Interview With Peoria TT Champ JD Beach

In the sport of motorcycle racing it’s pretty much an either/or. Either you race on dirt, or you race on asphalt. There’s not much in-between, especially now since the once hybrid dirt/asphalt sport of Supermoto has all but faded.

Monster Energy’s JD Beach, who won last week’s prestigious Progressive American Flat Track (AFT) Peoria TT, is one of a handful of racers that broke the ‘either/or’ barrier. A Peoria TT victory can warrant an entire story. The race takes so much diverse skills that are basically foreign to AFT racing, i.e., turning left and right, and jumping, that it really takes a special racer to reign victorious. And, in Beach’s case, he’s won Peoria multiple times.

What really makes Beach stand out, though, is the fact he’s also an accomplished road racer. He’s won at high professional levels here in the States, both with AMA Pro Racing and MotoAmerica, like American motorcycle racing icon Kenny Roberts used to do back in the 1970s – and only a very short list of racers had done before, or since.

Monster Energy caught up with Beach to congratulate him on his Peoria TT win, and the conversation led to much more – something the Monster Army can appreciate.

Yeah, JD. HUGE win at Peoria! That’s just awesome. Get us going here with what it’s like to win the flat track racing equivalent of NASCAR’s Daytona 500, or IndyCar’s Indy 500.

That track, it’s definitely one that I like to win there. Ever since I was a kid I always watched races there. (7-time AFT champion) Chris Carr was actually one of my favorite riders. Since he always won there, I wanted to win there. With that track being around as long as it has, set down in the valley, all the fans around the track, it’s amazing. So many diehard fans. It doesn’t matter if it’s practice or the main event, they’re cheering and clapping.

Rewinding ‘er a bit, tell us how you got started with the sport of flat track.

I started out racing flat track when I was three-and-a-half years old. When I was a kid, and as I got older, Supermoto got big. In 2002 I wasn’t quite old enough yet to run the pro stuff, but they had the Honda Red Rider challenge for kids. At each (AMA) Supermoto round they’d picked 15 kids to race, top three from each race got to race the finals in Vegas and Reno, I made the finals two of the five years.

Coming out of Kentucky, we’d imagine you a big fan of the (motorcycle racing) Hayden family as well, particularly the late Nicky Hayden. Got any cool stories of growing up with those guys?

Oh yeah. They grew up doing the same thing I did. Grew up dirt track, then went road racing. And that’s kind of the career path that I did. Dirt track to 2007, then did road racing – full time until 2020. I lived in the same town as the Haydens, so I did spend quite a bit of time with them. We trained a lot together. Their dad, Earl, who passed away a couple years ago, had a track at his house and I rode there a lot with them. And every lap was on the stop watch.

You made the transition from dirt track to road racing, and were selected to compete in the Red Bull MotoGP Rookies Cup. Talk about how that came about.

Yeah, that started in 2007, and in ’06 you had to apply for it. The organizers picked 100 or so kids to participate, from all over the world. You had to go to Spain and we ended up trying out for it. And at that time, I had never done a road race. So I had very little time on a road bike, on an actual race course. But I got picked to do it, my first road race, and was at a MotoGP race. It was really cool because Nicky Hayden had won the MotoGP title in ’06 and I was at the race where he won it all, and came back the year he was defending the title. The first year I was 16th in points, and the second year I won the title. At the time I was pretty young, 16, and I didn’t realize how cool it was that I do now. The experience I got, traveling and racing all over Europe on those legendary tracks was incredible.

That’s rad you won that deal. But soon after you returned to the States. What brought you back here?

This all happened at the end of 2008, which was when the economy kind of crashed and there wasn’t much out there. It was kind of hard to get a ride in Europe because they got hit hard too. And as an American I wasn’t really well known over there, and I was young. At that point I came back here and started road racing in the pro series (2009) with AMA Pro Racing. I did the full season of that, and a few pro flat track races as well.

So you were winning titles in both AMA dirt track (Singles class) and in AMA road racing (SuperSport) in 2009 and 2010. How difficult was that? To win in both series’, and how many guys have done that before?

I raced Singles (AFT) in 2009 and 2010. I was on a Honda, my own bike, and I was paying for it all. My teammate now, Dallas (Daniels, with the Monster Energy-backed Estenson/Yamaha Racing Team), his crew chief, James Hart, was the one who built my bike that year. I would only do the ones close to home because of the costs. 2010 I won the AMA SuperSport title and placed 3rd in my first Expert race at Springfield (Ill.) Mile. And I was the first person to do that since Kenny Roberts.

In 2019 you moved up to Mission SuperTwins and won two events, both TTs, while also racing full time in MotoAmerica Superbike. That year you also nailed your first Superbike win. And you did this in  back to back weekends. Talk about that season and the significance of winning premier classes in both Progressive AFT and MotoAmerica.

Yeah, I think there’s only been about five or six people throughout all the years of racing that have done something like that. It’s really rare. Most people just focus on road racing, or just flat track. And especially when they’re kids, they start out on flat track because there’s not much opportunity in road racing for kids. Tim Estenson (JD’s current team owner) was just kind of getting into the sport in 2018, and I’d won the SuperSport title that year and our race season was done before the AMA Flat Track season was done. So my team was done, but I was still contracted with Yamaha through the end of the year. So I wanted to do the last two flat track races for fun. I gave Tim a call to see if I could ride his bike for the last two rounds, and ended up taking a 5th and a 6th in the Twins class.

