The Sons of Speed race happens in a strange corner of motorcycle culture.
The premise? - Old motorcycles. No front brakes. An oval track. Riders in open-face helmets and leathers lining up on machines that look like they rolled straight out of a black-and-white photograph.
And if you walk through the pits long enough, you start to realize the race is less about winning than it is about the strange gravity that pulls certain people toward old motorcycles.
The Sons of Speed, the race created by Billy Lane, doesn’t look like modern racing.
There are no corporate tents, no digital timing boards and no crew chiefs staring at laptops.
Instead, the pits look like a garage sale for American motorcycle history. Flathead Harleys. Knuckleheads. WR race motors. Hand-built frames and parts that feel closer to sculpture than engineering.
Some bikes are carefully restored, while others are clearly still evolving.
One rider named DJ stands beside a machine he built mostly because he had the parts laying around.
“I’ve done Sons of Speed since the beginning,” he says. “Always pitted and built bikes. Then last year I said, ‘You know what? I got enough stuff… I’m gonna make me one.’”
It runs aluminum wheels from a Yamaha dirt bike and a Superglide front end.
“It’ll run,” he says with a grin. “Way faster than my pay grade.”
A few tents down we found JB, carrying a quiet confidence as he stood by his bike. The confidence of a man who knows he is meant to be here.
The machine is a 1942 Harley-Davidson WLA, stripped down in the same spirit as the early WR race bikes.
“It’s pretty stock for the most part,” JB explains. “Aluminum heads and I’m running a knock-off Mikuni.”
It’s exactly the kind of practical solution that shows up in vintage racing. If it works, it stays.
The tank carries the WR style racers used decades ago. The rear fender has been cut down. Everything about the bike feels purpose-built for the type of racing that defines Sons of Speed.
But like most riders here, JB’s relationship with motorcycles stretches well beyond the race track.
His daily rider is a CVO Street Glide, there’s also a 72 Shovelhead chop in the works.
And then there’s the sportster, a bike that used to be JB’s but now it belongs to his mom. But that is a story for another day.
A lot of people describe Sons of Speed as a gentleman’s race. Although we did have two female riders this year, Shelly Rossmyer Pepe & Thelma Rangel Tomalewicz. So lets call it an enthusiasts' race.
Old bikes. Friendly competition. A place where people show up because they love the machines.
Then you meet someone like J-Bird whose love for the machine is one part antique, and two parts unique.
The frame is aluminum. Prototype cams. Geometry changes to lower the center of gravity and hold corner speed.
“Frame weighs twelve pounds,” he says. “Dropped the seat three inches. Stretched the frame four inches. Twenty-four degree neck so I can keep the turning radius.”
Then he laughs.
Because the bike might be precise, but the emotion behind it is simple.
“Please… just let me win,” he says.
The truth about Sons of Speed is that it might be a friendly race, but the friendliness ends the moment the green flag drops.
Every rider here wants the same thing.
To see if their machine, and their nerve, can outrun the rest of the field.
Every rider, except Detroit…Detroit is chasing something deeper.
His shirt caught my eye immediately, four black faces cover the front, with the text “Motorcycle legends.” I asked him about it and why there were no names. He prefers it that way.
“I don’t put the names on there because I want people to ask,” he says.
Each name represents someone who helped build the early history of motorcycling.
Hal “Demon” Wade was a champion from 1913 and 1922 in the Black racing circuit. (At the time all sports were segregated.)
Ben Hardy, the builder commissioned to build two iconic bikes for "Easy Rider" the Captain America chopper and the Billy Bike.
Bessie Stringfield, also known as the "Motorcycle Queen of Miami" was the first African-American woman to ride across the United States solo.
William Johnson, one of the first Black Harley-Davidson dealership owners and famous hill climber.
Detroit doesn’t talk about them like museum figures. He talks about them like teammates.
“These folks are motorcycle legends,” he says. “I get to see further over the horizon because I stand on their shoulders.”
Then he looks out toward the track. “When you see me out there, I’m not trying to go fast. I’m trying to represent them.”
It’s the kind of sentence that makes you realize the Sons of Speed race is not just about motorcycles. It is about remembering and honoring the strange and stubborn culture that motorcycles built.
