The 14th round of the 2021 Monster Energy Supercross championship is in the books and it was Team Honda HRC’s Ken Roczen taking the win in 450SX action with Justin Cooper taking a wire-to-wire victory in an action-packed 250SX West main event. The winners were available to the media following the race for this Debrief interview. 

450SX

Image: Octopi Media.

Saturday was obviously not great and tonight went great, what was the change, what was the difference? 

Well, everytime we go race, first off the sports freaking hard, you know what I mean? There’s just different variables all the time, could be track, could be bike and we kind of threw a lot at me for this coming round also with the bike and tried to make some changes throughout all three practices and stuck with something that was good and better. But at first, it’s unproven right, until you race it and race good on it. In general though Saturday was just a tough one and like I said I wasn’t really myself, just struggling and struggling and couldn’t really do anything on the track. But the most important thing, and this is not an excuse whatsoever, but today things turned around. I just never lose hope you know what I mean? You see the points and everything fizzling away but at some point, I’ve gotta kind of look away from that because in the last few rounds I’ve had just a tough time in general. At some point, you’ve gotta just let go of that as well and kind of regroup. You can see things can turn around real quick and this is what we always say but mostly I’m just trying to stay calm and not get over my head here. Same with the win tonight even though this came just at the right time and we all needed it, at the same time it’s not like we have a lot of racing left but we’ve gotta make it through a few more rounds and I just want to do my thing and try hard. I’ll give my best to see what we can do and hopefully, it works out, and if not, so be it.

It was an important 1-2 for Honda today, at what point if any do team tactics potentially come into play? Does that get discussed at some point soon considering the points situation?

I mean that would be something to ask the team to be honest. I don’t mess with that at all because I try to just go out, race and win on my own terms. But of course, I guess maybe it kind of helps when say I’m leading, Chase [Sexton] is third and Cooper [Webb] is second it kind of helps that Chase is fit, he’s strong, he’s young and wants to win essentially. As far as tactics, we don’t do stuff like that where you take someone down, we just go and race. So even Saturday, I mean Chase was the gate pick in front of me and I didn’t even – there was no such thing as ‘Hey, let me pick the rut that’s better’ or whatever, we just don’t do things like that. So honestly this would be a question to ask the team. I try to win on my own terms and the rest is kind of something that I don’t really I guess have that much control of.

Can you talk about what you’ll do during now and the next race to keep yourself in a good head space and finding the balance between focusing on the race in front of you and the championship? 

Honestly between now and the next race I honestly will try to relax as much as possible. You cannot be, or I don’t like to be in this ‘on state’ all the time. I feel like it’s super draining, so unless it’s race day or the night before, even the night before actually, as long as it’s not race day I try to take it super easy, kind of enjoy what we did tonight and work on my body because the turn around now is pretty quick. Even the way the track is out here, it’s a little bit more obviously outdoor style, we have a lot of big jumps to flat land and it’s tough on your body. So I’m just trying to get the body all back in check try to recover as much as possible, get some soft tissue work in and more just focus on the recovery side of things and let the mind rest as well just to be able to turn it all back on again for Saturday.

This is our first residency at a track like this, do you feel like so far this has been more demanding physically? 

I think so, the track gets pretty rough but at the same time I really enjoy it. I was actually talking to Justin Brayton about it earlier, because he felt like from the outside watching it didn’t really feel like a Supercross, but for me riding it, because we have whoops, we have rhythm sections, though there’s some other areas that are super fast I do still feel pretty supercrossy. Having said that I love these kind of speedway, I think it’s fun to have something different, but I was hoping that the lighting was going to be better again, it’s just not good enough. It’s not the greatest out there, I was hoping that compared to Daytona with the dirt not being so dark, I was hoping that it was going to affect it and be better. I don’t know if it was just me but I think that the vision out there could be better.

 We all know the highs and lows you have experienced over the last handful of years, but the biggest thing is now, you’re back into championship contention. Has there been any big moment or something maybe you didn’t realize the pressure that’s different now than spending two years recovering? Is it different than what you remember? 

No not really, because I’ve been in championship situations before and it’s harder some days than others but I always try to go back to works for me is that I don’t feel like I need to prove myself anymore or anything like that and I just want to be able to enjoy the moment that I’m in. It’s been a long time and it’s never been for me in Supercross that I was this close to a championship this late in the season. So I really just am trying to enjoy the battle and putting up a fight all the way to the end. You know, not letting him creep away because lately he’s creeping away and finally I was able to take a big chunk out of it today. So I try and just go back to the basics of why we started all this, because we have fun. Some nights are tough, you gotta gather your thoughts and make the best of it. Because not every night you feel the same and it’s really difficult to always be there. I’ve made the best of it and sure, have I had some bad races, absolutely, but I’ve also had some really good races and I’m lucky enough to be- as of right now me and Cooper [Webb] are the only ones in the position to really battle for this championship. I mean anything can always happen and Eli [Tomac] can come really close but at the same time I go back to ‘Hey, I must have done something right’ you know?

One-hundred percent, yeah, one-hundred percent. Most of the time, I think halfway through the season before, I would be like 25, 30, 40 points down or something like that and it’s just not the same. You go out there and you race for wins and what not but still the best feeling is when you’re able to fight for a championship. It just makes it different there’s more opportunity and it’s fun.

250SX West

Image: Octopi Media.

You mentioned on the podium after the race after going by and seeing Cameron [McAdoo] down and then the red flag and him back on the gate, how that kind of took you out of your head space before the next restart. Can you talk about that and has the team mentioned if they’re exploring if that was allowed? 

Yeah, I mean always when you’re winning a race and it gets red flagged it’s always hard to regroup and try to do the same thing. It’s not often where you can go back to back to put yourself in a good position, especially in a main event where all the pressure is. So yeah, I was actually really glad to see that Cameron was there and ready to race, I just saw the crash on Instagram and I’ve never seen a crash that gnarly. So props to him for even being able to get up on his own power, because that was definitely gnarly. But back to my mindset before the race you just gotta put yourself back in the zone and try to calm down, keep your heart rate down and just [execute like] you did before. Definitely hard to do and glad I was able to put myself in another good position to get out front again in the second start.

What about the fact that McAdoo was allowed to line back up, did you have any questions about that before the restart? 

Yeah I was thinking about it and I’ve never seen it done in Supercross, I don’t believe, so yeah I don’t know if they were waiting on a call or whatever but it was a while. So I was kind of wondering what was going on out there and was ready [to go] you didn’t want to let the heart rate go down and you know, not be ready to race. I was in a hurry to get back out there I was sweatin’, but I guess they were making a call or something, so it was just a long time on the gate. But it was good to see that he was there ready to race.