Slaw
Stop me if you’ve heard this before, but Ken Roczen has started the Monster Energy AMA Supercross season on fire!
Ken, as usual, is off to a hot start to begin the year and picked up his first win of 2026 at round 5 in Glendale, AZ. Right in the thick of the title chase, Ken spoke with the media after the race about his win, what Larry Brooks means to him and more.
It’s been extremely apparent your desire and your hunger to win this year, but now this first win of the year, 2026, where does this mean? Up in 2026 as the competition, they don’t slack.
Ken Roczen: Since it is becoming more rare for me to win, not for lack of trying, but they just get sweeter and sweeter. I’ve come close many, many times, but the competition is so stiff and it’s even just hard getting on the podium. So, winning in a fashion like this got a good start and then I was trying to find my feet because I knew Hunter… I haven’t been able to get by him right away in some of the other races that we have had. And so, I was trying to just be patient, but it did seem like I just had a bit more momentum around the track and was able to make it happen pretty quickly there. But I knew that I was in for a long main because first off, he’s not just going to let go.
And second, we had, I don’t know, probably at least 15 minutes ago or something along those lines. So, I try not to look at the tower, look at the time and really take it bit by bit, make it through halfway and then kind of go from there. Never really worried about the time, I guess, too much, but clicking off my laps and I feel like I was going really fast there for a sec. And then once we got closer down, I saw it was kind of like a heat race. So, then you kind of put yourself in the mental state of like, okay, it’s a heat race, you know what I mean? It’s like six, seven laps, whatever you got this. And then you get further and further down the line and it was five laps ago.
And so, you kind of played these little mind games to stay locked in and I guess you never want to celebrate mentally too early. Things can happen really quick. So, it was very, very important for me to stay locked in all the way till the end. And then two laps to go, one lap to go. I actually think my mechanic showed me three laps to go and then luckily we came around and it was only two or something along those lines. So, we actually did one lap less than what I got told on the pit boards. I was like, “I saw the white flag.” I’m like, “Yes.” Just because the track is tricky in a way that you have these 90 degree turns onto the tabletops, the tabletop was just so messed up and potholed out.
It would have been very easy to get bucked. So, just washing the front end, the tiny little rut that you had was like, if you don’t pay attention, your nobbie will go over and just tuck the front. Something stupid like that can happen without even not realizing it. So, I’m beyond stoked. It hasn’t really set in yet.
Ken, I know the last two weeks have been a little tougher with Larry Brooks’ absence due to his battle of cancer. Larry’s legendary. He’s won tiles with McGrath, with Stewart, with Reed. He came to the HEP team to help build it into a program to get a guy like you. And coincidentally, you guys basically ended up there the same year and have really accelerated this program together. So, I mean, beyond what Larry is as a team manager, can you tell us about your guys’ relationship and what he’s done for you and just kind of talk to us about that?
Roczen: Since my dad isn’t really here, I talk to my dad almost every day or every single week for sure about racing and whatnot, but he can be my dad. And funny part is the relationship that Larry and I have, he’s a little bit like my dad here without having my dad here, if that makes sense. So, he’s so genuine and the game plan, every time I’m out there, I want to make him proud. I want to make us proud. And it just feels like, I guess a little bit honored to be able to ride for him because of his history in the past with champions and all the riders that he has represented and done really cool things with.
And I think before we even got together, the time where he was working for B teams and maybe not winning or being on the podium constantly, I know that’s ultimately what he wanted. And for me to be able, or for us to be able to get there in the fashion that we did is a moment that I’ve always… It’s really close in my heart. It really is. So, having him not here was a tough pill to swallow for the last few rounds, but we all got his back. His health is the most important in all of this. And to me, it feels like he’s here anyway because we talk morning till night, no matter what. We keep in the loop. We watch Dart Fish together, send each other videos and he analyzes everything.
So, for what it is, I still feel like he’s somewhat present.
Is it that family dad touch that makes him so different than any other team manager you’ve had in that sense, that personal family feel?
Roczen: I think so. I mean, to be honest, he’s really the only team manager that I’ve ever had that when we go down to the line, he’s right there. He’s right on the start. He doesn’t care about being in the manager. Actually hates being in the manager tower because he can’t really see anything. Or it’s just positioned funky sometimes where you don’t really see the whole track. So, he would probably ride the bike for me, honestly, if he could. You know what I mean? He wants to be right there. And that’s what I love about him because every time we go down, we look at the start, we talk before, we make a game plan and we execute exactly what we talk about every single time.
And I think since we have done that over the last three years or four years, however long we’ve worked together, it’s just become a natural relationship that it’s the funnest team or best team manager that I’ve ever raced for, hands down.
Last week you’ve voiced a few problems that you had why it kept you away from the win. This week, you went out and you straight smoked these guys. I mean, you put a lead down, you had the speed, it was phenomenal. What do you take away mentally, physically from this win and having… In this day and age, really, that’s a huge lead.
