USA Insider No.178: Barcia’s Big Deal
Transmoto’s weekly web-exclusive column, the USA Insider, penned by Jason Weigandt, presented by Ipone.
In this sport, the team/rider dynamic is generally not too complicated, and often not even that critical. Wait, what? Did I just write that? Well, yes. Listen, if a rider gets a bike he wants — and much of that is based more on the production OEM parameters of the bike, which the team can’t change – and then gets results he expects, all is well. This is a sport devoid of timeouts, radios, pump-up speeches or strategy. Good riders can do well on a variety of teams, as their surrounding cast of trainers, friends and even a spouse make as much a difference as anyone on the actual team. Any top factory outfit can handle a top factory-level rider.
That said, I’m constantly impressed with Justin Barcia’s relationship with the Joe Gibbs Racing Autotrader.com/Toyota Yamaha crew. This relationship really does make a difference, as Barcia loves his guys and his guys love him, well beyond the usual. Barcia owns a track and house down in Florida, which you might have seen in a new Monster Energy Dirt Shark video called BamLand. But Barcia rarely rides at BamLand. He’s usually at the JGR team shop near Charlotte, North Carolina, about six hours away from home. He now rents an apartment two miles from the race shop, and logs motos at the team tracks instead of his own. Barcia no longer has an official trainer, but instead works with his mechanic, Ben Shiermeyer, who is big in the local cycling scene. Barcia shows up during the Wednesday night Charlotte Mountain Bike Racing Series, and he and Shiermeyer have raced road cycling events on Sunday afternoon after nationals. He’s always hanging out in town. I’ve seen him at local baseball games with the team, and just last weekend everyone went to an AMA Flat Track race at Charlotte Motorspeedway (a NASCAR facility) together.
We’re now into the off-season, but Barcia still has Motocross of Nations duty to attend to. So he’s staying in North Carolina and riding at the team tracks. This week he hung out at the shop on Monday, and went testing on Tuesday and Wednesday. It appears he might never go home!
To cement the relationship, the JGR team recently extended Barcia’s contract to 2018, a contract length that’s fairly unprecedented in this sport. One of the team honchos told me recently they’ve never gotten along with a rider as well as Barcia, and the relationship has nothing to do with the results. They just like him, and he likes them. Will he deliver wins and titles to the team? Who knows? They’re just happy to be betting on him to do it.
It makes sense. The JGR team is kind of counter to the standard factory culture. They’re based on the east coast instead of California, and the staff is young and edgy, different from the more corporate ideals at other teams. Barcia fits in because he doesn’t fit in with most teams — he hates California, and he’s not friendly with his competition. His old employer, Team Honda, wasn’t the type of operation that works with a guy like Barcia. He’s hyperactive, kind of crazy, and always bouncing from one thing to another. He’s hard to pin down — but now he’s found a place he doesn’t want to leave.
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