Roczen's Team Manager Larry Brooks: "It’s been this way for years and years and now we just got 18 points taken away from us because of a lapped rider and a DNF."
Ken Roczen's incredible start to 2025 has been derailed by a crash in lapped traffic over the weekend in Tampa. The Progressive Ecstar Suzuki rider was in a battle with Cooper Webb for third place as they approached Tristan Lane and Jeremy Hand, who were battling for 17th and 18th. Roczen tried to jump into the sand between the two of them but tangled with Hand, sending both down to the ground. Lane then crashed as Roczen's bike veered into his, and Roczen was extremely lucky that Lane's bike managed to bounce and fly over him, and not cause an injury.
Damage was done, though, as the collision with Hand bent the sprocket on his bike. Roczen's Team Manager Larry Brooks did not hold back in his post-race comments in a Suzuki press release.
“It would have been a great night,” reported Larry Brooks, Team Manager for the Twisted Tea/H.E.P. Motorsports/Suzuki presented by Progressive Insurance Team. “We kind of struggled during the day, even struggled in the heat races, then we kind of got it together in the main event. But a lapped rider jumped on top of Ken Roczen and bent the rear sprocket. The AMA does not do anything to penalize the riders that are being lapped; they only give them a blue flag and let them kind of dictate what they want to do. And it hasn’t worked. It’s been this way for years and years and now we just got 18 points taken away from us because of a lapped rider and a DNF. It’s super disappointing. Ken Roczen was riding really good, and for him to have a rider jump on him – it’s just really disappointing. It is the sanctioning body’s job to take care of the lapped riders and all the officiating, and it just seems like we have not been taken care of. They are here to keep the riders safe, and I don’t think that happened tonight. It put our rider in danger, that’s for sure. But we’ll come back next week stronger and better. We still have a lot of racing left.”
Roczen's competitors like Cooper Webb and Jason Anderson also weighed in on the topic in the post race press conference, asking for penalties for lapped riders. We've clipped their comments below.
