The Dirt Store brand has rapidly become incredibly familiar in the world of dirt bike sport since the company was formed at the end of 2023, and their even more recent partnership with Triumph has become a powerful force just as rapidly! The team brings the new 450 and two young but experienced Brits with big ambitions into the 2026 Arenacross Tour.
Dylan Woodcock has been an indoor racing specialist for many years but incredibly is still only 25 years old and very much at the peak of his powers. He will campaign the new Triumph TF 450-X into its first Arenacross season alongside 22-year-old prodigy Eddie Wade, who moves across from electric machinery for his third year of AX competition. Both men are looking to be podium contenders and challenge for the title.
Straight to the Top
“God loves a tryer” is how Jon Giffard, Team Manager of Dirt Store Triumph Racing, sums up the efforts of the combined forces that have brought his outfit to the top of the game in almost record timing. Jon and his brother Dan have lived a life full of Motocross for as long as they can remember, from racing to a high level, to wielding the spanners for some of Britain’s very best, and now to forming one of the UK’s leading distribution companies and premier Motocross teams. It’s been a rapid rise to their current position of reigning British Champions in the MX2 class with the mercurial Tommy Searle.
After Jon Giffard started JGR Performance to put his technical skills and decade-plus of world-class experience to use in a business environment, the brothers put together a youth Motocross team in 2020. The Giffard Racing Team (GRT) competed with some of Britain’s rising stars and immediately imposed an impressive presence in the paddock. Armed with their extensive contact book, from working with Roy Emberson’s long-running team through to mechanical duties for Mel Pocock, the brothers started to look at options for an adult squad, just as Dan was beginning to expand on a budding distribution business.
Through conversations with Nick Turner-Goldsmith of GTCi, who was a major sponsor of Searle, the Dirt Store brand was born in late 2023, and pushing their presence with title sponsorship of the British Motocross Championship, as well as with Tommy’s efforts as then defending Arenacross Champion, the company is in everyone’s face wherever there are dirt bikes in numbers. Tommy had switched to racing an MX2 machine for the last British round and won convincingly overall. That set him up for a switch to the class for 2024, perfect for the Dirt Store team’s ambitions, and a strong year left him just 7 points away from the title!
The Black Union Jack
The arrival of Triumph as a force in Motocross, already with big teams in the World and American National Championships in 2024, felt incomplete without a presence in their own country. Looking for a big team to run with in MX2, for which Triumph already had a proven bike on the world stage, the Dirt Store team seemed the perfect solution “You know that with Tommy, you’re gonna get a lot of exposure no matter the results”, says Jon. Alongside teenage sensation Billy Askew, both of Dirt Store Triumph Racing’s riders won races and led the British Championship, with Searle taking his first title in the class at the age of 36. Tommy even took the 250 to the Arenacross podium against a horde of 450s and electric bikes! It was the perfect storm for a stellar 2025 season.
Woody and Wade
The team is once again focussed on going for AX glory in 2026 and their selected riders should be going in with high hopes. Dylan Woodcock had ridden for them in the middle east, and having great relations with the Giffard brothers, as Dan was his mechanic several years ago in the European Championships, there was no issue in signing for the 2026 AX Tour on the new 450.
Dylan is hungry for wins and the title, even if he does admit that reigning Champion Wilson will be tough to topple. “Tight arenas are my kind of thing. I’ll be gutted if I’m not on the podium at the end of every round.” As he usually does, Dylan will be training in California, where he stays in a mobile home rented from British entrepreneur John Mason of MX Dreams, with the SoCal Triumph dealership helping with bikes to train on. Dylan will compete in the opening round or two of the AMA Supercross series, for the first time on a 450, as the ultimate warm-up for the 2026 AX Tour.
Eddie Jay Wade, hailing from a Sheffield family who moved to Spain before he was born there, has been something of a youth Motocross prodigy who is now starting to put together a solid pro career. The 85cc World Champion at the age of 13, who has dual nationality but doesn’t sound even 1% Spanish, despite being fluent in el lingo, spends the winter in the land of his birth to prepare for his first attempt at racing on a 450 four-stroke. Having previously raced the electric Stark machine, he’s thoroughly enjoying the extra power!
“Nick messaged me with an offer of a bike out of the blue. The team is everything you’d expect it to be, but the other boys are all training for Motocross while I get things dialled on an Arenacross track.” Having asked permission from Stark to race a petrol machine outdoors in the British Championship, Eddie surprised everybody with a fighting third place at Duns in the MX2 class, and as Jon Giffard says, “If he can erase the mistakes that we’ve seen in the last two years, then he’s got some serious pace.”
One of those mistakes resulted in a collision with Searle in 2024 that ended his title shot, but Eddie was cool enough to immediately clear the air post-race, letting Tommy know that it wasn’t intentional. It’s great to know that the Dirt Store team weren’t put off by the incident, and the #7 rider could be a surprise package in 2026. “Nick loves bikes, that’s why it all works so well. They’re all good guys in the team, with great banter, and I can’t wait for the new season!”
With the commitment of both Dirt Store and Triumph behind them, Woodcock & Wade could be the dark horses of the Tour, and for sure the team title could well go the way of the British bikes in black! If you’re a fan of British machinery pushing for success, you need look no further!
