In a way, it’s already been a great year for AutoTrader.com/Toyota/JGR Yamaha. The team has new outside-the-industry sponsors locked in, and they were big winners in the free agent sweepstakes by getting Justin Barcia on board. That’s the good news. The bad? The results that were expected haven’t come. They haven’t landed on the podium, and just when Weston Peick looked ready to make serious waves, he went down with an injury.
So has this season been bad or good so far? We asked team manager Jeremy Albrecht to see what he thinks.
Racer X: We’re five races in, so just give me a synopsis here. Are you happy? Is there panic? Where are you guys at?
Jeremy Albrecht: That’s a good question! I would say we’re not in panic. We knew it would take a little while. Each week there does get a little more urgency that we need to get up front, but really I feel like if we could get the starts he’s there. He’s riding fast enough, Barcia. Obviously Peick was doing better than expected, and he’s super comfortable, super happy. I think that my take is, Peick hasn’t really had as many options and has done it on his own, so for him, he’s just happy to not have to worry about all that. For him it was an easier adjustment because everything we have is probably better than anything he’s ever had, where Barcia’s always been on good stuff. That’s just a little bit more of getting him to where he feels comfortable. It’s a confidence thing. It’s confidence that you can win; it’s confidence that you can get the start—all of it. We’re still looking for that. Each week we get improvements. If it got worse every week I think we’d probably be down, but each week we feel like the bike looks better; we feel like he’s getting better. This weekend it was better through practice until he crashed and he kind of hurt his elbow after that practice crash. So we were struggling a bit; then he didn’t get a start in the main. I don’t know that anybody’s going to be able to move through the pack this year. The top ten are all really close in times. Unless you’re two seconds faster like some guys used to be, you’re not going to go anywhere. There’s really nobody that’s way faster than somebody else right now. You need a start, you need to be aggressive, and you need to not make mistakes.
It’s hard to judge, because if Barcia was getting fifteenth it would be obvious there was a problem. When you’re getting sixth or seventh and the only guys that are finishing ahead of him are also good guys, it’s really hard to say this is really bad. I’m sure you’re not pumped with sevenths, but it’s so hard to judge what seventh means right now.
It’s really hard, but for me looking at it, because I don’t want to get frustrated, at the first race [Jason] Anderson was up there in second. He got a good start; he finished second. Then Anderson was the guy we were battling with this weekend for eighth. It’s not like there’s a guy that hasn’t been there and all of a sudden the guys’ going way faster than you. If you look at lap times, this weekend I think the top seven were all really close, within the same second. They were all doing fifty-eights in practice—we were all lined up. It’s been easier for Justin to get on the board lately. I think the lap he crashed he had the segments really fast and he was going for a hot lap, and I think he would have gone to the top if he didn’t crash. Maybe that would have been the confidence booster he needed—get a better gate pick, get a holeshot… But we’ve also been changing the bike quite a bit just trying to figure out what works for him. I feel like we’re probably going to go on some things back where we were at before. Definitely motor—we need more motor. We’ve been detuning the motor trying to make it easier to ride but obviously that doesn’t work on the starts.
You can go the other direction too, right? Too gnarly off the gate—isn’t that possible?
Yeah. For us right now we need to figure out how to get starts—that’s what we need. And then the rest, he’ll ride fine. I watch him. He does a lot of good stuff. I see that when he doesn’t get the start he gets a little frustrated, which all the guys do at times. Maybe like a [Ryan] Dungey is really good at not getting frustrated. It’s hard to be back there and not get frustrated.
So, if Justin gets the holeshot, you’re confident that he’ll be able to hold his own?
Yeah, I am confident. The only good start he got he won the heat race. They were behind him, but it’s different to pass somebody, though. Dungey tried, but I think we all know Justin is not going to let the guy pass easy. It’ll turn into a really good race. I know he’s going to fight for it all the way to the end. That’s the one thing I will say, with all our guys actually, Phil [Nicoletti], Weston, and Justin—I feel like every lap no matter what place we get, I know they gave everything they had every lap. I guess that’s the good and the bad. That’s the bad if we didn’t win because you gave it everything you had, but I know they’re leaving everything they can on the track. I know for us as a team we’re here every Monday trying to figure out ways we can try to help. We’re not in panic mode. We definitely want to do better and so does Justin. He really wants to do good for the team, too. We’re still all working good together. I keep saying next week will be the week and I hope it is, just to prove for him that he can do it.
