WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
VOL. 55 ISSUE 1 JANUARY 9, 2018 P61
Briefly...
dirt almost gets torn up worse out
of the gate," Honda HRC Team
rider Cole Seely said. "It's like we
have more wheel spin or some-
thing, and it really eats the dirt
up, which is obviously new to all
of us."
THE SURPRISING
ROCZEN
The difficulty of making up time on
the A-I track layout made Honda's
Ken Roczen's performance even
more impressive. To start the
day, Roczen surprised just about
everybody when he threw down
the fastest qualifying time of the
afternoon just a couple of laps
before the end of qualifying. His
52.406 put him a tenth of a sec-
ond in front of Tomac's 52.506,
followed by Justin Barcia's 52.604
and Jason Anderson's 52.611. In
fact, the top 10 were separated
by less than 1.1 seconds. Roczen
put the pack on notice that he still
had world-class speed despite his
arm injury suffered at Anaheim II
almost a year ago. But Roczen's
starts weren't fantastic. In the
heat, Roczen worked his way up
to third by the finish after a start
that left him mired in the pack on
the opening lap. But at one point
even in that short heat, he was
battling to go around eventual win-
ner Justin Barcia, who nearly put
Roczen on the ground, costing
Roczen a couple of spots. In the
main event, Roczen started even
worse, rounding the first official
lap in 12th. Then he lost his helmet
visor—attached on his Fox helmet
with magnets designed to allow
the visor to break away easily (evi-
dently too easily) in a fall—when
While McElrath had even more nerves prior to the
race this year, on the track he was calm, cool and col-
lected as he rode to the first 250SX win of 2018 and
snared the points lead for the second year in a row.
"We've really got everything out of it that we could,"
McElrath said. "We learned from last year, and it's early
in the season, but I mean, it was A-I and I had more
Shane McElrath (28) rode a
near-perfect race en route
to the 250SX West main
victory. Aaron Plessinger
tried chasing him down but
had to settle for second.
