Ken Roczen has started seasons strong before, he’s led the points before. Considering it’s a sample size of just four races, his strong start to 2025 Monster Energy AMA Supercross should be greeted with measured tones. But this isn’t just about math, points leads or results. There are other intangibles to Roczen’s game this year that provide even more hope. Glendale, while again not a win, packed more examples.
First, Ken is strong from start to finish. Even when he’s feeling bad, Ken is lethal early in a race. When he’s having problems, it shows up later. When he’s right he can maintain that pace to the end, and this year he’s been doggedly determined down the stretch. Ken hasn’t faded one bit.
Second, he’s aggressive. Ken is not one to bang bars very often, but in the second race of Glendale’s triple crown, he came into turn one way hot on the inside, barreled into a bunch of riders, and snagged a tuff block. Ken laughed and said that was an accident, and he was even yelling at Jett Lawrence to warn him a collision was coming. Yes, that part was an accident, but what Ken did after that speaks volumes. He never gave up on it, powered through the carnage and then made sure to position his bike in front of Lawrence to get ahead of his young rival. Ken was aggressive! That move gave him the lead, and he took off from there and scored the victory.
Third, he’s going faster in qualifying. He usually doesn’t care about going fast during the day, such as at Anaheim 1 when he was 14th fastest but later landed on the podium. At Glendale though, with confidence blooming, Roczen was consistently on the board and ended up fourth overall. The guy is pushing it!
Third, he’s taking chances. In qualifying on Saturday, Justin Hill was the first 450 rider to jump that huge 84-foot triple across the start. Roczen quickly followed suit, and he jumped it several more times in the races. After so many injuries and surgeries, it was understandable for Kenny to be a little gun shy about aggressive racing, qualifying hot laps and big leaps. That’s all starting to go away.
Want an example of all of this? Listen to the work Ken put it to win a late-race battle with Justin Barcia and Justin Hill to get to the overall podium.
“Both of the Justins were doing good,” he said in the post-race press conference “Hill kind of took me high a few times, too. My biggest problem was just messing up some of the rhythms. I was trying to push through it, and I had to hit everything super perfect to be able to do it, so I was just trying to push through it a little bit too much, sometimes, and I'll clip the triple before going big over the big one over the start straight. I messed it up so many times. So, then I was yo-yoing and putting in a lot of work to get close to him. I did get the message that we need Barcia. Then it was two laps to go or so and I just like, I wanted it really, really bad.”
Roczen did get the podium, but you could sense a slight shift. Instead of being elated with digging his way up to a podium spot, he started to wonder what might have been.
“In the end, podium, it’s kind of funny that I’m bummed out on a third, you know what I mean?” he said to Steve Matthes. “I think I could have been at least second, but I’m nitpicking here, you know what I mean?”
We do know. Ken now feels like a podium is merely good and wins are in play. Would be good to get some while you’re hot, and Ken definitely is right now.