Roczen: Nothing really, if I’m going to be honest. You know what I mean? I want to go home. We’re flying home tonight. We have a red eye home. My son was here, my wife was here. I want to go back home and do all my things that I do with the kids. Be mad at them, yell at them, get over them. I need to get out of here. I really don’t want anything to change. So, I think that’s just part of keeping a level head. Of course, I’m going to analyze and look at the race and whatnot, and it feels great. But at the same time, after the race is before the race, and so I’m going to enjoy this tonight. I’m going to enjoy this tomorrow. But nonetheless, once you’re in the season, the weeks are very short.
So, like we talked earlier, there’s not really a whole lot going on in between because you have three days at home, you try to recover, you put in a good day, recover for the weekend. So, I’m just going to go back and go back.
This track was incredibly fast and there’s a lot of wood chips in places that were kind of mixed with the sand. You guys were dragging the bars in the back section across the start. Hunter said that it was very difficult to pass, but yet you were able to kind of just walk through people and then manage the race by just being gone. What made you able to walk away from it?
Roczen: Oh, I feel them when it comes to passing because in the heat race, I did really struggle. Because of the speed that we have, I mean, you get into the turn before the finish line with… I mean, what are you going to do? It’s inside, outside, and then that was one spot you can pass. But other than that, you could just rail everything so hard and then the jumps, a lot of speed. And honestly, the obstacles were pretty tall and steep. I wasn’t in love with it, to be quite honest.
During press day and Saturday and during practice, it just, I don’t know, maybe it’s just me getting older too, but you’re hitting these fricking five footwalls and your freaking body collapses and you’re jumping all over the place. So, I don’t know. It’s just every track has its unique trickiness. You know what I mean? This was not so much that, oh, it’s rutty in between and kind of gnarly that way, but it was a fast track. And the rhythms, just because of the floor plan that we have it, they’re always a little bit funky, if that makes sense. Sometimes, we have long-ass rhythm lanes with a tiny kink in it, just like we had here. And I don’t know, just every venue has a little bit of its uniqueness.
So, I don’t know. It worked out in the main, obviously, and it just definitely helps getting a good start, just not being in between riders, just because, to be quite honest, on this far rhythm lane here, before we get back to the mechanics area, when you go so fast and you hit these walls, sometimes it almost feels like you’re having a little bit of a tire roll. So, when you’re trying to pass somebody that’s kind of like riding in the middle and you have to… You can vary in the jumps ever so slightly because you’re hitting them really fast and you’re not always going to land within the inch that you think you’re going to land. So, it’s just every track has this difficulty.
You set up that pass on Hunter in the sand section. Just a few minutes ago, Hunter told us that he had no idea that inside line had gotten so much faster. Was that something that you had figured out or was it a happy accident?
Roczen: Nope. We talked about it. Me and my mechanic talked about it before the main because Levi was hauling the mail and he was taking the inside. So, I made sure in the parade lap that I kind of shaped that rut or that line as good as I could. Obviously there were a lot of riders behind me that they can mess it up or whatever, but I kind of knew that the inside, when you double that and you kind of land perfect, which that is the tricky side of things because it’s either you double in and you kind of miss the rut and then you mess the whole section up or you land where you want to land and you can make that whole turn one motion. And honestly, 95% of the race, I was able to just pinpoint exactly where I landed.
I landed and then without any effort, I made it one motion and just from mid-turn to exiting, I had so much momentum going forward. I was almost sometimes able to not necessarily skim that section, but I was able to like slap my front on the top of the jump and push through it and whatever. I do feel like that was my probably strongest area on the track.
Yeah, there was eight laps. That rut was perfect, dude. It was so good. So, coming into this season, you’re on a bike that you haven’t changed for a long time. A lot of your main competition is either changing manufacturers or changing new models. You and Hunter are probably some of the only top guys that stayed on a very similar machine. Are you analyzing that at the point, like at the start of the year, being like, “You know what? I’m actually in a really great position with my motorcycle because all of these guys are dealing with change.” Even Coop, he stayed with the same team, but he’s dealing with a new motorcycle.
Did you kind of have a feeling coming into this season that, “Hey, this actually might be a really great chance for me because I am so familiar and everybody else is on a completely different scenario”?
Roczen: For sure. I mean, first off, I have been happy with my motorcycle for quite some time now, so I take that in the bank, right? My confidence in me just grows with that because I’m not changing clickers or having to deal with a whole bunch of changes and figuring out what I like. And so, yeah, of course, going into the first, that’s a big relief, big weight off the shoulder, not having to deal with a bunch of changes. Having said that, I think it really depends because if you’re a guy like Eli or if you’re with a team for three, four years, he may have exactly been looking… If his inner desire is like, “Man, I need to change. I want to go somewhere else,” then that can be fine too, especially if it works out and the whole package is pretty good from the get go.
It doesn’t always have to be negative, but you do run into the risk of it not working out, right? For me, I wasn’t really in the mindset of changing everything upside down and starting over again with a new team. I really don’t know if I, at this very moment, if that would’ve been the smartest idea for me. So, sticking with it, I trusted it and I really haven’t been wanting to go anywhere.
