The life of a mechanic is a hard one. Jordan Troxell of the Honda HRC team has had a lot of success as a wrench, first for Troy Lee Designs/Red Bull/KTM, and then more recently for Ken Roczen and Colt Nichols. He’s transitioning to a new role with the Red Riders this summer as 250 crew chief, and his story is an interesting one. Here’s an excerpt of a much longer podcast I did with him about his climb up the ranks in the industry.
You can listen to the full podcast here:
Racer X: I just want to point out that everybody has won but you over there (at Honda), so I’m just going to point that out right away.
Jordan Troxell: Well, yeah. Just hit it hard right off the bat, right? For sure, definitely kind of a bittersweet thing. Super happy for everyone else on the team. I guess you could say I was trying to be a part of it as well and help everybody along the way. Unfortunately you can’t always choose your success or whatever. It is what it is. I’m happy for the guys. Stoked to be a part of it. I’d love to get my own one day, but it just hasn’t been in the cards.
You’re a World Supercross champion.
If you want to call it that. I kind of refuse to call that a title.
You worked for Colt Nichols this past year, obviously. A real nice guy, real cool guy. I imagine compared to Kenny it was a little bit of a vacation for you. He’s not hard on bikes, I would think. He’s amiable, pretty happy to be there. Was it quite a difference than working from the pressure of Ken Roczen and all that?
Yes and no. People ask me that all the time. There’s a certain standard, maybe not created by Honda, but more just for myself of an expectation of what I expect from myself and the product that I want to present to my rider and the team every week. So, that doesn’t change, regardless of who is on the motorcycle. Sure, Kenny came with his own list of things that I had to really focus on, but I call Ken mental work. It took a lot of thinking and forward thinking. But he was also in Florida during the off-season too, so I had some time to relax where Colt was here every day, so I ran the practice program. So, hour-wise as far as physical work, it didn’t really change. If anything, I maybe worked more hours with Colt.
Let me ask you about this. You’re working for Kenny. I noticed this late in my mechanic career and I didn’t like it as much. I love the path that you’ve taken to Factory Honda, and I do think there’s a story there, and also a lesson for a lot of people. Even toward the end of my mechanic career, these riders, are like their own team within a team. They have the wife or the girlfriend, the agent, the practice bike guy, the trainer, all these different people involved, and you’re a little bit removed from, ‘Hey, man, let’s watch some video, or let’s do this.’ It was kind of like we’re friends, we’re good, we’ve got a good working relationship, but it’s a little bit of a team within a team. Did you find that with Ken?
Yes and no. I think you kind of find that everywhere. You could even go back to the year prior in ’19 when I worked with [Cole] Seely. We were kind of our own team also, and even at TLD it happened at times. For sure there’s something there. I think you do pick up on it. Sometimes you’re happy to be in that little tightknit group, and then other times people might look at you a certain way for it. When you work the hours that we work and put in the dedication that we do, 60-70 hours a week sometimes, just to kind of be there, you better be invested. If I’m at fault for that, or some people are at fault for being in that group and trying to get that guy to succeed, then that’s just kind of part of it, I guess.
What was it like for you? This was such a weird situation, this past off-season. Kenny was out. He wanted to do World Supercross. Honda came out, Brandon Wilson came out with that letter saying we wish him well but we’re not going to bring him back because he wants to do the world supercross. Kenny was like, ‘Okay, I’m out of here.’ Yet, and what I think is super cool by the way, you went and worked as a Factory Honda employee for Kenny on the Firepower team for the world supercross races. I remember talking to you at England, and you were like, ‘Yeah, man. I don't know. I’m happy to be here. I’m just working.’ I think it was really great of Brandon and Lars Lindstrom (manager at Honda), and great that Kenny accepted you. There was none of this screw-anybody-over thing. It was a conflict that couldn’t get resolved, and yet everybody put their best foot forward to make it work.
That was definitely an interesting time. I was thinking it’s probably been six or eight months since that happened, but everything was changing literally by the day or by the week, as far as where Kenny was at contractually, with Honda, with WSX, with Yarrive (Konsky) and Firepower and all that stuff. We’d have one plan set in place on Monday and then Tuesday afternoon it would change again. So, it was just kind of a constant back and forth. Super thankful to Lars. The way that the WSX series was looked, as far as our manufacturers here not wanting to support it, Lars was super cool with me basically doing a week in England, a week in Australia. Take two weeks off unpaid and just kind of have him make up for that. But I really wanted to help Ken also, and he asked me to do that because I spent three years with him on a Honda.
Even though when I got to England, that Honda was completely different than anything I had worked on in the prior three years. Truly I believe why Ken asked me to go over there is he trusted in me and knew that I would give him the product that he needed. Man, it was stressful. It was really stressful for kind of a two-race exhibition series.
Were you caught in the middle a little bit or was everybody cool? Like it was fine? Everybody at Honda and everybody else was good?
Yeah. Everybody was actually really cool and super supportive and everything. Just to keep it black and white, the fact that Honda didn’t pay me for that was kind of what gave me the freedom. It was basically a two-week leave of absence. So I think that was kind of the paperwork to say, they’re not really supporting Jordan. He’s just taking a little vacation. So, on that sense it made everything work. On a selfish note, of course I was down to go do that and to go to two countries I’ve never been to. So, that was enjoyable.
