Nobody had an answer for the #94 at round one. Photo by: Hoppenworld
Heading into the 2015 Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship, RCH / Soaring Eagle / Jimmy Johns / Suzuki’s Ken Roczen had the red background #1 plate but unfortunately was forced to begin his title defense with no momentum from a rough Supercross season and a nagging back injury. With that, Kenny started 2015 with a twelfth overall at Hangtown and went on to score just one overall win in his bid to defend the 450MX Championship he earned in 2014. It was a rough start to the season, and in the end, the German was forced to surrender the #1 plate to Red Bull / KTM’s Ryan Dungey.
Fast forward a year to last Saturday and Kenny showed up for the 2016 Hangtown National with a head full of steam from winning three of the last four Supercross races and possibly as fit as we have ever seen him. With the #94 back on his bike, Kenny went out, quickly passed his way to lead and ran away with dominant wins in both motos. Kenny was on another level, recording his first 1-1 since way back at the 2014 Red Bud National. This was no doubt a statement race from the former Champion and that statement was, “I want my #1 plate back.”
After the race, Kenny sat down and answered some questions.
Ken, 1-1 on the day today. How do you feel today went for you?
Good! Obviously, like I said on the podium, we’re in a way better position than we were last year. Things were definitely not working out for us, especially coming in with an injury, but that’s all behind us. I can finally go out… I’m pretty happy with the bike and the way me and the team are working together. I can focus on my riding now. I think that makes a big difference. I’ve always done good at Hangtown for some reason, even though today was very different I would say. It was a lot harder [the soil] than it usually is. I think they did that because of possible rain coming in. It actually got pretty sketchy there in the second moto. Obviously it gets rough, but it was very notchy, very hard in certain spots that made it quite a bit different. It’s good to get that first one out of the way. It’s always kind of tough coming in here. We only have the one weekend off, but it is a new season and everybody’s points are put back to zero, and everyone has a new chance at another title. What I want to do for the whole season is I want to bring it to every single weekend. Last year, I played catch up all the time. We were in a bad place, where right now I feel like I can go from weekend to weekend. It’s progressing my riding and how I feel. It’s going to be a hard battle—it’s just the first race—and I’m super happy that I put myself in a good position. Like I said, long year and it’s going to be a lot of good racing.
You’ve won championships before so it’s not a big surprise that you’re winning, but did you surprise yourself on how you rode away from everyone today?
I don’t know if “surprised” is the best word to say. I think everybody coming into this race has a little bit of an empty mind. Sometimes you can feel great and then you get smoked, or the other way around: you don’t feel that great and you win. I think everybody is going to get better from here on out. It’s the first race and there were a lot of jitters for a lot of people. It’s not that I surprised myself, but I am very positive about today obviously. It’s good to take that momentum and especially not to start way back in the points like I was last year. I think that’s the biggest difference.
Does this kind of riding still kind of aggravate your back a little bit? I saw you stretching during the parade lap.
Every once in a while it will bug me a little bit, but it cannot get any worse; put it that way. The fracture’s there and people live with it their whole life.
Then nothing like last year?
No! Last year was a little bit different, that’s for sure.
You scored your first win here in 2014 finishing 1-1, and [Ryan] Dungey finished 2-2. What is it about your riding style and this track that puts you ahead of him here? This is the only track he has not won at.
I don’t know. I think a good rider has to be good on any soil to begin with. I don’t know; I’m a rider that’s solid no matter what dirt I ride on. It just happens to be that we come here and I find myself in first and he’s in second, or like Eli [Tomac] last year—he won. It’s just the way it is. It doesn’t necessarily mean anything, and obviously we have a lot of racing left. You never know what’s going to happen at the next few races.
Talk about how different the track was today. Normally they disk it really deep and the bumps form differently. The ruts get deep and there’s bumps inside the ruts, but today was different because of the rain in the forecast. Can you talk about the differences, and was it different for you?
Last night or this morning—whenever it was—it seemed like they sealed the track pretty good. You never know when there’s a bad storm coming and it could rain pretty heavy. We’ve had previously in years—I think Indiana one year—where they rip it too deep, it gets swamped and it’s almost unridable. I think they were smart about it. Obviously, we got lucky with the weather. It will always get rough because of how many riders are riding out there, but it gets a lot harder. It just seems like the bumps aren’t necessarily growing, but the dirt gets harder, and it sometimes makes it uncomfortable for us just because we usually ride a stiffer suspension setting ’cause we’re not used to riding really hard tracks honestly. Most of the time we go to Nationals it’s ripped really deep. Some of the parts actually got really dry. That’s what was kind of sketchy. With two laps to go I almost crashed on the downhill ’cause I hit a bad kicker and almost went over the bars. The track just has no give. There’s a bump and you’re definitely not going to move the bump.
In the first moto you had a bit of a gap before Dungey got into second, but in the second moto you took the lead away from him and ran away with it. Do you take any mental boost from that today?
Well, both motos were pretty much the same. Actually, in the first moto, I was behind him too and I just kind of—I don’t know how or what I did—made some moves happen and found myself right at the front pretty quick. The second moto, I was the same way, and I actually didn’t think I was riding that good in the middle. Then, towards the end, I switched up my lines a lot. It seemed like I stuck to the same line over and over even though I didn’t like it. (laughs) I switched it up a little bit and made it a lot rounder so I could keep my momentum up a lot more which helped me out with my riding, and overall I picked up speed a little bit.
Thanks, Ken, and congratulations. We’ll see you next week.
Thank you.
