Slaw
What could have been for Progressive Insurance Cycle Gear ECSTAR Suzuki’s Ken Roczen in Houston. He was this close to the win, pressuring Cooper Webb throughout the last race of the night to claim the overall.
While he feel short in his bid for his first win of the season, Roczen has three podiums in four rounds and sits third in points.
He spoke with the media after Houston to talk about the track and much more.
Another really great night for you from winning that first race, great starts all night. Looking back on the race, how are you feeling about the night overall?
Ken Roczen: I’m a little bit bummed just because when you start off the first main with a low score, like a first place or whatever, you have high hopes. And then the other two mains, I didn’t get the start and had to make my way up there. And I just, especially in the last one, so I knew the situation between me and Hunter and Cooper. So after that, actually, it was really scary on the first lap. Me and Cooper, I think Cooper bumped into somebody before the finish line and shot left. Luckily he checked up. I jumped the jump. It would’ve been really, really bad. So little heart-stopper right there, but then I knew, okay, Cooper’s behind me. I saw Hunter up front and I knew that Hunter could not be two spots ahead of me. So it was all good, but I took way too long to get around Jason.
He was kind of holding me up a bit and that forced me into a couple of mistakes where I didn’t do the rhythms and I lost two positions. So then you just have to go to work again. I charged the whole time. I really can’t be mad about the effort that I put in, but because of that, sometimes these… I don’t know if necessarily decisions, but a moment that could have changed everything if I would have gotten by Jason right away. I think it would have been a little bit more smooth sailing, but because of that and I lost, and Chase passed me too. So then you just really had to go to work and obviously we know that Cooper is not easy to pass. So I tried all the way till the end. I hung in there, but the difference was I had to get Cooper to win and then I got third. So I can never be mad about a podium, but it is a little bit bittersweet just because it was right there.
You kind of touched on it, but were you getting a lot of pit board signals in that final moto because I think for a while you would have won it with your points total.
Roczen: I didn’t need the pit board. I knew exactly what was going on. Like I said, I needed to be at least one spot just behind Hunter and I would have been fine if Cooper was behind me, but since Cooper and I were same points, as long as Cooper is ahead of me, I’m not winning. And then since Hunter was ahead of him, that’s two spots, I was in third. So I knew exactly what was going on. I was more so watching lap times, but at the same time, I didn’t glance at the pit board too much because I was in a battle the whole way and I just knew how to get Cooper and I couldn’t.
Speaking of Cooper, between you, him and Hunter trying to get your first wins of the season, Cooper was definitely in the most do or die situation. And you guys have had somewhat of a tumultus pass in terms of your guys’ racing, but I was watching you guys on the podium afterwards talking about that moment. You already mentioned just overall seeing the difference in you two as racers as it’s grown. Because again, I’ve seen nights like this where it’s been very do or die between you two for a win and it’s ended with a bit of a different emotional response. But again, I know you would want that win, but it was really cool to see your guys’ interaction.
Roczen: Yeah, yeah. We were talking for a long time outside right now. I mean, obviously this has been so long ago, the problems and I haven’t thought about that for a long time anyways, but when it’s on the track, we’re going to race each other hard no matter what. But you know me, I’m not a dirty rider and so we’re always trying to make passes where it’s the cleanest, but when it’s about a win, you sometimes got to do what you got to do. At the same time, like I said, it’s been a long time and we have great respect from each other and we’ve had plenty of conversations, not just right now. So yeah, it’s honestly been fun racing, I don’t want to say the elderly necessarily, but it has been fun racing the dudes that are older than some of the young ones and we’ve done it for so long and some of us get along better now.
It seems like a huge amount of mutual respect between, again, that group you’re talking about.
Roczen: I mean, how can you not? I mean, if you look at the history and granted, I don’t really have the championships to show for, like some of the other guys, but I’ve been around for a long time and had some highlights in my career and winning and great battles. So we’ve all had that. So you can’t step up on the podium and not have respect for the guys that we’ve been racing for years and years and that have plenty of championships. And I think all of us have something unique about us, whether it’s my early sprint speed or Cooper’s super gnarly in the end and he’s just like a little ankle biter that doesn’t let go. And then Eli is just a beast overall. So I think we all have that uniqueness and I mean, how can you not respect that?
