Monster Energy Yamaha Factory Racing Team’s Justin Barcia Has Best Moto Finish of the Season in Millville

The conditions were tough all weekend. It was extremely hot yesterday. Then this morning it rained for the better part of mid-morning. In spite of the rutty, muddy, sloppy conditions, we definitely had a step in the right direction today.“I think that when we started the season, it was no surprise that we were behind the eight-ball due to injuries and time off during supercross. So we’ve been making progress each week. I think these last two weeks of being off and being able to ride and work on fitness and speed seemed to help both guys. We look to keep building on that next weekend at Washougal.

It was a pretty good day overall for me. The first moto put me back, but I got up to 11th. I seem to be continuing the hard charger role, which isn’t really fun but shows my spirit to not give up. The bike changes we made for the second moto were good and we rode well. I played cat and mouse with third in the second moto. I feel like there is room for improvement, which is good to say on a decent day. We have more to get out of this season still and we’ll keep moving forward with my riding and the bike.

Spring Creek went pretty well, considering. I felt pretty good in qualifying, even though we only got about three or four laps in. We went out for the first moto and it poured down rain. So the track was muddy. It was tough conditions, but I worked my way up to ninth. It was a really good race and I felt really good on the bike. I changed some things for moto two and went out and got a really, really good start in moto two. I was running with the top guys for a little bit, the Justin [Barcia] and Eli [Tomac] got by me and I decided to go end over end on the “Chadapult.” So that ended my race, kind of destroyed my bike a little bit. We’ll get back out there this week and get after them next weekend.