Blueprint
An unlikely leader has delivered
Monster Energy Yamaha Factory
Racing back to the top of the podium
WORDS: JASON WEIGANDT
PHOTOS: RICH SHEPHERD & JEFF KARDAS
TO REALLY SEE the metamorphosis of Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Racing and its star rider, Justin Barcia, you can’t just focus on the good. The team ended 2018 by winning the 450 Class at the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross season finale, its first victory since 2009. The 2019 season opened with Barcia winning the prestigious Anaheim opener for Monster Energy AMA Supercross. Team Yamaha was back! However, it’s more telling what happened at round two outside of Phoenix in Glendale, Arizona.

“Phoenix was like, ugh, the most difficult day ever for me,” Barcia explains. “But we learned so much that day, and we can use it to our advantage in the future. In the past, I would have been so pissed. I would have gone upstairs, tossed my shit in a bag, and left without talking to anyone. So instead of being that guy, use the bad night and make a positive out of it.”

Working together, staying positive. It’s led to the rebirth of Barcia’s career—and Yamaha’s factory effort as a whole.

An unlikely leader has delivered
Monster Energy Yamaha Factory
Racing back to the top of the podium
WORDS: JASON WEIGANDT
PHOTOS: RICH SHEPHERD & JEFF KARDAS
TO REALLY SEE the metamorphosis of Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Racing and its star rider, Justin Barcia, you can’t just focus on the good. The team ended 2018 by winning the 450 Class at the Lucas Oil Pro Motocross season finale, its first victory since 2009. The 2019 season opened with Barcia winning the prestigious Anaheim opener for Monster Energy AMA Supercross. Team Yamaha was back! However, it’s more telling what happened at round two outside of Phoenix in Glendale, Arizona.

“Phoenix was like, ugh, the most difficult day ever for me,” Barcia explains. “But we learned so much that day, and we can use it to our advantage in the future. In the past, I would have been so pissed. I would have gone upstairs, tossed my shit in a bag, and left without talking to anyone. So instead of being that guy, use the bad night and make a positive out of it.”

Working together, staying positive. It’s led to the rebirth of Barcia’s career—and Yamaha’s factory effort as a whole.

Don’t get me wrong, I was so happy [to win Anaheim], but there’s no reason to have these huge spikes, because then the next weekend would have been a super low. I did that in the past. I know that if you ride those highs and lows, it will drain you.”
(Main) Justin Barcia takes the checkered flag at the Anaheim Supercross, his first AMA Supercross win in five years.
Don’t get me wrong, I was so happy [to win Anaheim], but there’s no reason to have these huge spikes, because then the next weekend would have been a super low. I did that in the past. I know that if you ride those highs and lows, it will drain you.”
(Main) Justin Barcia takes the checkered flag at the Anaheim Supercross, his first AMA Supercross win in five years.
I

n Arizona, Barcia and his teammate Aaron Plessinger were not comfortable on the hard, slick desert surface. The team dug through video to find the solution, but it didn’t come.

“It’s not like the bike was terrible, but at this level, with this competition we have early in the season, you’re searching for 1 percent,” Barcia explains. “You’re searching for tenths.”

Barcia did his best to salvage a sixth in the main event. He found a positive, though: the data collected through the struggles will make their next hard-pack performance better. Also, in past years, Barcia admits, “I would have over-ridden the bike more, and then I probably would have gotten arm pump and thrown it all away.”

“When things go wrong, he’s the leader who points us forward and says, ‘C’mon, guys, we’re going this way,’” team manager Jim Perry says. “It affects everyone under this tent.”

This isn’t the way Barcia has always been seen. But his maturity has met this team at just the right time.

“I’m sure in 2013 he was the young punk over there at Team Honda, and they were dealing with that!” Perry says with a laugh.

“It definitely comes with age and experience—and going through difficult times,” Barcia says. “Coming in as an underdog fill-in guy with this team taught me a lot of respect and that if we worked together we could do a lot better. I’ve learned a lot in my career. I wish I knew what I know now years ago.”

It had been even longer for Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Racing, which celebrated with Barcia the following week at their California HQ (below). They can add that photo to the one from last August in Indiana after Barcia (bottom) got the factory its first 450 Class national win since Matt Goerke at Southwick ’09.
Barcia went from blue-chip amateur prospect, two-time 250SX Champion, and winner of the second 450SX race he ever entered to, well, not winning much at all after that. His second career 450SX win, in April of his 2013 rookie season, was the last until this Anaheim triumph, almost six years later. In between, he switched from Honda to JGR Yamaha, but a continued downward spiral of results left him completely depressed and ready to retire.

