The Monster Energy AMA Supercross Season heads into the final stretch with the completion of the Birmingham Supercross. The event inside Protective Stadium paid points toward the 17-round Supercross season as well as toward the SMX World Championship. The Alabama track’s dirt was inconsistent and choked with large rocks. The unpredictable soil conditions put a premium on line selection and quick reaction times of the racers.
Ken Roczen (94) displayed incredible speed from the start of the day in Birmingham. Roczen earned top-three spots in both qualifying sessions and in the overall qualifying results. In his heat race, Roczen rounded the first corner just outside of the top five. Roczen drove forward past his competitors and put his Suzuki RM-Z450 into the lead at the heat race midpoint. Roczen held on for his fifth heat race win of the season (in addition to two Triple Crown Race wins).
In the main event, Roczen crossed the holeshot stripe in a disappointing 16th place, then launched a charge to the front that will likely be re-watched for years. With less than four minutes off the race clock Roczen reached fifth place and had no intention of anything less than a victory. Six minutes into the 20-minute plus one lap main event, Roczen put his Suzuki into second place.
The race announcer and former Suzuki racer James Stewart commentated that Roczen has been riding really good all season and hasn’t adjusted his bike settings in nearly a year. Roczen went to work and posted the race’s fastest lap time, more than half a second quicker than the nearest competitor. As the ruts deepened and heavy rocks surfaced, Roczen steadily eroded the gap to the lead. He cut the gap to less than three seconds before a few minor mistakes late in the race halted Roczen’s progress. Roczen kept the pressure on and took the checkered flag in second place. The Birmingham points moved Roczen up one position in the championship standings and the pace demonstrated that Ken Roczen will be a title threat through the final stretch of the season.
“Alright Birmingham is done and dusted. We had a really good day overall,” said Roczen. “In [qualifying] I was always up on the board in the top three or so. The track ended up being trickier than I originally thought; the rhythms were pretty basic, but we had a lot of different dirt. It was new dirt, it was pretty rocky; and not just little rocks, but big boulders. [Also], part of the track was really rutty and deep, and other parts were extremely dry and pebbly with no traction. So, it ended up making it quite difficult… My starts just weren’t there tonight, and it was a really big bummer starting at around 15th or so. It’s hard to win when you’re that far back. Luckily, I was really on one tonight… I was pretty fast all [through the] main event and was able to click guys off. I ended up coming in at second. I was catching [the rider ahead] quite good but the track, with how rocky it was; you didn’t even have to make a mistake, but it ended up being [similar to the result of a] mistake just by landing on a rock a little bit and shooting sideways.
So, I missed a couple of rhythms a couple of times, and the gap went back out to 5 seconds or so. I was able to get a little closer towards the end. Ultimately, I was really happy with the second place after that start. We rode amazingly tonight, and my bike worked well, too, so we’re on a good path.”
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