Forget the Ken Roczen you saw at the first six rounds of Monster Energy Supercross. This version of the Soaring Eagle/Jimmy John’s/RCH Suzuki rider is much better, as Kenny showed up in Texas confident, positive, focused and determined. He rode as well as he ever has, holding off Ryan Dungey in a fierce twenty-lap duel to snag his second win of the season. Kenny is still down 23 points on Dungey in the standings, but when we talked to him just outside of his motorhome after the race, you could hear in his voice that big things are coming.
Racer X: So take us through it.
Ken Roczen: We got another victory. Me and Oscar [mechanic, Wirdeman], the entire day we said that we were going to turn things around and we start tonight. We put that in our head and we believed it in. So we started in the heat race and got a win there. That’s where it starts. We knew we needed a good position for the main event. So we won that. I went into the main event with strong thoughts. I think that’s what got me the holeshot too. I just really wanted it and in my eyes made the perfect start. It’s been a long time coming. I think I have more actual wins than I have holeshot awards! It’s pretty rad for me to get those. From really crappy starts to a holeshot tonight was great. Obviously Ryan [Dungey] was right behind me. We had a good battle for the first couple of laps. He made a pass on me and I didn’t want to just let him get away and cruise to a victory. I really wanted it. So I passed him back and basically from then on it was wide open until the checkered flag came out. He was right on my tail the entire time. There was nowhere to relax. There were some spots on the track that were really difficult to do and required a lot of focus, but we really hit our marks. A couple of little mistakes I think for both of us. We didn’t hit the quad a few times. Not really was making up a lot of ground but it was just good to do. We had some tacky spots and we had some slick spots. It was definitely a fun race. It’s the way you want to win a race. We’re going to have some great momentum going into the week. I’m going to fight back and be aggressive again next weekend.
What’d you see in that gate pick? I saw where you lined up next to [Vince] Friese on one side and [Mike] Alessi on the other, and they both holeshot the heat races, they’re great starters. Did you have any thoughts like I might get pinched off or anything?
No, not at all. I had a good gate and I believed in myself, so I didn’t really care who was next to me. I just looked in the first corner the entire time and knew that I was going to be there first. It’s a lot about focus. We’ve been working on starts a lot and I think at one point we might have worked on it too much to where today all day I didn’t really do practice starts, nothing, and kind of just winged it and it was a lot better. At one point you can do too many, and we’ve done our work. We’ve done starts over and over and over and it just seems like you get to a point where you focus on every little detail and that’s when things kind of go sideways. We just did our thing tonight.
Last week wasn’t the best. How do you all of a sudden show up this morning and be like, today’s going to be good?
We struggled a little bit last weekend with the bike. I made a… not that it was a big change, but it helped me big time with balance. I went into the first practice right away and the bike felt good to me. That I think was the key point. I feel like now I can leave it where it’s at and just kind of go to every practice track or to every race and just leave it. Before, we had our struggles, especially San Diego first practice last week, I felt like a novice out there. That’s never a good sign. Not that I care too much because I know once you come to the race I’ll make something happen, but I couldn’t ride the way I wanted to ride. Obviously tonight we gapped the field pretty hard. Why didn’t I do that last weekend? So we made some little changes and I felt like that helped me out a lot, just to go confident into the first practice and kind of keep the bike the same way the whole day.
You’re not a guy that usually seems to struggle with confidence. You never seem to get really discouraged even though the points were getting stretched out.
I’m not. Still I’m not. I know what I’m capable of and we are working really hard. That’s really all you can do. Kind of just going into the weekend with a clear mind and I know what I want. I want to win. I’m going to do for sure everything I can to be on the top spot. If it doesn’t happen, at least I tried. It’s not that I leave anything out there. I think that’s one of biggest things. That’s why I’m still keeping calm because we do still have some races left. It’s tough out there. The competition is really strong and the tracks get sketchy sometimes. Anything can happen, really.
Everyone was talking about this one was legitimately rough track. This track was bumpy and chewed up is what I heard a lot of riders say.
Really?
You didn’t think so?
No, not at all. I felt like there were way worse.
Every guy said that!
I don’t know! I think previously there were other tracks that were way gnarlier in my eyes. We pushed the entire time and some of the other tracks they kind of get to a point where you’ve got to kind of keep calm and can’t push like that. For example, Oakland was super rough. This was nothing compared to Oakland in my eyes. But we did get some good ruts and it was slippery. You had to hit your marks, bottom line. But I didn’t think it was something way out there that it got super rough.
There was a rhythm going into the tunnel and you and Dungey were jumping it different I think at one point. He was behind you. I think he picked up on the way you were doing it. There were a few different spots where you had different lines, and he had different lines. I think he cut down out whoops differently. Did you feel him back there doing different things or were you actually just thinking of your own deal?
Well, Ryan is really good on staying low in the turns and getting a good drive. After the tunnel, we all were finishing the turn kind of, and then I went in there and there was just a soft spot. Not that I almost crashed but I made a mistake and I knew right away that we were going to have to start taking a new line. So I started cutting down a little bit earlier. When a battle like this is going on, you’ve really got to make the right choice. You don’t have a whole lot of time to really make up your mind. That’s the thing with tonight. The ruts start really early, so if you protect your line you square up and he just hits his marks so he’s right next to me. It’s so tough, especially when lappers are coming. You hit them at a bad spot, he catches right back up and he feeds from that and he gets confident. It’s definitely not easy out there but I never looked back. I was hitting my marks and I was just doing my thing the entire time. In my eyes that’s something champions do. He’s really good at that stuff, too. That’s why he’s such a good competitor.
