VOL. 52 ISSUE 33 AUGUST 18, 2015 P39
ROCZEN'S WOES
I
t's no secret that RCH
Suzuki's Ken Roczen has
been struggling, especially
outdoors, in 2015. The
defending 450cc champ
started the season look-
ing absolutely terrible (by
Roczen's standards) in the
first moto at Hangtown,
mainly because of a back
injury, and once he got up
to speed, he started to feel
that his RM-Z450's setup
wasn't right for him. He
reportedly rode fellow Su-
zuki racer Blake Baggett's
bike at Baggett's track in
Florida and liked his set-
tings a lot more, and then
he began working with
his RCH team—and to an
extent with the Yoshimura
Suzuki squad—to get his
bike working like Baggett's.
This led him down the path
to where he is now—running standard spring/oil
Showa forks. (Baggett, however, runs air forks.)
Simply put, Roczen seems to feel more comfort-
able with those forks than he did with the factory
Showa SFF Air forks that he started out with.
While the production Suzuki RM-Z450 comes
with Showa SFF Air forks stock, it should be
noted that the most people don't ride a bike like
Ken Roczen. In short, the air forks are getting
plenty of positive reviews from motocross mortals,
but some of the immortals are struggling with
the factory version of those forks, including Trey
Canard over at Honda, which led to Canard, Eli
Tomac and then Cole Seely all switching to KYB
air forks this year.
Since switching to the spring/oil forks at Un-
adilla, Roczen has scored three second-place fin-
ishes in the last four motos, and he hasn't finished
that well since winning High Point with a 2-1 score
at round five.
Looking ahead, Roczen says he's going to take
some time off this off-season to get "tuned up" for
2016. He's not racing the USGP at Glen Helen,
nor the Motocross of Nations for Germany, and
likely not the Red Bull Straight Rhythm or even the
Monster Energy Cup because he's having surgery
to fix his back on the 31st of this month, and he's
having his wisdom teeth pulled.
"I need to see how the recovery goes," Roc-
zen said. "I don't think it's going to be anything
really crazy that they're going to do on the back,
but you never know. People handle things differ-
ently. So just want to get that done and see how
I feel. I also need to get my wisdom teeth pulled.
I've been struggling with that for quite a while. I
could have done it in between when we had an
off weekend, but some people are out for a week
or two, some people just a few days. So I didn't
know. I need to get a full tune-up."
Another rumor in the pits is that Roczen is in
talks in some capacity with Honda.
Steve Cox
Ken Roczen is going to
take the "off season"
literally this year. He
doesn't plan being "on"
the bike racing much
after the Nationals.
PHOTOGRAPHY
BY
STEVE
COX
