Leading the points 'just a dream come true' three rounds in.
Few could have predicted that Ken Roczen would be wearing the 450SX red plate three rounds into the 2025 season, which comes as a result of class-best consistency with 2-4-2 results across the pair of Anaheim races and San Diego. This is how and why he’s managed to enter Glendale with the points lead.
Coming into Monster Energy Supercross this year, Roczen had a reserved confidence about him, and now with things clicking – even if he hasn’t picked up a main event victory this year just yet – he’s making the most of this current run of success and enjoying the moment.
“I’m just beyond stoked to be on the podium, honestly,” Roczen commented following A2. “It’s just been, it’s been a dream. I was reminiscing about the red plate last week [in San Diego], how, you know, if I would have made the pass for third, I could have shared it with Eli [Tomac], which would have been really rad.
“Besides having the red plate frequently in 2022, I haven’t really had a taste of it in a long time, and especially not on yellow, so it’s just a dream come true. And honestly, Anaheim 2 is a little bit of a funky one. Like I just feel, I try not to be, I just feel a little bit more anxious of what happened in 2017… it’s just kind of lingering a little bit. In practice and stuff, I’m just a little careful.”
After departing the powerful Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) organization at the end of 2022, Roczen found a new home at Dustin Pipes’ HEP Motorsports-operated Progressive Insurance Ecstar Suzuki team, reunited with the RM-Z450 and continuing to be competitive despite the aging platform.
Still, in his third term at HEP and already with a World Supercross Championship (WSX) to their credit together in 2023, the 30-year-old German acknowledges that he still has the potential to contend for that elusive 450SX crown.
“I think 2021 was the last time I was really hunting for the championship,” Roczen recalled. “It seems like so long ago, but it really isn’t, so deep down inside me I think I can [contend for the title in 2025], but I really just need to put it together over the whole season. That makes me want to not worry about it too much.
“I’ve been in these shoes a lot, but lately we’ve been pretty far off the championship. I wouldn’t be out here if I didn’t believe I could still do something about it, but I’m not too worried, I’m just going to take it weekend by weekend. I haven’t been on the podium a whole lot in the last few years, so my goals are just weekend after weekend to be on the box.”
Suzuki made a factory-specification transmission available for Roczen and the HEP team late in the pre-season, which has led to significant improvements on track with taller first and second gears. Plus, a transfer to Mark Johnson’s REP Suspension using KYB – rather than the Showa that he had been using last year – has also been an important step forward in 2025.
“Motor-wise, the transmission made a huge difference,” he explained. “I probably had around two and a half or three weeks on it [in the pre-season], but it helped me out a lot. It’s not like it’s all of a sudden going to make me 20 seconds faster, but I enjoyed having that transmission in. We tried some stuff a couple of years ago, but we have now finally had some stuff become available.”
“Suspension-wise, going with REP, we’ve done a bit of testing and made very targeted adjustments. I feel like I know my bike very well right now, but there’s always going to be something to work on. I haven’t really made that many clicker changes over the last few weeks, so overall I’ve just been pretty comfortable on the bike and looking for reliability in it.”
Three rounds in and Roczen has continued to develop his setting and general direction, which led to further shock adjustments ahead of Anaheim 2, but he eventually went back to his base setting prior to the final practice. It proved to be the correct decision in finishing second place on the podium in mixed, technical conditions.
“We tried some things this week and I had a new shock in,” Roczen added. “And for the last practice, I just kind of went back to my base and that was a massive, or that was the perfect decision we could have made as well, just because it felt a lot more familiar to me, so it seemed like everything that we have done today was a success.”