OrangeCat Racing 2027 starts with the biggest news of the MotoAmerica offseason so far: reigning Superbike champion Bobby Fong has signed to ride the No. 1 BMW M 1000 RR for 2027 and 2028. He joins Sean Dylan Kelly, the rider he beat for the 2026 title by 11 points, which puts the championship’s top two finishers in one garage. Congratulations to everyone involved.
BMW Motorrad Motorsport and OrangeCat Racing announced the deal on October 19. The Chicago-based team ran its first full Superbike season in 2026 after three years in Stock 1000, and BMW says it is the first official BMW Motorrad team in U.S. Superbike. Team principal Jeff Connors called the signing “a big moment for OrangeCat Racing.” It is hard to argue with that.
How OrangeCat Racing 2027 Landed a Champion
Fong won the 2026 Quad Lock Superbike championship on a Yamaha, his first Superbike title, with six race wins. It came down to New Jersey Motorsports Park in late September. He won both Saturday races in rain and slick conditions to get within two points, then clinched it on Sunday with a fourth-place finish in the wet Race 3, after Kelly crashed on lap four. The final count was 316 to 305.
You can read how that weekend unfolded in our New Jersey race report. The part that belongs in this story is where Fong goes next. He moves from Yamaha to BMW, and he says he is excited to get on the M 1000 RR, get to work with the team and defend his No. 1 plate.
Fong and Kelly Together in OrangeCat Racing 2027
Kelly finished second in 2026 with three wins and 13 podiums, riding for the team that made its full-time Superbike debut this year. It was a strong first season that sets the table for OrangeCat Racing 2027, and our earlier look at the OrangeCat lineup has the background on how the team got there. Kelly won the 2021 Supersport title and took a Superbike win on a BMW in 2024.
The two know each other. Kelly says they were teammates on Supersport bikes in 2019, and he sounded happy about the news, saying the plan is to “put both BMWs up front.” Connors expects the pairing to push the development of the team’s superbike, and two riders chasing the same result in one garage tends to do exactly that.
What OrangeCat Racing 2027 Owes Jayson Uribe
Jayson Uribe is leaving the team. He rode for OrangeCat this season, and he was the Stock 1000 runner-up in 2024 and third in 2025 before the move to Superbike. In New Jersey he beat Mathew Scholtz to the line for fifth in Race 1 by 0.015 seconds, which is a good way to sign off.
BMW Motorrad thanked Uribe for his work on the M 1000 RR customer racing program, and for what he did away from the race weekends, calling him a true brand ambassador. The announcement does not say where he is heading next, so we will leave that for him to tell. Good luck to him.
The Road Ahead for OrangeCat Racing 2027
BMW and the team put the start of the 2027 Superbike season at Road Atlanta, April 16 to 18. MotoAmerica has since announced tickets for Road America on June 4 to 6, WeatherTech Raceway Laguna Seca on July 9 to 11, and VIRginia International Raceway on August 13 to 15. That is a full run of tracks for OrangeCat Racing 2027 to learn on.
So congratulations to Fong on the title and the new ride, to Kelly on a teammate who makes the team stronger, and to the whole team on what should be a strong OrangeCat Racing 2027 season. April is a long way off, but the grid at Road Atlanta just got a lot more interesting.
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