Bryce Kornbau: Got The Life
Bakersfield, California, is a working-class city. Sometimes overlooked on the map, it sits at the base of the Grapevine in California’s vast Central Valley. Its oil derricks and service roads scar the western side of the valley floor, while to the east rise the Sierras — and for hundreds of miles to the north, it’s nothing but farmland. To the interstate motorist, it seems just like any of the other western oil and agricultural towns.
But Bakersfield is also an intensely creative and fiercely competitive city that has birthed a legendary lineup of iconic figures across music and motorsports. In 1993, the nu-metal band Korn burst out of Bakersfield bringing an entirely new musical genre to the scene. Three decades earlier, Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Buck Owens coined the twangy, electric “Bakersfield sound” on these very same streets alongside his contemporary, Merle Haggard—who was famously born in a converted boxcar in neighboring Oildale.
On the high-octane side of things, three-time NASCAR series champion and native Kevin Harvick famously cut his teeth at what was Mesa Marin Raceway. And today, BPR Racing Yamaha Team Owner Bryce Kornbau is carrying on that proud racing tradition for the two-wheeled crowd. Having brought a Mission Super Hooligan National Championship title back to his race shop, Bryce quite literally—as the Korn song goes—has “Got The Life.” He commands his own dealership, his own workshop, his own race team, and his own championship trophy. Now, he is making his own distinct brand of music on Buck Owens Boulevard, utilizing Yamaha’s iconic tuning forks. Just not on a piano… let us explain.
This year during the Hooligan season finale at COTA, Kornbau finally did what he’d been waiting all race to do. His teammate Andy DiBrino had led just about every lap, and Kornbau had been sitting there behind him — patient, watching, taking notes on exactly where the pass might live. The back straight. The final lap. The final race of the season. The run out of Turn 11. Two Yamahas side by side at full song, and Kornbau sent it around the outside under braking — and never looked back. Race wins and a championship. Ten years after his first one — on a motorcycle he built with his own two hands.
Ask him which title means more and he doesn’t even blink: “winning my own championship on my own equipment that we did everything on ourselves — that’s the biggest and most important thing I can appreciate out of all that.” The first one, the 2016 MotoAmerica Superstock 600 crown, came on Graves-built machinery, where a rider’s job is simple: ride what’s given, don’t break it, bring home the trophy. The second one came on a bike that only exists because of him — the engines, the tuning, everything from A to Z. “I don’t know how many people built all their own bike engines, did all their own tuning — everything from A to Z on the motorcycle — and went out there and won a championship in pro racing,” exclaimed Kornbau.
Bryce Kornbau — the name might be new to you. Heck, it’s new to him: he raced his entire career as Bryce Prince until switching to his legal surname in 2025. But a new name doesn’t rewrite the resume, and it sure doesn’t shorten the tenure in the paddock. The Central Valley native grew up racing minis in the California Motorcycle Road Racing Association, the 50-to-80cc proving ground that also launched John Hopkins and Josh Herrin into the world. Dig up the old points sheets and you’ll still find his name sitting on top of the Amateur 80 Stock standings, like it never left.
Then came 125s at nearby Willow Springs and Buttonwillow — where he spent his teenage years dicing with Cameron Beaubier, Tommy Aquino and Elena Myers in USGPRU 125GP. That earned him a ticket to the 2008 Red Bull AMA U.S. Rookies Cup, running with Hayden Gillim, Benny Solis and Jake Gagne, and he didn’t just show up: fastest in practice at VIR, front row at Infineon, fourth in the race.
The ladder kept going up. Two seasons of AMA Pro Daytona SportBike, trading paint with Beaubier, JD Beach and Garrett Gerloff. Some AFM club racing for good measure. Then MotoAmerica’s first season in 2015 — and a year later, the Superstock 600 championship, wrapped up with rounds to spare. It looked like the start of something big.
Plot twist: it was nearly the end.