Should a person not as familiar with AFT and MotoAmerica racing be reading this, how would you compare what it’s like, and how difficult it is, to switch between dirt flat track and pavement racing at the highest possible level in the States.

Luckily for me, I’ve done both for so long, it’s kind of second nature for me. But going back and forth on the bikes, you have to keep in mind that a flat track bike has no front brakes. You lay the bike over (at 90 to 100 mph) and scrub speed off. In road racing it’s all front brake. So that technique is completely different. Also, asphalt is consistent and always the same, unless it’s raining. Whereas a dirt track changes every time you go out. On dirt you’re always looking for grip. On asphalt you try to hit the same line consistently, where on flat track you’re always changing that up to find grip.

Very interesting. In 2020 things dipped a bit for you in flat track, but you had a couple late season podium finishes, as a couple wild card entries in MotoAmerica’s SuperSport class. Talk about finishing strong in 2020, and how it made you look at things for the ’21 season.

From 2019 to 2020 is when I made the switch to go full time in flat track, and at that point the team that I’m on now (Monster/Estenson/Yamaha), we were beginning what was a long road of developing a street bike motor to go up against, historically, custom designed and built flat track bikes. That was a development season for us, learning just as much as we could.

Was that a pretty frustrating time?

It was both. I knew what I signed up for. And as a racer you always want to be up front, but looking back at it now, I feel that I grew a lot and was able to learn how to keep fighting, even when the bike wasn’t doing so well. Since that year the team’s developed a lot of parts, tested a lot. You try this part, go out on the track, then come in for another part, then go right back out. I enjoyed explaining stuff and how it works versus how they say it’s supposed to work. So I definitely feel that I’m more one with the bike now that I’ve done that.

Interesting. You again showed your mettle in Progressive AFT TT event racing, winning the 2021 Atlanta Super TT and, for the first time, the Peoria TT. A couple more podium finishes and you ended up with a career best 5th place in the Grand National Championship standings. Talk about 2021 and the direction your career took.

The 2021 year was the backbone of all the work we did the year before. Of course we wanted to do better, but to get those wins, and to run up front a lot more – and get those wins – was a big step. Once we were closer to the front  could learn more. We’d plateaued, and we needed to get to that point to see where we needed to get. We could see the light in 2021, after not finishing top five in a race in 2020. Heartache after heartache. 2021 we could start to see all that work pay off some.

This past season, 2022, you scored your first Mission SuperTwins oval victories (Laconia, N.H., short track and Cedar Lake, Wisc., Half-Mile) and were a Progressive AFT title contender through season’s end – earning a career-best four victories. Did your 2022 season solidify your eagerness to focus solely on flat track?

From 2020 to 2021 the team had improved the bike, and 2022 was the first year the team designed our own frames. We weren’t just buying stuff anymore. That was the first year of the real team bikes. And that season last year I felt really good, and was on a bike that I helped develop. Again, I honestly felt like I was one with the bike. We had a couple mechanical issues, then halfway through the season I’d injured my left ankle, and that’s the foot you use going through the turns. Tore some ligaments and tendons, so throughout the season when I caught my foot I tore some more stuff. Finally my ankle just broke. So in that last race of the year I went from 2nd to 4th in the points because I couldn’t put my foot down.

This year you’re battling back and forth with Briar Bauman for 3rd place overall in the standings. You won the Arizona Super TT and, along with Peoria, have six podium finishes on the season. With four races remaining on the Progressive AFT tour, including at TT at Castle Rock (Wash.), talk about your chances of an overall podium finish in the Grand National Championship.

This year I started out a little rocky, was still struggling with my ankle from last year. And actually, I had some stem cells injected into it after the first two rounds at Daytona. I could barely put my foot down because it hurt so back. I broke it last October, so I couldn’t test at all in the off season. I was on my back foot a bit to start out. Then at Round 4, in Arizona (Super TT), I could get around it, because I could use my front brake. So that went well. This year the level of the top five guys is so high, it’s hard to make up points. So I dug myself in a hole a bit after how I did the start of the year. I just came off a podium finish and a win, and the next four rounds are at tracks I’ve done really well at in the past. So my chances of being in the top three in points is good.

Great stuff, JD. Let’s wrap this up with your take on Monster Energy’s involvement with the sport of flat track. Do the fans, especially the younger ones, get a charge out of seeing the M-claw logo at AFT events?

Monster’s been great for the teams that I’ve been on. I’ve actually been with Monster since 2014. It’s really cool because the brand is so big and they support so many sports. Racing, skateboarding, snowboarding – they’re on athletes that are on the top. I feel that as a motorsports team, when you have that M-claw logo on the bike and on your suit, that brings a lot of legitimacy to the program and team.

Right on. Well, from everyone at Monster Energy, including the Monster Army ranks, best of luck the rest of the way on the Progressive AFT Championship tour.

Thank you. Hope to see you guys out at the races.

Next up on the Progressive AFT Championship tour is the City of Sturgis Black Hills Half-Mile, presented by Black Hills Harley-Davidson, set for Saturday, August 6th.