As anyone who watched the SX broadcast from St. Louis saw, this was the last race for Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Justin Shantie, mechanic for Adam Cianciarulo. He’s going to the NASCAR world over at Joe Gibbs Racing (JGR) and although the race didn’t go as hoped, he still had a lot of success as a wrench. We talked to Justin on the PulpMX Show Monday night and here’s some of that conversation.
Racer X Online: I’ve never seen such a tribute to a guy hanging up his wrenches, as I did all day in St. Louis.
Justin Shantie: I was kind of blown away myself. I just kind of showed up to do another race and not get any kind of sideways about it. You can tell, I’ve lost my voice partying a little too hard on Saturday night. It was cool. Adam showed up on Friday right away and was like, “I want tomorrow and today to be all about you. You’ve stuck it out for me, and I haven’t been able to give back as much as [he] wanted to the team and us and stuff.” He was really cool. He surprised me with a couple butt patches. I even asked Kenny Day [from Fox], I was like, “Dude, was that you?” He was like, “No, it was Adam the whole way.”
It does suck to have Adam’s crappy night. Hurt his ankle. No fault of his own. Then that’s it. So, that kind of sucks, but whatever.
Yeah. It was a shitty situation, obviously. We’re both looking at each other like, why does this always happen? It was a weird deal. He went and got X-rays or whatever and got his boot off, and then we got him a bucket of ice and [Steve] Navarro [chiropractor] was in there. I took off and went down to staging. So, we were going to line up. He was like, “I’m racing, dude. I’m racing.” I was like, “Cool. I’m into it.” So, I marched down there, got staged up a little early. I didn’t really have my headset on. I think I was talking to somebody. Somebody came up on the team and was like, “Hey, he’s not going to do it. He can’t get his boot on.” I’m like, oh. It just kind of hit me. If it’s not going to be now, it’s not going to be at all. It was kind of surreal, bittersweet. I don't know what you want to call it.
I guess I didn’t realize my last one - or not even the last one, who knows in the future what’s going to happen, but my last one with him for sure, it was really the first moto and I didn’t even realize it. So, I almost kind of would rather it that way. I get emotional about stuff. So, we just kind of did our business all day. He said he felt great. He felt the best he had felt all season so far. Just kind of staying loose. We had a really good vibe going, then the gate dropped, and that shit happened. He just was kind of twisted around in that corner. We just locked eyes. I just knew it wasn’t going to be that great. I thought it was his knee, honestly.
Related: Adam Cianciarulo to Retire from Racing Following Conclusion of Supercross
So, why the decision? You’re going to go work for Toyota at JGR, NASCAR stuff. Why?
To be honest, it was going to be an April Fool’s joke and now I’ve got to move to North Carolina. Took it a little too far. [Laughs] No, it honestly came out of nowhere. I had talked to [Dan] Fahie [Kawasaki team manager] early on, like Halloween night. We stayed late at the shop and I kind of just told him I was burned out. Burned out I guess is pretty general, but I was just kind of ready for something different. I wasn’t really planning on moving and doing all this stuff, but I was ready at the end of the season to look towards something else in the company, in the team, do something different. It’s been professionally 16 years for me, and I didn’t even know where the hell all the time went. I started with the Alessis in 2008. I only made it 12 months.
Was that MotoConcepts?
No, that was before that. That was the first year that Mike rode Suzuki’s. Then it’s been 11 on Kawi. Five on Mitch’s and five and a half here. I didn’t make it the whole way. So, I was just cruising along. I told Dan, “Listen, I’ve got for sure this year in me, and I probably have another one after Adam. We’ll just see where it goes. We’ll see who we get. We’ll see what happens, then we’ll go from there.” He’s basically been a huge mentor to me and was like, “We can’t change the job. We can’t change the workload. How can we make it better?” Get out and ride your mountain bike more. Get out of the shop more. They’re not crazy about being there from X time to X time. It’s kind of like, get your shit done and go home, be an adult. That worked. I tried to ride more, tried to hang out more, tried to just not be at the shop there for a while. But you know how it goes. The work has got to get done.
Adam is in California full-time, so Oscar [Wirdeman] and I are basically splitting up the duties of going to the track and you’re riding off-season four days a week. You’re prepping race bikes. Now the last few years we’ve had to prep two full race bikes. I’m trying to take some time off to go skiing, like usual. It kind of caught up to me in a way that I didn’t realize. I don't know if I could have changed anything leading up to it, to try to prolong it. But I feel like I’m one of the guys that really capitalizes on taking time off, doing some cool shit outside of racing or when we’re on the weekends on Saturday nights or Friday nights or whatever.
So who made this all happen for you?
Actually, a guy at Team Green, a great buddy of mine who had been working there for a few years, Mario, he got a call just being connected through Loretta’s and stuff, to work on the East Coast from a guy that works on the Gibbs team, one of the crew chiefs, and says there’s a job open with Toyota and he would be a great fit for it. So, he secretly had kind of done the deal. I think Anaheim 2 was his last weekend for the Futures stuff. He took the job. Then when they came out here for the clash [Busch Light Clash at The Coliseum NASCAR race], he had a meeting with all those guys at TRD [Toyota] over in Costa Mesa, and they told him, “We could actually use one more guy, if you know anybody.” He was like, “I’ve got the guy. If you want a moto guy… “ Toyota, I didn’t know this until I started talking to them, but they’ve had a lot of guys from Kawi over the years, North Carolina and here in California. Guys that we all know. Tons of them, actually. Dave Carl, and [Mike] Hooker, and [Dana] Wiggins and Zach White went over there for a little bit. Just a ton of guys. So, he said, “Absolutely. We love moto guys. We love their enthusiasm. We love their attention to detail. We love how they work, how they’re multi-faceted and stuff.” He was like, “Have him give me a resume.”
When Mario called me, we talked about it, and I immediately was getting super antsy on the whole thing. I was like, “Wait, what job is this?” He started explaining it, and I’m like, “Dude! Of course, being a mechanic and what we’re doing, we can do that job. That’s something we can do. Tell me more.” I just couldn’t get enough of it. I got this new spark inside me. I was like, man, I know where it’s headed. I literally ran upstairs. My wife works from home. I told her all about Mario. She’s like, “Tell me more. What is this whole thing?” So, we got into it a little bit further and learned some more stuff. Once I decided to dust off my resume and sent it in, it just kind of flew from there. It was like a month later, I think around Detroit or something, it got pretty serious. Long story, I took the job.
So now that you’re done, what are some of your highlights?
I got to go 1-1 in both classes in outdoors with Joey [Savatgy] at Hangtown, a week after he lost the title in Vegas, that was cool. Adam in the 450 class in Millville. He was such a stud that day, he rode with a two second gap all day long with, I think Marvin [Musquin] one moto and [Zach] Osborne the next. To go 1-1 in outdoors is pretty cool. And there’s a lot of firsts in there also, when you go to Pro Circuit you’re expected to perform as a mechanic and I got my first win with Justin Hill, got Joey’s first win and podiums with Malcolm Stewart and Matt Moss with JDR KTM.
I said last time I was on the show that I will never leave Kawasaki, but something else drug me out of there. I just want to say Kawasaki is the best team in the pits, the company, the staff. I’m so pained to leave there and it’s the hardest thing. Never mind the stuff I have here, leaving the people there is the hardest thing. I’m packing now and driving out there on Saturday to start the new thing.