His British girlfriend, Amber, became his savior. Since she lived in England—they met at the Geneva Supercross—the couple would often go months without seeing each other in person (early-season injuries in 2016 and ’17 actually afforded Justin the time to travel and visit her more often). Had Barcia hung it up after a frustrating 2017 season, the couple could have finally picked a living space together—plus, the injuries and accompanying frustration would have gone away. Amber knew so little about motocross that, on their first date, she claims she had to ask Justin if he was “actually any good on a bike.” There was no real reason to encourage him to keep racing, except for one.

There’s been a big reset for Yamaha and Barcia. The team added 250 SX/MX Champion Aaron Plessinger (7) to join holdover Barcia (51 and above), and he now has a “free mental coach” in his new bride, Amber (center). Industry veterans like team manager Jim Perry (upper right) and technician Shane Drew (lower right) are also around to look out for both riders.
“I knew he wouldn’t be happy,” she says. “If he had turned around to me that day and said, ‘That’s it, I’m done,’ I knew he’d regret not giving it another chance. It would have been easier for me, though!”

It helps that Amber has a degree in psychology, and they both joke that it turned into free mental coaching in a way.

“We had to do a lot of resetting,” she says. “I was just trying to help him with his mindset and getting him to really believe in himself. When he wanted to retire, he didn’t believe he could do it. I believed he could. I did a lot of work previously in university, and I applied a few things, and it really did work.”

When Davi Millsaps was injured just before the Monster Energy Cup in October of 2017, the team called Barcia, who was building his own privateer Honda effort. For the MEC, Justin stuck with the team and the bike he had built but kept in touch, and he landed a six-race deal to start the 2018 season. As soon as he podiumed Anaheim 1, it was clear he’d last longer than six races.

“The atmosphere here is different. JGR was like a family. We were all friends, and we all hung out,” Barcia says. (Barcia’s JGR mechanic, Ben Schiermeyer, was in Justin and Amber’s wedding party in December.) “This team is super professional—we’re here to do a job. Back in the day, if I got down, I could see that other guys would get weird, you know? These guys just stay positive no matter what.”

Back and Blue
Yamaha’s team has certainly seen worse than a sixth-place finish at a supercross. From 2010 to ’14, the team didn’t even compete, riding out the recession by supporting the privately owned Joe Gibbs Racing effort, which Barcia rode for. Barcia had a relationship with the Yamaha staff already but says he didn’t get to work as closely with Yamaha as he would have liked. Perry sums it up this way: “The NASCAR guys think they’re smart enough.”
Even while the factory team was in operation, it often supported higher-profile riders under satellite factory units, including three straight AMA Supercross Championships with Jeremy McGrath from 1998 to 2000, with a factory YZ250 clad in Chaparral Yamaha colors. That team was managed by Larry Brooks, who returned to the scene later with L&M Racing, backed by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. That team, on Yamaha YZ450Fs, scored back-to-back AMA Supercross titles with Chad Reed in 2008 and James Stewart in 2009.

Despite all of that success with satellite operations, Yamaha never planned to shutter its own factory team, with racing division manager Keith McCarty telling us in previous stories that it was simply a matter of economics. Other factory teams found title sponsors to supplement the budget, but Yamaha didn’t, so it shut down at the end of ’09. Perry and others stayed on to help the support teams, always expecting the team to return at some point.

It did in 2015, with a supercross-only squad for Reed, announced just days before the Anaheim opener. Perry says Reed, who had won both of his SX titles on blue, “could have had his name put on the building” if things had worked out. Any old animosity had passed in the six years since, when he had ridden other brands, but the rekindled relationship brought negatives back to light. Namely, Reed was, as always, very outspoken when the bike or team didn’t perform the way he liked.

Some expected Plessinger to stay on the 250 for at least another season, as Yamaha had invested heavily in fellow Star Racing alumnus Cooper Webb (above) and hoped ’19 would be the year he started paying off with some wins. When Webb departed after two mediocre seasons, Yamaha fast-tracked Plessinger (right) to immediately join Barcia in the 450 class.
Even while the factory team was in operation, it often supported higher-profile riders under satellite factory units, including three straight AMA Supercross Championships with Jeremy McGrath from 1998 to 2000, with a factory YZ250 clad in Chaparral Yamaha colors. That team was managed by Larry Brooks, who returned to the scene later with L&M Racing, backed by the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians. That team, on Yamaha YZ450Fs, scored back-to-back AMA Supercross titles with Chad Reed in 2008 and James Stewart in 2009.

Despite all of that success with satellite operations, Yamaha never planned to shutter its own factory team, with racing division manager Keith McCarty telling us in previous stories that it was simply a matter of economics. Other factory teams found title sponsors to supplement the budget, but Yamaha didn’t, so it shut down at the end of ’09. Perry and others stayed on to help the support teams, always expecting the team to return at some point.

