In “10 Minutes + 2 Laps with…”, we take the same amount of time required to complete a Mission AFT SuperTwins Main Event (give or take a red flag) and use it to catch up with, and hopefully learn a little about, some of the more prominent figures on the Progressive American Flat Track scene. This week, we caught up with Latus Motors’ Owner George Latus.

AmericanFlatTrack.com: George, you’ve been around the dirt track, roadracing, and drag racing scenes for quite a while now, fielding lots of different efforts with lots of different bikes and riders. But I have no idea where it all began. Can you give me the Cliff Notes version of your motorcycle and motorcycle racing origin story?

George Latus: Well, I was always interested in motorcycles ever since I was just a really, really young kid. And my parents thought they were very dangerous, so I didn’t get my first actual motorcycle until I got out of the service. But in the meantime, I had a motor scooter, and a go-kart, and I built a hot rod car and did that kind of stuff. But my folks were just not big on two-wheel stuff.

When I got out of the service, I decided I wanted to go to college because I had some GI Bill benefits. I went to the University of Montana in Missoula, Montana. Of course, it wasn’t enough to cover everything, so I went to work as a mechanic at a motorcycle store there in Missoula.

That was a really good deal, and I continued doing that until I graduated, and then I kind of stayed in the motorcycle business. I went from mechanic to parts manager and then into sales. After that, I started my own motorcycle shop – Latus Motors – which was kind of a motorcycle salvage yard in the beginning. The motorcycle season was so short in Montana that people would have mechanical issues with their motorcycles and just trade them in rather than fix them. So I'd go around and buy those used bikes and fix them up to sell.

And then to make a long story short, in 1984, I had an opportunity to open a Harley-Davidson dealership in Spokane, Washington. They had not had a dealer there for well over a year. My immediate predecessor had gone broke. And the guy before him was terminated for warranty fraud.

If you’ll remember, in 1984, Harley-Davidson was in dire straits. But I followed the industry pretty closely and Harley had just introduced the Evolution engine and the Softail. And I saw the Harley-Davidson dealer margins were substantially better than any Japanese bikes. That turned out to be a good investment.

Anyway, I had a few guys in Spokane that would come by that were into racing, and I gave them a little bit of money to help them out. That’s how I met Joe Kopp, so we go back over two decades.

AFT: You’ve gone your own way many times. You ran the Triumph in dirt track and roadracing when it might not have been exactly fashionable to do so, you were ahead of the curve on developing a KTM for dirt track, and you helped keep Harley prominent in Progressive American Flat Track when the factory program ended its run. Tell me if I’m wrong here, but it seems like you’ve made some decisions that were based on what would be best for the sport rather than the easiest path for yourself and your team. 

GL: That is the case. I do make decisions on what's going to be good for the sport. What's going to bring young guys in, and what’s going to keep the sport alive, keep it healthy, and just keep it moving forward. That's what I've tried to do. I guess I’ve kind of been fascinated a lot of times in my life by taking on these underdogs and trying to make something out of them.

AFT: While it has made you the underdog at times, that's not the case where we stand today. After years of toil, the XG750R proved itself a serious weapon last year with the advent of the all-production rules set, and linked up with Rick Ware Racing, you won more races than any other team in 2025. 

GL: We struggled with that bike… We bought the very two of those bikes that Vance & Hines built because I started to get interested in the Production Twins program. We actually started to build our own Production Twin because we had some success with Joe winning a Super Hooligan championship on a similar bike. We could see some potential in the thing. We started working on our own, and then we found out Terry (Vance) was building this bike. We took a look at it, and they did a really good job with that thing. We bought two and went racing with James Rispoli.

I’d say we dominated that class with James and Harley-Davidson was pretty enthusiastic about it. They offered us some technical support, which we badly needed. And they offered us a pretty decent sponsorship package. But in order to get that, they wanted us in SuperTwins. So, we ordered the SuperTwins kit, and I think we ran that stuff for three years. We could never really get the power to the ground.

And while we had some really good riders, when you’re in SuperTwins, you better have some really good riders if you want to do well.

I felt kind of bad. I felt like Harley had tried to help me out. I took some money and some technical advice, and we just didn’t produce any results. I just kind of felt I should continue to march until we got this program launched.

Chris Carr helped us out as a rider coach for Max Whale, and he helped us put together the program last year. We were going to run Kody (Kopp) before he made the decision to go roadracing – which I think was a smart decision because it was a chance to go race for Kenny Roberts.

We had Dave Zanotti and Michelle Disalvo, and then Rick Ware Racing also got involved because Briar (Bauman) was still under contract.

And the deal was, my part of that was Dave and Michelle worked for me. Chris worked for me. And I supplied basically the hardware for the team. And Rick took care of a lot of the other logistics, tires, fuel, transport rigs, and so on. It worked out pretty well. It way reduced my expenditure on it. And we had a great season. Briar is a very talented rider.

AFT: In 2026, it all comes full circle. How excited are you to field Kody in his rookie Mission AFT SuperTwins season?

GL: I’ve been fortunate to be able to help Kody in his career from way back. It’s exciting to bring him into SuperTwins on this Harley. We understand it's going to be a little bit new for him. It’s going to be a bit of a development program, and that’s kind of where I've been with him throughout a good part of his career.

But we do think he’s going to win some races.

AFT: And you have Dave and Michelle working with Kody. They obviously have a long track record of working with championship riders. Their experience should prove an invaluable resource.

GL: They do and it will. The other thing about David and Michelle is they both have a very close connection. Michelle is also an employee of S&S Cycle, and Dave works there in an advisory capacity. S&S has some pretty serious capabilities, I would say, basically on par with Vance & Hines. They can make things. They made us some exhaust pipes and quite a bit of other stuff. And that's been really helpful to us. And so it gave us resources and connection that previously I never had. And that's shown in the results.

Dave and Michelle both are very capable people and have worked with a lot of really good riders. So I think we’ve put together a dream team, so to speak.

AFT: Okay. Now it’s time for the two bonus questions. First one – can you name an interest or hobby of yours that is completely removed from racing, engines, or wheels? 

GL: Because I grew up in Montana, I've been around firearms my whole life. And so I've been kind of interested in shooting and guns and stuff. For a while, I got pretty involved in clay pigeon shooting.

And I did pretty well at that. I won a couple of belt buckles and had a lot of fun with it.

AFT. Okay, last question: What would be your death-row style last meal?

GL: (Laughs) I've thought about a lot of weird stuff in my life… this isn't one of them. And hopefully I'll never be in that position where I'm going to have to make that choice.

Periodically, I read about what some of these things are like. And I know there’s some criteria that the prisons put in place. You can't spend over X amount of dollars, and the stuff has to be available locally, you know. And obviously, there’s no alcohol in the house. So that rules out fresh lobsters and all of that kind of stuff.

I think if I were going to do it, I'd probably want a Caesar salad or a wedge salad with some blue cheese. And I would probably want a real good steak, maybe a bone-in ribeye. And probably some mashed potatoes and gravy. And I guess for dessert, I wouldn't want either a piece of apple pie or a chocolate ice cream sundae.