Ken Roczen and RCH Suzuki dominate Spring Creek MX

RCH Suzuki Factory Racing’s Ken Roczen pulled-off his fifth perfect 1-1 victory of the season at the weekend’s 2016 Lucas Oil Pro Motocross Championship eighth round at Spring Creek in Millville, USA.

The 22-year-old German raced his # 94 RCH Soaring Eagle/ Jimmy John’s/ Suzuki Factory RM-Z450 to another double race win and increased his lead in the series to 55 points with four rounds remaining.

When the starting gate dropped on the first 450 Class moto of the day, Roczen secured his footing near the front of the field and spent much of the opening lap stalking Justin Barcia for second. After making the pass on Barcia, just before completing the first lap, he set his sights on Southwick winner Eli Tomac for the top spot.

The 2014 Pro Motocross Champion reeled-in Tomac near the one-third mark and never looked back. By the time the chequered flag waved on the first premier class moto of the day, Roczen had stretched his lead to nearly eight seconds before collecting his 12th moto win of the season.

While he was able to go two-for-two and win the second moto of the day and his13th of the season by almost 30 seconds, the victory came with a bit of a twist:

Said Roczen: “Took the first moto after some battling with Eli (Tomac). Second moto, we got off to a rough start. I almost went down and then in the second turn, I bent my shifter really bad and I missed shifting a bunch of times. It was pretty sketchy so I tried not to shift too much and ride a safe race. I fought my way to the front again and we came away with another win. That’s what we’re shooting for every single weekend no matter how big the gap is and we pulled it off.

“I’m a racer so my mind is just getting to the front. At first, I didn’t know what was going on. I mis-shifted and almost went over the bars twice. I was like ‘what the heck?’ And then I looked down and the thing (shifter) didn’t look right. So, from then on, I just kind of put my rear-end back and kept it in third and went wherever the other guys didn’t go to try and make passes.”


Related Motorsport Articles

84,520 articles