FXR Racing Presents MXP Chatter With Joey Crown

This sport is notorious for its roller coaster, up and down nature. One weekend a rider can have everything go just right and then the next weekend they’re wondering where it all went wrong. For Joey Crown, this pretty much sums up this past season as it was one struggle after another. Compare that to his 2018 season in Canada when Joey came up a few points shy of winning the 250 MXTour Championship. But as they say, you cannot have a rainbow without a little rain, and in recent months we’ve seen Joey’s race results on the upswing. Back in October, he won the 125 class at the Red Bull Straight Rhythm, and then this past weekend Joey was crowned the Prince of Geneva as he took the overall in the 250 class at the Geneva SX. To find out all about his recent success we caught up with the Michigan rider for this week’s MXP Chatter.

MXP: Hey Joey, welcome back to North America! Are you back at home in Michigan or are you down south?

JC: I flew back to Charlotte and right now I’m back training at ClubMX. I’ve been here for a while now, which is where I did my training before I headed over to Geneva. I’ll stay here until next week and then head home for a few weeks for Christmas. Then I’ll come back and resume my training for 2020.

We’re heading down to South Carolina next week for Christmas and we might go riding for a day at Club. Maybe we’ll see you.

That would be cool. The tracks here are in great shape so I hope I get to see you guys.

Anyway, back to your racing. In October you went to the Red Bull Straight Rhythm event and won the 125 class. After a tough season it must have made you feel good to see your name plastered all over the place after that big win.

For sure, I received a lot of great press after Straight Rhythm and looking back I’m so glad I went. You’re right, up until that point my season had been a disaster, so I needed to change things up. I was able to get into the Straight Rhythm event, so I borrowed a KTM150 and we started preparing. We went down to Travis Pastrana’s house and rode his little straight rhythm track, we hit up an outdoor race, then we drove out California and did the race. It was a really cool experience and it couldn’t have worked out any better.

Sounds like you kind of took a chance heading out to California to do that event, but sometimes you have to roll the dice for good things to happen.

Exactly, my result at Straight Rhythm got me invited to Geneva this weekend, and after winning this weekend I have had people calling me and inviting me to more races.

Well, that’s good to hear. I did see in an interview last night that you might be headed over to Germany in January to do a race in the German SX Series.

Yes, the final round of that series is in Dortmund in January, so I’ll be heading over there. I just have to decide which team I want to ride for.

Okay, let’s talk about Geneva. Judging by your Social Media posts you did a lot of work to get ready for the Geneva SX. You must have felt prepared when you arrived in Switzerland.

Definitely! I spent some time here at ClubMX riding SX, training hard, and I felt confident. I struggled a little in practice on Friday with the bike and the track but we quickly got things figured out.

I’m assuming you took as many parts as possible over to Geneva and then just bolted them on a fresh bike.

Yes, I took suspension, triple clamps and as many little parts as possible. The bike already had an exhaust system on it so that was good. In practice we had a little trouble with the ignition I had brought over, so we went back to the stock one. It made the bike a little slower, but it ran a lot cleaner. Other than that, everything was good!

Overall how was the track? It looked soft on television and the whoops looked big.

The track was good and fun to ride. In practice it was smooth. You could try and be aggressive on it, but as the night show went on it got rutted and the whoops got difficult. In the main events you had to ride smooth and not try to go too fast. A few times I tried to be more aggressive in the whoop section but because the tops got cupped out, I ended missing a whoop and almost crashed. Yeah, you just had to ride relaxed.

You’ve always been a good starter and in Geneva you were able to start up front most of the time.

That helped so much, especially when the track got rutted. It wasn’t a track that you wanted to come from behind on so getting out front and being able to ride your own race was crucial. On Friday, I had to pass a few riders in the early laps of the main event before I took the lead. However, after that I was able to ride my own race.

What a great experience for you! It’s good to see all of your hard work pay off. Compared to 2018, this past season has been tough for you.

This season definitely didn’t go as planned at all, but you have to move on and learn from adversity and keep pushing forward. I was able to get some really good preparation in before heading over to Geneva, and it obviously paid off. Hopefully this puts me in a good spot for 2020 and I can have a good year.

Do you have some concrete plans set in place for 2020?

I do have something set up for the 250 SX East Series but I’m not able to say what they are right now. So supercross is set for next year but I don’t have anything for outdoors yet.

Would you like to come back to Canada and race the 2020 MXTour?

I’d love to, that would be very cool. I almost won the title last year and I think I could come back and be one of riders to challenge for 250 Championship. We’ll see what happens. Hopefully a team gives me a chance, but if not then you may see me come up and do the eastern half of the series. Obviously, a lot has to happen before next summer, so I’ll just focus on the next month.

Going back to Geneva, were you able to spend any extra time there and do some sightseeing?

Yes, actually I did. I didn’t fly out until Monday so on Sunday we toured around the city and some saw pretty cool sights. Geneva is a really nice city and I’m glad that I was able to look around.

That’s good to hear. Sometimes as racers you end up flying in and then flying out right after the race and you don’t get to see anything. Obviously, the racing is important as that’s why you’re there, but as you get older and look back, investigating the surrounding area provides the best memories.

For sure, you definitely want to take some time and look around and take with you some memories away from the track.

Did you have any trouble with sleeping or eating while you were in Geneva? Racing in a time zone that is six hours ahead of your body time is never easy.

For the most part everything was good. I slept well the first night that I was there, which was important. I had a little trouble sleeping on the Friday night after the race as I was still pumped up. I don’t think I fell asleep until like 3am or something. Other than that it was all good; the promoter provided us a good lunch and dinner at the track each day so we were able to eat pretty good. The entire experience was great and I’m looking forward to heading over to Germany next month.

Well Joey, it sounds as though things are going well and I hope it continues that way for you. Thanks for taking a break from your training at ClubMX and chatting with me. Merry Christmas to you and your family and maybe we’ll see you next week.

Thanks for calling and Merry Christmas to you guys. Geneva was a good way to end the season and hopefully I can take the momentum into 2020.