How Royal Enfield’s Build Train Race Turns Women Into Racers – And Teammates For Life

Royal Enfield’s Build Train Race (BTR) began as a simple idea: invite women into one of the most male-dominated corners of sport and give them everything they need to thrive. It has since become something far bigger — a living proof point that when you design for inclusion, you don’t just change who shows up at the starting grid; you change the culture around it.
At the center of the U.S. program is Jennifer Lewis, Royal Enfield’s Custom & Motorsports Program Manager. As Lewis puts it, “Build Train Race is a, above all, it’s a women’s empowerment program, and it’s a way to get women into a very male-dominated sport.”
From Family Pits To Program Lead
Lewis grew up trackside — the youngest of three, shadowing an older brother who raced and a father who wrenched — and later studied nutrition and exercise science before motorsport pulled her back for good. Today, she runs point on custom and competition in the U.S.: “My current job is I am custom and motor sports program manager of the US.”
Her remit includes overseeing BTR end-to-end across both flat track and road racing, while also stewarding Royal Enfield customs that appear at major U.S. shows. The throughline: use motorcycles as a platform for confidence, community, and craft.
A Simple, Powerful Design: Build. Train. Race.
Each season brings together 24 riders — 12 for flat track, 12 for road race — who apply not only with résumés but with personal videos. The selection lens goes beyond lap times. Lewis and team are looking for intention and purpose: “It can be funny. It can be creative. It can be just them being them sitting there talking to us.”
Once selected, riders meet in Texas, where stock Royal Enfield motorcycles await. The first act is transformation: turn street-legal machines into race-ready bikes, hands-on, with guidance. Royal Enfield removes cost as a barrier — flights, hotels, logistics — so participants can focus on showing up fully: “They really don’t have to do anything but show up and be a good sport.” Or, as Lewis puts it even more plainly, “The only thing that these women are asked to give them is their time… their love, their passion.”
The series then runs alongside the highest levels of U.S. racing — MotoAmerica (road) and American Flat Track (dirt) — as its own spec class. The parity is intentional and pedagogical: “Everybody’s on the same spec of a bike,” with “nothing’s done internally” to engines. That means skill, discipline, and racecraft are the differentiators — and “you get to watch them grow” round by round.
Competitive On Track. Family Off It.
If racing culture can sometimes read as zero-sum, BTR flips the script. The ethos is fierce and generous at once: go hard when the lights go out, then close ranks when the helmets come off. In Lewis’s words, “When you come off the track, you’re family.”
Asked about the oft-assumed drama of an all-women paddock, she smiles: “There is no drama at all.” The opposite tends to happen: “Eight out of 10 times, it’s the other riders that are helping them get onto the track.”
That instinct to lift one another up is the real innovation here. BTR proves that excellence and empathy can coexist — that pushing limits and sharing knowledge are not contradictions but complements.
Why Royal Enfield Is Investing
Lewis is candid about the brand’s intent and the industry gap it seeks to address: “We are the only brand that has brought this to the table.” The goal is straightforward and overdue: “It is very much so to get female riders on to bikes in general.”
Because the bikes fit a wider range of riders, and the pathway is structured and supported, aspiring women can enter a space that has historically signaled “not for you.” BTR reframes the invitation — and then backs it with training, travel, and time on world-class circuits.
Documenting The Journey — And What It Unlocks
From day one, BTR has been as much a storytelling project as a sporting one. “Content has really been tracking this series since the beginning,” Lewis says. The reason is both practical and profound. In the sprint of a season, riders can miss just how far they’ve come. Watching it back together becomes a mirror — and a release: “We sit and watch this documentary together and then that’s when all the emotions… they get to sit back and really reflect.”
The impact radiates beyond the tent. Fans discover role models who look like them and live like them — college grads, engineers, nurses, veterans, moms of three — each bringing a different chapter of life to the grid. The most common response Lewis hears still makes her laugh: “This is badass. I can’t believe that this is a thing.” And perhaps the most moving: “I could do this.”
Graduation — And A Growing Alumni
BTR runs on a two-year cycle, after which riders “graduate” with hard-won skills, deeper networks, and a changed sense of what’s possible: “It’s a two-year program.” Across five years and multiple cohorts, a growing alumni community now mentors the next wave — a virtuous loop of women helping women go faster, further, together.
The Bigger Idea
The best programs don’t just create opportunities; they create identities. BTR does both. It invites women to build a race bike with their own hands, learn to ride it fast, and compete on the nation’s biggest stages — then insists that the real victory is the person they become in the process.
Applications for the 2026 cohort are open now. Eligible riders can apply through the official Build Train Race website.
Royal Enfield designed a spec to equalize machines. The riders wrote a culture to humanize competition. That’s the blueprint worth copying — in motorsport and far beyond.
Credits: Production team and all photo content: OV Motion with Chad Osburn, Josh Shipps, Cody David.