Page 56 - Issue_sixtyfive

JUSTIN BARCIA
450 SX / 8TH
IMAGE / KILPATRICK WORDS / LANG DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> What a start to the season for Monster Energy Yamaha’s Justin Barcia. Finally sign- ing the deal with the factory Yamaha team through 2018, Barcia is certainly the surprise of the season. Momentum is on BamBam’s side as of late as he has been a whole new rider this year. With new attitude and confidence, Barcia brought that right into San Diego with a great start in heat number one. Ripping down the center of Petco Park stadium, Barcia found himself right up front on the start where he has been all season. Coming out 2nd behind Rockstar Husqvarna’s Jason Anderson, it looked like we were going to see a great race between two of the feistiest riders in the series. With a long gnarly set of whoops this weekend, it was hard to hold back the rider in third though, who is arguably the best rider in this particular section, Malcolm Stewart. Malcolm flew passed Justin in the whoops on lap 2, but could not hold the leaders pace around the rest of the track. Justin would quickly get back by the JGR Suzuki rider and ride comfortably in 2nd place all the way to the finish. The Main Event started pretty similar to the heat race for Justin. Another great start for him sneaking around the inside and dodging all the carnage in the first turn. It appeared to be another podium night for BamBam when he passed Redbull KTM’s Marvin Musquin halfway though the race for 3rd, but suddenly something seemed to go wrong. Barcia rapidly started going backwards leaving myself and I’m sure the
rest of the viewers scratching their head. After looking great all day, what could be going wrong? Judging from the lack of aggression, some funky mistakes and his motorcycle dancing around a bit in the whoops, it looked like possibly a bike set up issue. He would drop from 3rd all the way back to 8th within a few laps. The track did change substan- tially from the beginning of the race to the end, so maybe Justin didn’t anticipate the track breaking down so much and set his Yamaha up for a smoother track? All speculation here, whatever the issue was, an 8th place finish was not what Barcia was hoping for es- pecially after starting the night off so great. Although he lost some valuable points to the red plate holder tonight, Justin did move up to 2nd place in the point’s series and is now Jason Anderson’s immediate threat for this 450 SX championship. I see intense racing between these two in the near future.
56 GRITMOTO • FEBRUARY 11, 2018