider in poor weather.
Fully Adjustable SHOWA Suspension And Brembo Brakes
The chassis hardware gives those electronics something useful to work with. Up front, Harley uses 1.9-inch inverted SHOWA forks with adjustable preload, compression damping, and rebound damping. The rear suspension provides the same three adjustments through its emulsion shocks. That gives a rider considerably more control over chassis setup than the basic preload adjustment found on many conventional touring motorcycles.
Braking is handled by Brembo hardware, with radial-mounted four-piston calipers and floating wave-style rotors up front and a single caliper at the rear. The CVO Road Glide ST also provides 31 degrees of lean angle in either direction, giving the rider more room to use the upgraded suspension and brakes through a corner. Forged-carbon components and the lighter exhaust help trim weight, but this is still an 838-pound motorcycle producing 145 lb-ft of torque. Managing that mass under hard braking and through quick direction changes is where the chassis upgrades matter most.
The CVO Road Glide ST Is Still A $44,999 Touring Motorcycle
For all the racing influence, the CVO Road Glide ST hasn’t stopped being an expensive Harley-Davidson touring bike. MSRP starts at $44,999, and the motorcycle still provides 2.42 cubic feet of luggage capacity behind its fixed fairing. A 12.3-inch TFT display runs Harley’s Skyline OS with navigation, while a Rockford Fosgate audio system handles the entertainment side of the package. This isn’t a stripped homologation special that happens to resemble a Road Glide.
That may be what makes the ST more interesting. Harley hasn’t tried to hide the size, price, or touring equipment that define the Road Glide. Instead, it has added a 127-horsepower High Output engine, shorter gearing, adjustable suspension, stronger brakes, and Track-specific electronics to a motorcycle that still weighs more than 800 pounds and carries hard luggage. King of the Baggers didn’t turn the Road Glide into a superbike, it just gave Harley a reason to find out just how far a bagger could be pushed.
Source: Harley-Davidson
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