Page 44 - Issue_78

KEN ROCZEN
450 MX / 5TH
IMAGE / KILPATRICK WORDS / MATTINGLY DESIGN / MOTOPLAYGROUND
>> Summer time is just around the corner, with the dreary days of winter seemingly pushed in the rearview. The days of placing the ngers behind the exhaust, revving the engine to thaw them out, are long gone; it’s now time for the umbrellas to come about behind the starting and pit boards to constantly wave, in order for each respective riders body temperature to calm down. Ken Roczen has been salivating at the thought of the outdoor season, well before the SX season even began. The more rugged the element, and more outlandish the variables Mother Nature can provide, the higher his morale goes. The track couldn’t get any better for the beginning of practice, as you could seemingly place the wheels anywhere you wanted
to. He would ourish, but his laptimes would steadily increase at the session would go on. Rounding out quali cation with a thumbs-up mentality, he looked forward to what the motos would provide. Off the gate they went, forty of the top motocrosser’s from around the globe jockeying into turn one. He would stand his ground, coming across the green ag in rst. In
a bit of a joust with Eli Tomac the two would almost be connected by chain links at times, never separating by more than a few feet. He crested the gradual roller that led onto the start straight near the halfway point, and he would feel a bit of pressure from behind; glancing over his right shoulder, as he shifted through the gears, he could see a faint image in the back ground; he knew he must remain on the gas in order to keep position. However, Tomac would work his way around, and Musquin would then follow suit. A solid ride, many questioned if he could hold onto third; he would do so, holding his composure for the nal ve minutes or so, and nish the moto in third. The gate would collapse for the second moto, and he immediately tried to veer left to pinch off as much of the pack as he could. It would work, as he scrapped the entire lap in a decent position, until a faint sound of the motor forced him into the pit area. Coming through the nish line section in the following laps, he would toy with both inside and outside lines, truly seeing to which track would be the fastest. He and Nicoletti would nd each other, as they looked to play a game of cat and mouse, while Roczen had charged from a lucrative thirty- fth place position early on. One would come down the steep hills on the in- side, ducking away to the inside berm; meanwhile he would rally on the outside, and although give a bit of length, would catch him at the top, due to a bit of increased power outage. Rally- ing, as the clock would surpass the twenty-minute mark, his arms and lungs began to fatigue a bit; but he wouldn’t fold, never relinquishing his position to Blake Baggett, who’d also had trouble early-on. As the checkered ag would y, he would take the eighth place score for the moto, and fth place overall.
44 GRITMOTO • MAY 27, 2018