It did in 2015, with a supercross-only squad for Reed, announced just days before the Anaheim opener. Perry says Reed, who had won both of his SX titles on blue, “could have had his name put on the building” if things had worked out. Any old animosity had passed in the six years since, when he had ridden other brands, but the rekindled relationship brought negatives back to light. Namely, Reed was, as always, very outspoken when the bike or team didn’t perform the way he liked.

Some expected Plessinger to stay on the 250 for at least another season, as Yamaha had invested heavily in fellow Star Racing alumnus Cooper Webb (above) and hoped ’19 would be the year he started paying off with some wins. When Webb departed after two mediocre seasons, Yamaha fast-tracked Plessinger (right) to immediately join Barcia in the 450 class.
The highest-profile incident came at the Glendale Supercross in 2017, when Reed rode with vintage verve and finished second. He then immediately put the team on blast in the post-race press conference: “In May, I knew what needed changing, and we sat on our hands all off-season,” Reed told the gathered media. “Finally, when you suck at the first race, they allow you to do the things that you feel like you need to do.”

“Let’s just say that was, like, 20 things that were happening, all summed up in one night,” Perry says. He adds that after Reed found the “magic setup” that night, he then requested the team change it the next week.

In 2016, the team took its next big step by signing Star Racing 250 graduate Cooper Webb to a big-money deal. Webb had the talent to be the next big thing, and Yamaha wasn’t about to let him go. His two 450 seasons produced only mediocre results, due in part to injuries. The team still believed in his talent and the brand equity they had invested, so they wanted to bring him back for 2019. Webb welcomed a change of scenery instead and moved to Red Bull KTM. In his place came the next Star Racing graduate, Aaron Plessinger—who, like Webb, graduated from the 250s with a sweep of 250SX West and the 250 Class MX title.

“It’s much, much different,” Perry says of the team’s current atmosphere. “Some of the other guys we’ve had, maybe they’re a little more standoffish in their personality.”

In the first three weeks of the ’19 season, Barcia went from the highs of winning Anaheim 1 and wearing the points leader’s red plate to the lows of ending Anaheim 2 with the Alpinestars Mobile Medics.
Reed and Webb never quite hit it off, nor did Barcia and Webb. The Barcia/Plessinger matchup has been great so far, helped by Barcia’s maturity and leadership and Plessinger’s infectious personality.

“You guys know me—these guys keep it positive, and that’s obviously the way I like it,” the always-smiling Plessinger says. “I don’t know, maybe they’ll get on me if I lead a race and just faceplant or something, but so far I haven’t seen it.”

Plessinger came through Yamaha’s amateur ranks and was drafted to the Monster Energy/Star Racing Yamaha 250 squad. Team owner Bobby Regan is known for his football-style speeches, and he’ll come down hard on a rider who isn’t performing.

“Oh yeah, I heard it,” Plessinger says. “It worked on me sometimes, but after that I’d block a lot of it out and go to my positive mind state. I’d just put my headphones on and turn the music up! But Bobby figured it out. Last year, before every single race, he’d be blasting country music inside the rig. They were keeping me loose, and you could see how it worked out.”

Win, Lose, Draw
Plessinger and Barcia plan to work together out of Barcia’s Florida property when the races head east. Barcia is not a California fan, but with his back against the wall, he ceded to Yamaha’s requests to stay west. Even though it’s not his comfort zone, he admits it has helped the process.

So with all of this positivity, all this jiving, all this camaraderie—even on the bad nights—surely when the team wins it sends good vibes through the ceiling, right? Nope.

“Don’t get me wrong, I was so happy [to win Anaheim], but there’s no reason to have these huge spikes, because then the next weekend would have been a super low,” Barcia says. “I did that in the past. I know that if you ride those highs and lows, it will drain you.”

When Barcia won the Ironman National, the team gathered on a muddy podium to celebrate its first win this decade. The photo hangs in the lounge of the team semi. His Anaheim win marked Team Yamaha’s first supercross victory since 2008 and the first SX win for a YZ450F since James Stewart at Daytona in 2012. Unfortunately, the team podium photo was spoiled due to rain. So the team gathered for a shoot in the race shop on a Wednesday afternoon. In a way, it was better, because in-house staffers who weren’t there on race day could also appear in the picture. Yeah, it took a few days, but waiting to get the full team experience symbolizes Yamaha’s return to the front better than anything else.

A veteran of ten years in the pro ranks, Justin Barcia has learned to take the good nights and the bad ones in stride—and not make the bad ones worse. Whether that newfound patience finally pays off in a major championship for him and Yamaha remains to be seen.
A veteran of ten years in the pro ranks, Justin Barcia has learned to take the good nights and the bad ones in stride—and not make the bad ones worse. Whether that newfound patience finally pays off in a major championship for him and Yamaha remains to be seen.