I was watching you in that last main event and though after the finish line, there’s that whoop section. You got a little sideways sometimes, but that left-handed corner, it just seemed like there was a couple of times where you just didn’t get the traction. And watching you, you have so much precision when you ride on the track. Take us through that main event and just give us some insight into your mind of like what were the points you were trying to hit around the track to make up time on Cooper and why weren’t you able to get it done?
Roczen: Well, this track was really tough for it because it got pretty ruddy in the turns and the ruts, they went from the beginning of the turn all the way to the takeoff. So when you’re right behind, I actually struggled with that big time in the second main when I was behind Justin Cooper. When I’m right on his ass, or right on his rear wheel, when I’m right on his rear wheel, you can’t see where you’re really going exiting the turn and the rut goes all the way to the takeoff. And then some of the triple side of the turns are pretty big. So you kind of have to get maximum speed to make it. So if you get a little bit off balance, it can get sketchy real quick. So I don’t know, I ended up switching up my line in the whoops to go further left, which I liked it better there.
But then since the ruts were starting to cut down earlier and earlier, just the angle was so steep going in there. So once you set it in the rut, it just kind of like sticks a little bit and it can throw you off. So under a helmet and under your goggles, you just kind of go with your gut feeling and do what you think is right or where you’re most comfortable. I did get sideways a little bit when I hit the whoops in the middle and to the right and I couldn’t really charge them as hard. And so I ended up switching up my line a little bit. And I don’t think it was for the lack of speed necessarily, but really the key factors for me were not getting by Jason and messing up a couple of rhythm lanes and then losing two spots all at once pretty much. And then yeah, the rest was history.
As of all the fans in Supercross, I want to say thank you for keeping it interesting, the last one, because typically in a Triple Crown, sometimes you guys know where you’re at and it’s already done. So the race is halfway done after the midpoint of the third one. And secondly, how important were those rhythms? Because it seemed like this track was very fast and you almost had to be precise everywhere because if you messed up, you’d get passed. And then also to pass somebody, it seemed like you had to try to just soak up a little bit more. It seemed like you guys were doing so much more, I don’t know, effort in the rhythms.
Roczen: So to be quite honest, I wasn’t really a fan of the track. I think it was extremely sketchy. It was super high speed. And then we had a couple of those and talking to the other riders, they were on board too. But we have these triples going into these bananas, we so called bananas, they don’t have legit landings, right? So you kind of need to overshoot those a little bit to actually get some pop because if you land perfectly, you don’t get the lift. And then we basically have to land into a five footer when you’re just seeing a wall. So if you’re not basically over jumping the first one, you’re kind of just running through it and then you’re hitting a wall of the five footer, right? So what I’m saying is some of these triple out of the turns, if you clip something and had to double it, in the end, you ended up hitting a five footer into no man’s land on the far end rhythm lane.
So then by doing that and just landing in flat, if somebody greases it, you have so much more forward momentum. So if you did mess it up, you were off rhythm. There was really only one fast way to go around the track. So once you got off sequence with that, with a mistake, if somebody is behind you, they’re going to blow past you. So there weren’t a whole lot of options out there as in different rhythms and kind of the same speed or whatever and make a difference. There was none of that. And I just think it was extremely high speed, to be honest.
How sketchy was that triple on after the start? Because it looked like it was very small, big kicker.
Roczen: Yeah, they are. It was like what we so call knuckly, like a knuckle just kind of short and steep and it unloads quite a bit. So you can go fast by soaking it up, but like I said, it’s just sometimes you get pitched funny and it can be detrimental. So it wasn’t like awesome to hit that thing, you know what I mean? But it was fine. So any part of the track though, dirt bikes are gnarly. It can bite you at any time, anywhere on the track, to be honest.
Photos: octopi.media
