It was too good. Justin Barcia did something rare last year. He raved about his motorcycle! We should have known it couldn’t last, because in this game, perfection is hard to find, and rarely do you hear such compliments for long.
Here’s an example of what we heard last year: “Last week, we tested during the week,” Barcia said after last year’s Glendale Supercross, in April. “Austria sent some parts and honestly, the bike is in a place right now where it’s just good. I tried some stuff, but I just kept the same thing because I’m just happy with it. No need to change it, just keep performing.”
Barcia loved his bike, and he used it to show more speed, arguably, than at any point in his career. Barcia wasn’t getting the starts, but he was slicing and dicing to the podium at will. It was great until it wasn’t. First, Barcia crashed on a dragon’s back at Nashville and broke his collarbone. Then came a similar injury at the SMX finale in Los Angeles. By the time Barcia finally got back, his 2023 bike was gone and the 2024 had different components. We’ve heard the fork, shock and triple clamps have changed. That was likely based on feedback from other riders within the KTM/Husqvarna/GasGas camp. Cooper Webb, for one, had been begging for 48 millimeter forks instead of the 52s they raced with for most of supercross in 2023. For ’24, KTM made the switch to 48s on the race bikes. They also introduced a new frame with less rigidity. This addressed the problems most racers had during the 2022 and 2023 seasons. Aaron Plessinger, for one, says the 2024 setup is much, much better. So, from that aspect, the changes were good changes. There’s a problem for Barcia, though. He was the one guy who totally loved the 2023 bike!
At least Barcia didn’t have to go to the new 2024 frame, yet, as the stiffer 2023 frame, which is he likes, is still homologated. He had to change suspension, though, and it has been a struggle since.
“When I came back from my collarbone stuff, the bike I rode, it was gone. It was gone,” said Barcia to our Steve Matthes after Daytona. “Life’s not fair sometimes. We’ve worked hard and got it the best we could.”
Barcia keeps emphasizing the effort his team is putting in to get him comfortable on the new stuff. They tested with him in Florida. They keep trying. He thought, for a moment, they had something figured out for Daytona.
“It seemed that way,” he said about taking sixth in qualifying. “We got some, I don’t want to say, false hope? We made a massive swing. The night before, me and Tyler Keefe [of TLD] talked a little and I was like, I want to try this. Something we had not tried at all. It was like “Okay, I like that feeling.” Then we tweaked on it, tweaked on it. I felt a little tight in practice, but the lap time was good. I was able to ride nearly to my potential. Then the rain came, the track changed, and it seemed like what we changed…the hold down went away, the forks felt harsh, everything kind of came back that I was struggling with. Heat race I got into the lead, and I was like “This is sick” and I was kind of vibing, but first lap, I knew, I was like “Oh man, this is not working.” Pumped up after about two and a half laps, then I was riding around like a squirrel. Fell down. Main event made a little change. Just didn’t work on these conditions. This was a different Daytona than other Daytona’s. They did a good job with the track, but when they built it, it was spongy soil. It turned out to be good today [in the morning], then it rained, and things changed. You had less traction, less hold down in the rear end, the front end was slipping around. The track threw us off. Like I told my guys, man this thing is so sensitive at changes. But these guys are working so hard.”
Barcia, incredibly, has just two top-ten finishes this year. Perhaps the only silver lining is that he has time to figure this out. Barcia is in the first of a new two-year deal, and he is more patient than he was in his younger days.
“We can dig out of this,” he says. “Man, I’m older and wiser now. I haven’t blew a head gasket like I did back in the day.”
Then he adds, probably in a nod to the new KYB-style forks that were noticed on Chase Sexton’s bike this weekend, “Seems like the KTM side is figuring some stuff out.”
In one social media post, Barcia tried to draw some attention to the bike struggles. That didn’t go over so well.
“I was trying to say it in a good way, I didn’t attack too gnarly, so I kind of beat around the bush a little bit,” he said. “I was looking, maybe, for some help. But that doesn’t help you at all. My bad on that. I respect these mechanics and this crew, we’re busting our hump out here. We’ll be back.”
Since then, he has been heaping praise on his crew.
For now, Barcia will have to keep working with what he has. Again, before the rain came, he thought there was a chance they had figured out a better solution.
“We’re taking it home this week to see what it does,” he said. “We’re definitely talking about some other options because we haven’t fixed the issues that I’m having. We just need to be better and we’re working extremely hard. No one is giving up.”
