Joe Bacal
Growing up in Southern California in the wide open hills of Santa Clarita, Joe Bacal spent every spare hour in the garage with his dad wrenching on classic cars and motorcycles. A love affair with motorcycles began at 8 years old and progressed to racing at the famous Indian Dunes Raceway Park on 80cc mini-cycles and then up to the 125cc class in his teens. Joe’s passion for motorcycles and dirt motorsports continued when he worked as a mechanic and pit support at the Mickey Thompson Series races plus the Camel AMA Supercross Series from 1988 to 1993.
In 1993 Joe decided to leave Los Angeles to begin a career as a test driver/technician at the General Motors Desert Proving Grounds in Arizona. Working at a test track was intriguing for Joe and he set his sights even higher by wanting to become a member of an elite driving evaluation group. Joe started working with GM, transitioned to Nissan, and finally ended up working with Toyota at the Toyota Proving Ground in Arizona. Joe eventually became the Lead Off-Road Specialist inside their world-famous 10 mile oval test track facility during just over a decade of work. Limit handling testing within off-road environments became Joe’s primary specialty and he developed into the key driver for Toyota.
Joe’s off-road background is diverse including technical rock crawling skills, thousands of hours of high-speed off-road driving, plus one-on-one training with the legendary Ivan Stewart and U.S. Camel Trophy driver Bill Burke in extreme off-road situations. Today Joe works as an independent professional driver under his company’s banner, JTGrey Performance Driving, where he works with a fantastic number of automotive industry companies testing, evaluating and promoting their products.
Joe is also co-founder of JTGrey Racing where he races professionally in off-road racing. With a successful 2009, Joe was featured in numerous magazines and brochures both in print and on the web.
Joe’s motivation for his continued success is his experience with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Joe was diagnosed in December of 2006, received chemotherapy and radiation in 2007 and was declared cancer-free in 2007. His cancer journey was the catalyst to pursuing his racing career and is still his catalyst for crossing that finish line at every race. He races for all those touched by cancer and will continue to encourage others to never give up.
You can follow Joe’s racing career at ControlAmidChaos.com