By Davey Coombs, Chase Stallo, and Jason Weigandt
Chase Stallo: Weston Peick has come a long way.
Just five years ago, a much heavier Peick was struggling just to make supercross mains. In fact, in his first professional season (2010) Peick made just six mains, with a season high of fourteenth—nothing to give any indication a factory ride was in his future.
Motocross always came easier for the former high school football player, but Peick was determined to improve. He hit the gym hard and trimmed down to closer to 200 lbs., the next year. He made nine mains that season and twelve the following year—including five top-tens. It was in 2012 that many started to throw Peick’s name in the ring for rides in 2013. But the musical chairs stopped when it came his turn. He would be on his own another season.
I was working on a story a year ago for Racer X Illustrated titled “Why Not Weston?” At the time, the long-time privateer had yet to secure a ride for the 2014 season despite solid results, again, in both Monster Energy Supercross and Lucas Oil Pro Motocross. I had spoken with Peick a number of times before he finally got his chance with RCH/Soaring Suzuki last summer. He pinpointed a number of reasons why he may have not be considered beforehand: “I think the main thing that held me back with everything was not racing Lites.” But he still felt he could get something going this year.
In fact, all of the three team managers I spoke with agreed.
“I personally feel that what he is doing is good for him in building his own team, and if he puts in a solid year this year, it’s going to be hard for anyone to pass him up next year,” said BTOSports KTM’s Forrest Butler.
“He’s perfect. He’s a good guy, well spoken. When he rode for us he was great; he was a good teammate,” said Valli Motorsports Yamaha’s Chad Lanza.
“He is on our list—he definitely deserves a ride—but we have two riders and we just didn’t get that far,” said JRGMX Yamaha’s Jeremy Albrecht, who along with Yamaha just signed Peick for 2015.
While Butler, Lanza, and Albrecht thought Peick would secure something for this season, it wasn’t clear-cut; there were some reservations.
“The problem for us, or anyone in the industry, even if you get tenth every weekend—and that’s actually good—it’s not good enough for our sponsors. You’re better off if you can have a couple flashes of a few podiums here and there, than get eighth every weekend,” Albrecht said. “Eighth every weekend does nothing. It’s tough, but no one even remembers who got fifth.”
It didn’t take Peick an entire year to earn a ride. Ricky Carmichael and Carey Hart would take the first chance, signing him to fill in at RCH/Soaring Eagle Suzuki last summer for Lucas Oil Pro Motocross. “Why Not Weston?" Carmichael said in a press release last summer. "He has a great work ethic that will mesh well with our team personnel to get the best result possible.”
He excelled on the track with RCH. In his first full season outdoors since 2011, he finished sixth in points and claimed nineteen top-tens in twenty-four motos.
Now Peick is headed to JGR Yamaha, where he won’t be expected to contend for titles. He will be a complement to Justin Barcia, who will be expected to bring JGR its first championship. For Peick, though, it will be the first time in his career he will have a full off-season to train with a team, get accustomed to a factory bike, and not scramble to set deals for the next season. The past five years have been a journey for Peick—a journey that ends today.
Weston Peick has come a long way.
Jason Weigandt: Will it work this time? The JGR/Toyota Yamaha team has been around for a while now, but it has only taken one big swing for the fences with a championship-proven rider before. That was James Stewart in 2012, and it didn’t work well.
However, it’s hard to pin the Stewart/JGR fallout directly on either Stewart or JGR because the much-maligned 2010-2013 generation Yamaha YZ450F acted as an intermediary. Stew (and others) didn’t like the basics of that bike, and even NASCAR resources aren’t going to do anything about that when you’re dealing with AMA production rules and such. So they parted ways.
Now we have the new YZ450F at play, which is clearly a much better bike than the previous. What’s the proof? Well, you could look at Justin Brayton’s strong supercross rides this season, Josh Grant’s Glen Helen moto win, and those glorious motocross holeshots. You’ll have to use those facts as your guide, because no one is ever going to officially admit that Barcia ever tried the JGR Yamaha and compared it to his factory Honda. But trust me, riders at this level do not make decisions like this without trying the other bike. Contracts don’t technically allow it, so they’ll never say it and never show it. But it always happens (in secret), and I have no doubt that Barcia has already ridden this bike and decided it was worth switching. That’s the business in this sport.
