While bike specs and handling are certainly important, the rider's ability dealing with a modified, roughly 600 lbs bagger bike is going to be incredibly important, especially concerning last-minute braking, delayed turn-in while cornering, trail-braking in the curves, delayed apex in the curves with aggressive yet smooth acceleration out of the curves, aggressive yet smooth cornering throughout the curves, and significant in-board rider body-leaning to provide more traction potential and mitigate against hard-parts-scrapage while cornering. Acceleration in the straight-a-ways are important, but a rider's cornering skills and abilities at Laguna Seca have a huge influence on which rider stands at the top of the winner's podium at the end of the race.
And while bike modifications will be permissible, I hope the bagger race bikes will still somewhat resemble the appearance of a bagger bike, including some sort of saddlebags and some sort of front fairing. After all, bagger bikes are and look different than heavily stripped-down bobber bikes.
Tyler O'Hara will be riding the Indian Challenger. It would be nice if we could see him practice for the bagger bike race.