It’s easy to freak out when you get sixth.
It is, definitely. But for me, if you get a holeshot and you go to sixth, I guess that’s something to stress a little bit about, which I’m not saying that couldn’t happen some day either. You have bad days, you have bad races, you have bad tracks. I feel like we haven’t had a really bad track for him yet. I feel like there’s no big panic. It’s not like he can’t do the whoops, or it’s not like he can’t do this. Really early on we were just struggling with corners, and I feel like last couple weeks it gets better and better. I think the bike looked really solid all through practice. I don’t know if his elbow was a little sore or whatever. He moved through the pack a little bit, but I don’t think there’s anybody going to come from tenth to third. I think maybe he could have come a couple more spots up this weekend, but it was going to be hard with a start like that anyway.
When you made this deal, I thought, normally Barcia’s a good starter, and your bikes normally get holeshots. So the starts should have been automatic!
All last year I kept saying, all right, we’re up front. I couldn’t wait to see him on it because that’s all I felt like he did last year too—if he could get a holeshot, he’d win. So I came into it thinking we were going to be good on the starts also. And typically long starts, like we had last weekend, is where we were really, really strong in the past. Our bike would pull like halfway down to the start. Even Phil last year San Diego, he had every holeshot there was, outside, inside, wherever. I even asked Phil that this weekend. I’m like, “Man, where are your starts at?” He’s not really pulling them either, but he’s used to the bike; he knows it’s not way different from last year. So I’m not really sure. I don’t know if everybody got better, which is very possible. Maybe they’re all better at starts. We definitely feel like we have some work to do. Dean’s [Baker, JGR engine man] is actually on the dyno today, and we’re going to try some stuff with Justin tomorrow. It’s nothing on him. It’s really nothing on the team. We’re all trying, so we’ll get there. It’s just taking longer than everyone would hope I guess.
One thing that is good: Your team and the RCH team have really started to turn the corner and bring in outside money, which is not easy. We always figured if you guys can’t do it, no one can do it. You have some new stuff, like the Auto Trader thing. How does that come together? This is like the magic formula that every team wishes they could make these things happen.
That’s the one thing I thought would be easy for this team when I came here. They have all these people they work with already. The good and the bad is we started this team eight years ago, so that’s right when the economy was bad. It was a bad time to sell a house to move here. It was a bad time to look for sponsors. When we came in we had Toyota, so that helped. We were further ahead than most. Our goal was to have a couple big ones and not deal with any other sponsor, just make it more like NASCAR. You just have big sponsors and not rely on any of the industry, just pick and choose what you want. But again the economy was hard. Nobody was looking to spend new money; they were barely wanting to continue what they already committed to. We had a lot of NASCAR sponsors come to races. GameStop came, Home Depot, everyone was interested. Everyone loved it. But no one had extra money to say, let’s test this out and see what happens. I think if we were the type of team that would let them test the market, maybe, but if you let them do it for free or really cheap as a test, it’s hard to get it to really grow after that. I think we’ve had a lot of people want to try it. We don’t do that. Everyone on our team, it’s a deal that we want to happen, and we feel like it’s fair or they wouldn’t be on our team. We work on sponsors every year—this is not like it all of a sudden just started and it happened—but for some reason it all started to come together last year. All I can say is people are either willing to spend money because they’re not afraid anymore or they’re doing better with the economy or something, but something definitely changed.
The rider has nothing to do with it?
The rider helped, but it was going to happen anyway. Definitely it got us and them excited, but it wasn’t all tied together. Really the Auto Trader deal, Toyota did some stuff with Auto Trader and they told Auto Trader that they would like them to look at the sport and sponsor our team. That’s how it all started talking. They want a younger demographic, which our sport is younger. Auto Trader is a place where you look for cars. A lot of young kids, when they’re getting a car, they can try Auto Trader. I think it all makes sense.
