2017 PCC Series Silly Season

“Juveno Recollects Early Life, Feels Career Isn't Finished”

No spring chicken, Barry Juveno has definitely picked up some war scars over the years. Whether in a race car, on the football field, roughhousing with Charles and James in his backyard in Cleveland or feeding his fists during some bar fights, he has never shied away from consequences and that quality never left him from his earliest days.

Barry sat down with me at a cafe in Stockholm to chat about recent happenings and how Manticore’s new transition is treating him so far. I started off racking his brain about the apocalypse that would occur if he decided to chill out and stop getting into confrontations.

“I been a knucklehead all my life, I ain’t gonna stop now”, he tells me with an unfamiliar smirk. “In football, you don’t stop ‘til you do the job. They wanna be s***heads, they better not get near me or I’mma finish ‘em. Simple.”

After rising through the karting ranks in the central U.S., Juveno picked up opportunities to go late model racing in 2009, picking up six victories in his first season and walking away with the championship. He repeated the feat and added two more wins than the previous year, catching the eye of Stephans Racing for 2011 with an opening for the most prestigious stock car series in the country.

“They gave me my start. Being an Ohio boy, duh, you’re gonna take [the offer]. It started good, things just don’t last sometimes. You gotta adjust and we did, nothing worked. One thing and the next, and the next, and then some other s**t, y’know? It just didn’t stop going wrong. I’m doing much better now.”

He is of Kenyan ancestry and was born only a few months after his parents arrived in the United States, often playing football with his older brothers to keep himself busy during the winter offseasons. His mother passed away after he was delivered and says that it later "shaped me a lot. I got real cold. But that's what got me here. I got through that, came out a winner." Juveno previously aspired to be a guard in the NFL at a staggering 6'4" by high school, but racing slowly took over his heart.

“I guess I… took that loss I had and… gathered it. Didn’t even know I’d done it, but… it made me not give a damn. All I knew was I gotta survive. Just my instincts. You always looking at someone who wants what you got. Had plenty of people like that and I just don’t give a f**k. You at war out there. It’s all you in the car. Go out there and do it. That’s all I think about when I put that helmet on.”

He recalls some days of brief legal trouble that nearly cost him his big chance, a time that he often tries not to even think about himself. If not for his passion of competition, he says, he might be headed down a very different path.

“Being on the football team back then got me all kinds of s**t. When you popular, that’s what happens. And I was a young buck trying to prove myself, proving to myself I ain’t kill my own mom. That’s real dark to you, I guess, but I saw it like that. My brothers weren’t all that close. It was the world against me. I did whatever I wanted, drinking, smoking, blah, blah, blah. All that kiddie s**t. I did me. And you better move. Nobody gonna stop me, I’m a legend on the team. But… I told my teammates after a while, ‘Alright, I can’t do this no more’. I would’ve failed that test and never drove my way here had I been a bit dumber.”

Through his winnings, his family now lives comfortably in a city where they once had little more than a few bags to carry their belongings in to a brand new country. Barry has emerged as a constant presence in the PCC paddock through his seven years in the series. It is all he knows to be. And it seems to be working.

“I’m disappointed in myself”, Juveno said of his performances thus far in 2017. “I thought I would get a few wins and I’ve blown some chances too, can’t lie. We’re going through some changes right now and we’ll be coming back stronger on y’all. Just wait.”