It’s quite mind-blowing considering that two years ago, when Stewart was trying to make the 2012 Yamaha work, the YZF was considered evil while the Honda CRF450 was considered impeccable. Now it’s the new generation Honda 450 (and air forks) that’s going through the growing pains. Barcia has decided to seek comfort elsewhere, but the fact that Eli Tomac has gone around and around on setups and Trey Canard changed an entire suspension brand during the Nationals speak volumes. Who knows? Two years from now the Honda could again be the bike everyone is begging to get on board.
But this Yamaha seems pretty good, and the bike is all that really matters. Everything else about the Barcia/JGR pairing is cake. He’s an East Coast guy, and this is an East Coast team. He’s hungry and they’re hungry. They all have chips on their shoulders to prove themselves, and I think this is a great personality mesh. Looks like this pairing is going to go well.
How well do these match up? Everyone involved is going to be pumped on this deal now, but what if the wins and titles don’t come? With Ryan Villopoto about to vacate his Monster Energy Supercross throne, a lot of riders and teams are going to go to Anaheim thinking this season is their season. Will the good vibes continue once the real results come in? That’s going to be the trickiest part. Only one guy is going to win every weekend. Only one guy is going to win the title. Everyone else will be disappointed. Every rider will struggle to stay positive once the hard reality of racing and the ups and downs begin again.
On the Peick front, I hear Yamaha’s brass was pushing hard to sign him. Good for them. We’ve had two years of “Why not Weston?” and while people publically have said nice things, behind the scenes I’ve heard rumblings of personality conflicts. Peick can be rough around the edges, yeah. To that I say: Who cares? This is racing and a professional sport. Results are what matter, and Peick has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he’s freaking fast. Shame on the teams that doubted him, it took way too long for him to get help. Personality? It’s not like he was on trial for killing a bunch of dudes, or smoking weed and getting hammered before the main event. And the fans love him, which is where the rubber meets the road. This is a bottom-line business, and outside of the absolute extremes of behavior, results and fans are what matter. This is Yamaha’s win and everyone else’s loss.
Of course, one of the main people that Weston had friction with was Barcia. Methinks, suddenly, they’re going to be fine. This is going to be team chip-on-the-shoulder, and that’s a heck of an outlook to have coming into a season.
Davey Coombs: Sometimes, people just need a change. For Justin Barcia, that time seemed to manifest itself towards the end of last year's Monster Energy AMA Supercross Championship. Think about it. He had been riding red exclusively for ten straight years, going all the way back to 2005 and his original support deal while riding CR80 two-stroke minicycles. They'd been good together for a time, Justin and Big Red, the rider growing into bigger and better-paying rides, be it through Factory Connection's then-fledgling amateur support program, or GEICO Honda for his 250F days, and even right up to Team Honda Muscle Milk as a full-factory 450 rider. They won a couple of East Region SX titles, a handful of nationals, and lastly the 2013 Seattle supercross. In between those successes were bouts with injuries, murmurs that he wasn't quite happy with the bike, and the never-ending march of time, which is almost always at full throttle when it's a career in SX/MX.
Few guys ever stay at one brand as long as Barcia did with Honda. Jeff Ward is the king of sticking around, having ridden a Kawasaki for all but a few early races in his long career (though there are photos floating around of him flirting with a Honda for a JT Racing catalog shoot, thinking he was going to sign at one point). And right now the new standard must belong to Ryan Villopoto, who got with Kawasaki maybe a year and a half before Barcia rode his first Honda.
But the difference between the long tenures of Wardy and RV compared to Barcia's time with Honda can be counted in major championships: Ward earned seven in the eighties, while RV has grabbed nine in SX/MX since 2006. Barcia hasn't had nearly that kind of success, but he's still young, incredibly fast, and ready for a change of scenery. Same goes for Honda, which has already replaced him with Cole Seely while also extending Trey Canard for another two seasons.
Now Barcia gets to ride a different bike, practice on different tracks, and work with different people: mechanics, engineers, team managers, marketing folks, and more. Looking back, one has to wonder if his switch from Honda to Yamaha will work out as well for him as his former mentor Jeff Stanton's switch the other way, from Yamaha to Honda, in 1989 after nearly a decade on YZs....
Wow, now that I think of it, after his mid-career switch, Stanton, who never won a pro race on a Yamaha, earned himself six major titles in the four years that followed with Honda. Like I said, sometimes people just need a change. And Justin Barcia's not the only one thinking this right now.