The inaugural FIM Bagger World Cup crowned its first champion on September 20, when Archie McDonald sealed the title at the Red Bull Ring by nine points over Oscar Gutiérrez, with Eric Granado just one point further back. A year after the series existed only as an idea, it closed its first season with five different race winners, every team reaching the podium, and four riders still mathematically alive heading into the final round.
The FIM Bagger World Cup Opens at COTA
The series’ first-ever race weekend came at Circuit of the Americas on March 29, run alongside the MotoGP Grand Prix of the Americas. McDonald won Race 1 after a back-and-forth battle with teammate Eric Granado, while Oscar Gutiérrez took Race 2, setting an all-time Bagger World Cup lap record at COTA in the process. McDonald left Austin leading the points, a position he’d trade away and eventually reclaim over the following five months.
Andrea Iannone Joins the FIM Bagger World Cup at Mugello
Round two brought the season’s biggest signing: Andrea Iannone joined the grid at Mugello with almost no prior time on the Harley-Davidson Road Glide race machine, then qualified third and won Race 2 in just his second start in the category. The victory came after Gutiérrez crashed out of the lead, leaving Iannone and Granado to trade positions until the Italian pulled away on the final laps.
That kind of immediate speed from a rider with almost no seat time on the bike said as much about the depth of the grid as it did about Iannone himself, and it set up a title fight that would eventually include him as a genuine contender despite missing the opening round entirely.
Granado and Gutiérrez Split Wins as the FIM Bagger World Cup Reaches Assen
Round three at TT Circuit Assen marked the season’s halfway point, run in track temperatures topping 54°C. After three straight pole positions without a win to show for it, Eric Granado finally converted, fighting back from a poor start to take Race 1 in a six-rider battle that ran nose-to-tail for most of the distance.
Gutiérrez answered in Race 2, leading from Turn 1 to the checkered flag for his third win of the season, while Granado’s podium finish behind him was enough to move him into the championship lead by just two points over Gutiérrez, with McDonald a further twelve back in third.
Bradley Smith’s Wildcard Highlights the FIM Bagger World Cup at Silverstone
Round four brought a genuine storyline of its own. Bradley Smith, racing a wildcard entry for the ParkinGO Team in front of his home crowd, led Race 1 from the early laps and held on to win.
The result made him the only rider ever to stand on the podium across five different MotoGP-connected categories: Moto3, Moto2, MotoGP, MotoE, and now the Bagger World Cup, at age 35 after two decades chasing that exact moment.
McDonald answered by taking pole with a new all-time Silverstone lap record, then dominated Race 2 for his second win of the season, leading an all-Joe Rascal Racing podium.
His quote after the race hinted at more than the result alone: “You don’t know the half of it. I’ve seen things no one’s meant to see and I’ve been places that people aren’t supposed to be,” he said, a comment that would take on its full weight three rounds later in Austria.
Iannone’s Aragón Sweep Reshapes the FIM Bagger World Cup Title Fight
By round five at MotorLand Aragón, Iannone had turned a late start into a genuine championship threat. He became the first rider in series history to sweep both races at a single weekend, taking the full 50 points on offer and closing to within 27 points of the lead.
The result also shuffled the top of the standings: McDonald left Spain as the new points leader, seven ahead of Granado, with Gutiérrez and Iannone separated by a single point in third and fourth.
Four riders arriving at the Austrian finale with a mathematical shot at the title, in a series barely five rounds old, is a genuinely rare outcome for a brand-new championship to produce on its first attempt.
Archie McDonald Wins the First FIM Bagger World Cup Title in Austria
The season finale at the Red Bull Ring delivered exactly the decider the standings promised. Gutiérrez won Race 1 outright on Saturday, but McDonald’s controlled second-place finish, as both Granado and Iannone retired, gave him a 21-point cushion heading into Sunday.
Granado won Race 2 from the front, his second victory of the season, while McDonald brought the bike home eighth, enough to secure the inaugural championship with 202 points to Gutiérrez’s 193 and Granado’s 192.
McDonald’s own account of the season went well beyond the numbers. He won the opening race of his career in this series, then lost his brother Toby partway through the year. “To say goodbye to him, say goodbye to my family, and go overseas to keep training and keep following this dream… it’s such a relief now that it’s paid off,” McDonald said, dedicating the title to his brother directly.
What the FIM Bagger World Cup Proved in Its First Year
The machinery backing all of this was never in question. Jason Kehl, Harley-Davidson Factory Racing’s Technical Director, pointed to 62 degrees of lean angle and genuinely competitive lap times from a 131ci (2,152cc) Screamin’ Eagle 131R engine putting out more than 200 horsepower, built specifically to prove a bagger platform belongs at this level of racing. Bradley Smith’s own late-season wildcard appearance only reinforced how quickly the grid’s depth grew across a single year.
A series that didn’t have teams, riders, or even finished race motorcycles a year before its own launch just produced a title fight that went to the final lap of the final race, with a grieving champion crossing the line to secure it.
Building a functioning global racing series from scratch in twelve months is one kind of achievement. Making it dramatic enough to matter on the first try is a different one entirely, and the FIM Bagger World Cup managed both.
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