By 2018 he was fourth in Supersport, a national champion with a decade of pro racing in his leathers, and he’d seen enough to figure he’d seen it all. So he did what sensible grown-ups do: he got a job. Parts manager at a Bakersfield dealership in 2019. Fixed operations manager by 2021. Then — because Kornbau doesn’t do anything halfway — he bought the whole place with business partner Fabrice Vilder and became the owner and general manager of Kern County Powersports. The kid who’d walked out of Cal State Bakersfield halfway through a mechanical engineering degree to go racing was now a businessman with a payroll. But here’s the thing about racers: the fire doesn’t go out. It just goes quiet for a while.
In 2022 it flickered back to life: taking a Stock 1000 wildcard at Laguna Seca aboard a Champ School BPR Yamaha YZF-R1 to a P2 finish. It was almost like he’d never left. Then it was back to work at the dealer while continuing to build his BPR shop.
Bryce’s side-hustle, BPR (Bryce Prince Racing) could take a whole other piece to tell the full story but we’ll give you the 30,000 ft. view. After taking a step back from racing in 2019, and while still working at the dealership level, he began using his mechanical expertise and knowledge of the sport to build machines for local racers including Campbell and Ketlesen. Both riders would win AFM titles aboard BPR equipment and this is where it gets serious… Again.
In 2024, MotoAmerica’s Stock 1000 series shrank to five rounds with three of them practically in the BPR namesake’s backyard so he and fellow Californian Deion Campbell decided to go have some fun. “I’m gonna go do this, why not? Just for fun,” were the actual words from Kornbau when speaking about the decision. The good times followed indeed with a few podiums to fuel the returning fire.aaaaaa And somewhere in there, without intention, a race team was born. “I had zero interest in going pro racing full time again,” he admits.
Kornbau’s race shop is the engine room, literally and otherwise. The work covers the whole map and he even covers stock level maintenance and rebuilds for street legal motorcycles as well. More than a hundred bikes a year roll through his shop with four out of five of them full race machines. Most of the work focused on engines — one full-time employee does nothing but build motors, all day, every day.
Chances are, some of the R9s at your local track day came out of there. And here’s the kicker: there are no six-figure sponsors underwriting any of this. “I have zero huge money sponsors this past year, not one.” Just a handful of small backers and a winter full of customer bikes. “That is still the only way we could afford to pay for racing.” Read that again. The whole operation — the truck, the tents, the travel, all of it — gets paid for by building fast motorcycles for regular people.
In 2026, Kornbau’s squad published results that would make a factory team sweat. He and his teammate DiBrino absolutely tore up the latter half of the season, completely locking out the top two spots of the podium across the final three rounds of the series and a 1-2 points finish in the team’s very first year in the class.
In Supersport, the two YZF-R9s included four-time AMA Superbike champion Josh Hayes, who rolled to a milestone 91st career victory at NJMP and rookie Brenden Ketelsen. Finally, BPR fielded a full time Superbike Cup effort with Campbell garnering eleven Superbike Cup Podiums with five victories on the year. Five riders, three classes, and no rider finishing outside the top ten in points.
If managing all of this is starting to make your head spin, you’re not alone. Bryce himself admits he owes a great credit to his wife, Savanah. They’ve been together since 2011 after meeting at Cal State Bakersfield and her business management degree along with her work have been, by his account, a huge part of why the dealership and race team work at all. So it figured: when the Hooligan title was finally his at COTA, the first people out of his mouth were “…my wife, Savanah, for supporting me through all this, and my whole BPR Racing family.”
So what’s left for a guy who’s won a championship on motorcycles he built with his own hands, while running a dealership and a five-rider race team? Apparently, more. Supersport and Hooligan again in 2027, the 1000s still to be decided — and maybe, one day, the full-blown Superbike effort he once swore he’d never touch. “If you asked me a year or two ago, I would say no,” he says, “but we keep getting closer and closer.” Of course they are.
