Royal Enfield’s Build. Train. Race. (BTR) Program is Back for 2024!

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And, just like that, one of the most unique racing experiences I’ve ever encountered is back up and prepping for a new season.​

Back in October, I had the privilege of attending Royal Enfield’s event for their Super Meteor 650, meeting a fantastic plethora of personalities along the way.

Today, I understand these diverse dispositions to be a part of the Royal Enfield company itself, and it’s all the more reason to be excited for this year’s Build. Train. Race. (BTR) program.



A view of the actioning that goes on during the “build” and “train” phase of “Build. Train. Race.” Media provided by Royal Enfield.

What is Build. Train. Race. (BTR)?​

Speaking candidly, BTR is a racing series geared toward women who build bikes to race, train on them to race, and then race in a chosen, dedicated series. The efforts are the brainchild of founder and Royal Enfield Concept Design aficionado Adrian Sellers, who has had a strong influence on the program’s success from the very beginning.

Here is an excerpt from the interview I had the pleasure of recording while at Super Meteor’s “Pure Cruising” event:

“BTR was an interesting evolution. [Royal Enfield has] dabbled over the last 120-some-odd years in racing, but we’ve never really committed in the same way that factory race teams do.​ We are, however, committed to surprising people whenever we can. When our twins came out, we were thinking of things to do with them and ways of changing people’s minds about Royal Enfield because, in many ways, the twins were a paradigm shift for us. They opened markets like the Americas where a [large-capacity motor] is quite useful.​ We were looking at fun things to do, I thought, “you know what? Bonneville’s a lot of fun.”​ We’re not making these super-performance motors or anything, so it’s very hard for us to find a racing series to be part of in that sense (we eventually did with American Flag Track)… [and] in Bonneville, you’re not worried about competing incorrectly against anybody.​ We thought, “let’s try this out. It’s a one-off, if it doesn’t work out, not a problem.”​ We started building a bike in partnership with S&S/Harris Performance and built a special motor for it; we found a rider who just so happened to be a young woman – Kayla Rivas – and she knew what she was doing.​ And so we got our records, and it was all super exciting for us. In Europe the next year, we went to the woman that ran the [Petrolettes] and asked if [they would] be interested in doing some custom builds with us and then maybe racing them at the Glemseck 101.​ They said, sure, let’s do it. And so we did – four different teams from different countries around Europe.​ Anyways, it was a lot of fun, and everybody survived, which was my big worry. As a company you have all these ideas, and you want to do all these things, but racing is dangerous. And while every single one of these people who participated in BTR knew exactly what they were doing… you still feel a little bit responsible because it’s your program.​ After that, we called the US because we knew there was a strong racing scene here. At the same time, we were looking at what we could do from a pro-racing perspective. Those two things came together.​ This was an area where twins were key, and we had a twin. We were already building a motor for this, so we were like “let’s see, let’s try something here.”​ Flat track is very much about community, it’s about the people getting together and helping each other out, everybody knows everybody, grassroots, and it seemed like the perfect environment for us to try something like this out because we knew there would be love and support there.​ So we gave that a try, and it worked really well! It’s so important that we break down those imaginary barriers of motorcycling being a male ego trip and just make it about the bikes.”​ – Adrian Sellers, Head of Industrial Design Department, Custom & Motorsport, Royal Enfield​

A view of the actioning that goes on during the “build” and “train” phase of “Build. Train. Race.” Media provided by Royal Enfield.

When is BTR happening this year? ​

According to the recent information from Royal Enfield, BTR will debut March 7-8 at the Daytona International Speedway.



A view of the actioning that goes on during the “build” and “train” phase of “Build. Train. Race.” Media provided by Royal Enfield.

What’s the 2024 BTR racing schedule look like?​

We’ve got two series for this year’s efforts, so here are the names and schedules of each:

2024 BTR Road Racing Program (featuring Motorsports Hall of Famer “Fast Freddie” Spencer as coach)​

• Sunday, May 19: Barber Motorsports Park (Birmingham, AL)
• June 2: Road America (Elkhart Lake, WI)
• June 30: Ridge Motorsports Park (Shelton, WA)
• August 18: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (Lexington, OH)

2024 BTR Flat Track Program (featuring supermoto racer Johnny Lewis as coach)​

• Sunday, May 19: Barber Motorsports Park (Birmingham, AL)
• June 2: Road America (Elkhart Lake, WI)
• June 30: Ridge Motorsports Park (Shelton, WA)
• August 18: Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course (Lexington, OH)

While the 2024 BTR Road Racing season will feature thirteen racers (five returning, including 2023 BTR Road Racing champ Mikayla Moore), the 2024 BTR Flat Track program will carry as whopping ten riders (three returning).

Let the games begin!

Are you excited for BTR 2024?

*Media provided by Royal Enfield (via BTR’s Instagram page)*​

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