At Honda, you guys are contractors. You sign the one-year or two-year deals, right? When Ken was out, were you stressed? Or did Lars or someone come to you early on and be like, ‘We want you. We’re going to keep you. Whoever we hire, you’re going to be the guy.’ Sometimes there is that changeover. Teams aren’t doing it as much as they used to, but you are still working for a contract every year.
Yes. I’d say every July, August of every year, if you’re on a one-year contract you do start putting your feelers out. You go to your team first because you want to stay, you’re happy. But sometimes you get weird vibes and sometimes you start shopping. That’s just the way the industry is. You’re always trying to play out who’s going where. It’s kind of like in football or basketball. You have your big fish and you kind of wait to see where those guys are going to land. That kind of sets the whole bracket for the rest of the industry. Then the other riders start getting their deals done. Same thing, same hierarchy kind of happens as mechanics, too.
Once those rides get set, you’ve got some of your big fish in mechanics. If you know a higher-ranking guy on another team is looking for something, or is ready to make a move, everybody kind of stops and waits for him to make this decision, as it sounds. I’ve been super lucky and fortunate. I always give them that early. As far as Honda and Lars, there was never a question. It was, ‘Hey if Ken moves on, we always have a spot here for you. It that’s with a rider or not with a rider, we will have a position because we appreciate you.’ So that was something that I kind of had in my back pocket. I never really saw myself leaving Honda.
You’ve been in the game for a while. I don't know if you’ve been around long enough. For many years, especially in the ‘90s, Honda was really considered the no-fun team. It was very strict, very corporate. The team managers weren’t very friendly. Then it loosened up a little bit here and there, but it’s always kind of had that Honda ‘We’re better than everybody’ vibe. Just a general vibe. That was the old days. I have to say the guys now, and I think Lars had a lot to do with it, even Erik [Kehoe] when he was there helped it out. I have got to say, in the last ten years, whatever it is, everybody at Honda has shed that reputation. You guys are a nice bunch of guys, a good bunch of guys. It goes a long way from guys there just staring holes through you, you know, back in the day. I think you guys seem like a great team. Everyone seems to get along. Everybody seems really, really cool. Nice scene you’ve got there.
For sure. I remember kind of coming up as a privateer mechanic, so to speak, when Toronto maybe 2011 I had to come over to the Honda truck to get some parts. Definitely kind of one of those weird vibes. Even as late as ’15, ’16, something like that. I remember it was still almost kind of a stand-offish vibe. It was not unlike a prison. That’s a little strong. You know what I mean. It was like, ‘You’re really not welcome here. Stand outside the tent.’ I guess Kehoe helped transfer that a little bit. He was still, I would say, a little bit more strict than Lars. Lars is pretty loose and free on some of that stuff. Now, there are days when our Honda hospitality or the freedom around there will kind of rival the TLD hospitality back in its heyday. So, there could be some traffic in there now, for sure.
Yeah. And the Lawrence brothers help, right? They’re young kids. They’re popular, everybody is coming around. I feel like the vibe is good.
Yeah, for sure. Everybody has got an entourage now so that brings a group of people there. It’s just more heads under the team, and you have to make room for them. Where do you draw the line? Who can come in, who can’t? Once you get into that, there’s all kinds of things that come with that.
Kenny is a really good dude and he’s pretty open and honest about everything. He wasn’t happy with his bike at times, and he had virus issues. Not everything was rosy at Honda, despite all the wins and all the podiums, which any racer would take. His Honda record is really, really good. But there were times he put out an Instagram post, he was upset. We know talking about the bike. How much of that fell on you and made for an uncomfortable work environment, or made it tense at times because you had a rider who was vocal and not happy with things going on? How was that for you to balance?
That’s a loaded question, for sure. I had gone back and forth on it so many times. As a mechanic, you’re in this super weird gray area where you represent the team and you have to do what the team asks on a technical aspect, and even just the way that you deal with your rider and what you're able to tell him and what you can and can’t have. Then on the other side of it, you represent your rider also to the team. So, you kind of have to filter through some of their bullshit. What is good, what actually you need to take to the team and progress and push and say, ‘These are the changes we need to make.’ Also you need to filter some of that out and say, ‘Hey, Ken, I can’t push that or I don't want to push that, or maybe that’s a you problem, type of thing.’ It’s definitely a sticky situation. You do your best to try to navigate it and to do both. As far as when Ken would be critical of the bike and things like that, I think as a mechanic, that’s something that you need to compartmentalize or whatever that word is. You can’t let that stuff affect you. Early on, you need to figure out how to work around that type of stuff, because it’ll just eat you alive. So, when he complains about the bike or something like that, it’s not necessarily my doing.
Yes, I could feel attacked, but as long as I’m giving him a product that’s not failing on him and meets his standards, just because the suspension doesn’t quite handle the way he wants, or maybe there’s a chassis or a frame character or something that he’s fighting and doesn’t like, as a mechanic you’ve got to recognize that. That’s not necessarily your fault. If he wants to criticize that, then that’s on him.
