Photo by: Simon Cudby
After the red flag staggered restart during the 450 main event at the 2019 Glendale SX, Ken Roczen was leading with Jason Anderson all over him trying to take over the lead. After some laps of following Kenny, El Hombre ran low on patience and forced an aggressive pass that left the #94 on the ground picking up his HRC 450. Jason ended up being passed later by Blake Baggett to finish 2nd, while Kenny remounted and was able to cross the line in 3rd.
I really did not think the pass was too bad and definitely not out of character for an inpatient Jason Anderson, but after the race the champ did not own it. Instead he uncharacteristically apologized more than once about the incident in the post race interviews. “Honestly, I don’t think that’s how you race,” Anderson said to Daniel Blair on the podium after the race. “I was a little overly aggressive and I was kind of embarrassed after the whole incident happened. I want to apologize. Hopefully in the next race I’ll be able to not do something like that and race straight up. I feel really bad.”
We are used to hearing from a very unapologetic Jason Anderson, so that was a very strange statement to listen to from Anderson. It leads me to believe he maybe told himself heading into the 2019 season that he was going to cut out some of the overly aggressive passes and he likely did not like that he had fell off the wagon. Whatever the reason for the apology, it was definitely out of character for the #1 and will be interesting to see how the next few rounds go and if there are any more fireworks between he and Kenny moving forward.
Kenny talked about the incident in the post race press conference. You can see the crash and hear what Kenny’s post race response was in the video below.
