“I don’t win that much anymore,” said Ken Roczen on the podium. The former phenom, the rider once expected to take over the sport and take Honda back to the promised land, a rider where expectations were so high that anything less than a win was considered a disappointment, is now in a different stage of his career. Wins are not tear offs. Wins are not just business as usual. Wins are special, and he knows he needs to soak it up
“Yeah it doesn’t happen that much anymore, so I take these moments in so deeply,” he said in the post-race press conference. “Like I said, we’ve been riding really good, I’ve been having not the best luck coming around the first turn. That’s kinda been my Achilles heel. This week I got off to a super good start, I probably got on the brakes a little early, but I was able to sneak around the inside. I got to ride my own race. It was tricky out there. It started out really wet, but it got drier as the night went on. There were spots on the track where you had to be really careful. I wasn’t really checking the times, I was just going lap by lap.”
Roczen has won a few times in Glendale now, including a dominating Triple Crown sweep a few years back that appeared to stamp him as a Glendale specialist. But he actually says it’s not the case. Why does he do so well on this dirt?
“Good question! Because honestly, I felt like a fish out of water all day,” he says. “To be honest, it just didn't come as natural to me as in the past few weeks, like in Detroit, I just felt pretty comfortable right away and I didn't here. So I'm honestly a little bit surprised that the night actually went the way it went.”
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Align Media ![Roczen takes his 22nd 450SX main event win, which ties him with Cooper Webb for tenth on the all-time premier class AMA Supercross wins list.]()
Roczen takes his 22nd 450SX main event win, which ties him with Cooper Webb for tenth on the all-time premier class AMA Supercross wins list. Align Media ![]()
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Then Kenny laughed that maybe his old, old, old memories of hard packed soil on his family’s track in Germany paid off. He nodded over to Jett Lawrence, who also trained at Roczen’s house.
“I mean, Jett knows how my dad's track is and it's identical to this," Roczen said. "Granted, it's a long time ago now, but I think some things are just burned into your brain. So maybe that has something to do with it.”
What it has more to do with is Roczen’s abilities, now, to turn bad days into good ones. In fact, in that aspect, he’s probably a better racer than he was a half-dozen years ago. In those days, his abilities made him unstoppable when things were good, but things got frustrating outside of that zone.
“The mindset and the comfort for me personally is way different than 10 years ago, that's for sure,” he says. “And even, just even from a few years ago, I honestly feel like I'm now more ready than ever to battle for a championship than I've ever felt in the past. And that's a nice feeling to have. So I just value a lot of things that I used to stress about. Like practice. Every weekend is a bit different, and sometimes you need to force yourself to kind of like, quit being the way you are right now and just focus on the night show. So, it just really depends. Sometimes I wake up on the wrong side of the bed and then it just makes things a lot harder. I feel like today was honestly one of those days a little bit. I think I just know how to deal better with it honestly. It's just, an experience thing, I think. I wish I would have that mentality a lot sooner than now, but I'm almost 30!”
Glendale - 450SX Main Event
February 10, 2024| Rider | Time | Interval | Best Lap | Hometown | Bike | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |  Ken Roczen | 20 Laps | 1:04.172 | Mattstedt, Germany  | Suzuki RM-Z450 | |
| 2 |  Jason Anderson | +4.781 | 1:04.189 | Edgewood, NM  | Kawasaki KX450SR | |
| 3 |  Jett Lawrence | +9.248 | 1:04.375 | Landsborough, Australia  | Honda CRF450R | |
| 4 |  Eli Tomac | +14.369 | 1:04.323 | Cortez, CO | Yamaha YZ450F | |
| 5 |  Hunter Lawrence | +18.749 | 1:04.890 | Landsborough, Australia | Honda CRF450R |
Unfortunately, Kenny has been testing this new-found patience a little too much this year, which bad starts and untimely crashes costing him a lot of points in the early going. Now it’s flipping for him. Consider that in San Diego, he crashed while leading with Aaron Plessinger right behind him. In Glendale, Plessinger was right behind again, but this time he was one who crashed, and that gifted Roczen a sizable lead.
“It is a bit frustrating,” says Roczen before switching back into calm mode. “Some things are a little bit, I mean, you kind of make your own luck, you know what I mean? But some things are just a little bit out of control.”
But even that, even those first-turn crashes or bad starts, don’t bother him like bad races in the past.
“I've left way more frustrated before where I felt like crap," he said. "I was riding like crap and it just sucks ending on a bad note on a race night. Nonetheless, whether I go down on the first turn or not, I've just always left it out there and, charged how long I could. When you feel strong, too, and you do everything in your power to make the best of the situation, then that angriness or frustration just leaves me a lot sooner. I just chalk it up to, it is what it is and we try again next weekend. So, I think I've just also gotten better at putting that aside. Yeah, [this year] some of the results were just not that great, but I felt like I was riding really well and that's in the end what I mainly focus on.”