Even though Toyota maybe introduced them, Auto Trader is here because they want to be in the sport, not because Toyota forced them to or made a bro deal.
There’s no bro deals anymore, especially when you’re spending a good chunk of money. Phil Nicoletti went and did this big thing in their sales meeting down in Atlanta, and they said it was unbelievable. They had Shaq there and Dale Earnhardt Junior and Joey Logano and all these celebrities, and Poison and Blondie were there for a concert. It was a big, big deal. They go full-on. It’s cool to see a new sponsor come in to the sport. Same with Wienerschnitzel—that was a random deal too. We had a friend that met JR, the founder’s son. He was a snowboarder as a kid, not a motorcycle racer, but he loves motocross. He flew back here, we talked, hit it off. He flew back here a couple times for some meetings with all his management team. He decided same thing, he wanted a young demographic, thought this sport’s perfect for what they’re doing. That was another new one. And then the Moser thing, too. It actually is pretty random because they actually help run a track in Wyoming. Jonny Oler, our suspension guy knew them as a kid. He’s from Casper, Wyoming, same town. I guess one of them dated his sister or something—it’s kind of all weird! So the funny part, Interstate Batteries brought them to Dallas last year and said we have somebody that wants to sponsor your team. But you hear that so much. I’m like, “Yeah right.” So anyway we got them tickets. They came to the race. They’re taking pictures with Jonny, our suspension guy, by the bike. I actually took the picture and I’m thinking, “Do they know who he is?” He’s not the rider! Come to find out they knew Jonny; they know the sport. They were interested, but it took a while. From what I know—I’m not in the oil business—they have oil rigs that are out in the middle of wherever, and instead of getting power out there, they’re basically generators that run the oil rig to get oil out of the ground.
They’re just into it because they’re into it?
They love motorcycles. I would like to say we can sell them something, but that’s not what they’re in it for. They obviously would love to, but they just love the sport. They’ve been to almost every round.
What I think people don’t realize nowadays is this weirdo business-to-business thing that happens. It’s not really just about splashing a logo on the shroud. It is, but it’s not the only thing. Sometimes people will sponsor a team just so they can be a VIP, go somewhere, get in somewhere, meet somebody. That is part of it?
I think in the end, no matter what you are, if you don’t have a fan… It’s like a resume. I get resumes every day. If you don’t know the person, it’s just another resume. So I think unless you see something that you’re interested in or a friend told you about it, it’s pretty hard to look through it and get excited about something you know nothing about. Any sponsor I’ve ever seen happen, somebody there likes motocross, or knows somebody that worked there and got them excited and wanted to listen. Just sending out a proposal blind and expecting to get a sponsor does not happen.
How much of a difference does it actually make when you get those sponsors? Is it like a huge sigh of relief?
This year I was really, really excited. Not only the riders, but just knowing that we got all these new sponsors. I feel like we can make them all happy. That’s the other thing. Even Thomas from N-Fab, he’s been awesome. He was a little bigger last year. We had to shrink someone’s logo, and you still have to figure out how to make them get what they need out of it also. I feel like we have to balance all these different new sponsors and still keep the old ones and make them happy. So we have to do something different for all of them, but I feel like even with Thomas we can still make him happy. He loves the sport; he rides. That’s why he’s into it. He helps lots of people. It’s a hard thing to justify and wonder, “How many steps did I sell on Toyota trucks?” But I feel like we’re sponsored by Toyota, he sells stuff for off-road trucks—why wouldn’t he sponsor our team? It totally makes sense to me. Even Fram, they’re new to us this year. They’re a big oil filter company. So definitely a lot of new cool stuff. It’s cool to see that people are interested in it.
It does help as far as making the team more stable, or you can spend more, or you can do more? It makes an impact?
It makes an impact for sure. You would hope your deal doesn’t go backwards. So you’re hoping you grow it. That’s the way we’ve been doing it. We just see that, all right, cool, we got all these new ones. Let’s keep them happy and let’s grow it. Let’s make everyone love it and then to us this should be the worst year, and every year will get better, just like next week’s going to be our week.