Where's Roczen?
T
he recently crowned 2026
Monster Energy AMA Super-
cross Champion, Ken Roczen,
was absent from the opening
round of the 2026 AMA Pro Mo-
tocross Championship. Roczen
is a two-time 450MX Cham-
pion, and he last competed in
a full outdoor series in 2022,
finishing fourth overall. He has
been on a majority Supercross-
only contract since signing with
the Progressive/Ecstar Suzuki
team back in 2023 but usually
races a handful of rounds dur
-
ing the summer outdoor series.
Most recently, he competed
at the Unadilla round in 2025,
where he finished 13th overall
with 5-38 scores.
"As of right now, no," Roczen
told Ricky Carmichael on the
Motorsports on NBC podcast
when asked if he'd be racing
any rounds of Pro Motocross
this year. "You never know what
type of crazy stuff I'm going to
pull here in a few weeks, but
right now I really have no desire
[to race]."
After skipping round one at
Fox Raceway, Roczen slipped to
second behind Hunter Lawrence
in the combined Monster Energy
AMA SuperMotocross World
Championship points standings.
He is expected to compete in
the Playoff rounds of the Super
-
Motocross World Championship
later this year.
CN
VOLUME ISSUE JUNE , P33
Ken Roczen says he doesn't plan
to race any outdoor Pro Motocross
rounds this year.
Riders Against
One-Bike Rule
A
s MotoGP and the MSMA
edge toward a deal for 2027
and beyond, one possibility that
has arisen from the discus-
sions is that the series adopts
a one-bike rule, similar to that in
WorldSBK. The idea was univer-
sally loathed by riders.
"It's a really bad idea," said
Pedro Acosta. "I understand
the championship and brands
want the costs to go down. The
problem is now this means if
you crash in warmup, you won't
race. If you crash in FP2, you
won't make qualifying. And if
you crash in FP1, which is quite
easy to do because you're not
using the best tire option, you
destroy the bike and don't go to
pre-qualifying. I understand Mo
-
toGP is expensive. But [there's
no] way that three guys in the
box rebuild the bike from zero
in three hours. I can understand
you only use one bike per ses-
sion maybe. But you need to
have a spare bike in the back-
ground just for these cases. If
not, your weekend already ends
on day one."
Neil Morrison
Pedro Acosta,
among other
MotoGP racers, is
not thrilled about the
idea of going to a
one-bike rule.
