Ken Roczen & Suzuki Make a Tough Track Look Easy

#motocross #racing #sports
The 2024 Glendale Supercross proved to be a challenging one, with technical rhythm lanes and hard-packed conditions allowing for Ken Roczen and his Suzuki RM-Z450 to shine. Ken became the fifth new 450SX Main Event winner in the first six rounds of the 2024 Monster Energy Supercross season, which shows just how stacked the field is this year. In This Week in MXA, episode 165, presented by O’Neal Racing, Josh Mosiman talks about Ken’s impressive night, Nate Thrasher’s tough crash, the challenging Glendale track, and Jett Lawrence’s few mistakes. All the while, Josh, Dennis, Justin and Brian do some motos at the Mammoth Qualifier at Glen Helen.

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[Music] what’s up guys I’m Josh mosman welcome to this week in mxa episode number 165 presented by O’Neal racing today we are racing at Glenn Helen it’s the 2x promotions Mammoth qualifier the first mammoth qualifier of the year I’m riding the new 2024 and a half KTM 450 Factory Edition it’s got all the new gizmos and gadgets on it like the LI Pro ECU system it’s track lap times got the new frame new linkage all the goodies on it so I’m excited to see how it works in race conditions today this video we’re going to talk about the Glendale Supercross last night we had Trevor Nelson and Brian Converse there we got two strokes racing with us that’s posha revving up in the background and Dennis Stapleton Justin Lee Brian Madero some more guys are out here racing today let’s get into it all right before we get into today’s racing here at Glenn Helen talk a little bit about Glendale last night Ken roxon became the fifth winner in six races so far this season making it Ultra Ultra exciting really cool it must be the the Ken roxon diet the Paul Cino diet if you guys haven’t checked out that video I got to interview him at Anaheim 2 during press day he talked about what he’s eating and man Ken roxon is completely turned around his career now jumping on the HP Suzuki team he’s riding awesome he won the Indianapolis Supercross last year held that Kickstarter up on the podium this year no Kickstarter just throwing a massive whip over the finish line and leading the 450 Main Event wire to wire he was 21 points behind in the championship coming into round six so for him to get on the win maximizes the points he earned caught up to 15 points behind now jet Lawrence who is leading the 450 Championship but awesome to see that the cameras didn’t pay attention to Ken roxon too much since he was so far out front but every time you saw him he was carrying massive amounts of speed through Each corner seemed like he was locked in completely dialed in on uh on focused and making no mistakes and the corner speed he had was just insane last night the track was dry and slippery when it’s dry and slippery kind of like it is on some sections here today at Glenn Helen it’s hard to stop and get on the gas hard it’s hard to carry your momentum your rear wheel kicks out you lose a lot of momentum rear wheel spins out um so the key is carrying momentum that’s my key today so I don’t get arm pump here at Glenn Helen and that was Ken rox’s key last night Ultra smooth and pulled away to get the win jet Lawrence in the 450 main event he was actually making mistakes he cased the triple before the whoops twice like hard I don’t see anybody else case it all day at least not on TV he made mistakes and it kind of goes to show that when the track gets slippery as we got 50s going by when the track gets slippery it brings out a whole new element that’s why Supercross is so exciting cuz last weekend was soft rded this weekend Glendale wide open fast hard pack and slippery it took a couple of guys down like you saw Jordan Smith crash uh you also saw a couple other guys go down so Ken roxon congratulations good times now let’s get to some racing here [Music] all right first motos in the books I got a decent jump off the gate lost some traction Brian Madero ripped the start on our Suzuki 450 he led most of the Moto then dropped back to fifth I finished fourth Trevor Stewart got the win so looking forward to some more Redemption the next Moto skm 450 is Fast and the track is hard packed with all the rain we’ve had they pushed the mud off so it’s got a hard base underneath it hard slick not a lot of traction which means I got to chop the throttle and do everything I can to wait that rear end and not lose the the back end coming out of corner so that’s what I’m working on for next Moto talking more about last night’s Glendale Supercross I want to hone in on that technical triple in the middle of the ultra long Rhythm Section you guys remember it’s the only time we saw last night where the guys were Landing sitting down and then seat bouncing a triple in the middle of a rhythm Lane if anybody who knows Supercross knows that that does not happen very often you see guys seat bounce coming out of Corners all the time yeah no problem but when they seat have to slow down mid Rhythm Lane seat bounce just to get over a triple that tells you how Technical and how challenging that jump really is obviously Nate Thrasher he found out the hard way that you cannot hit it too fast and clip the top there’s no room for error on that jump he went for a ride but luckily for him the 250 West Coast series takes a six we break so uh that’s going to help him recover and hopefully get back on the track before Seattle Supercross but talking about that Rhythm Lane they have to slow down it’s not about how fast they go here at glennen or here at any in Southern California riding Paula or Paris when it comes to hitting a jump It’s all about speed and making it to The Landing you can case it you can overshoot it that jump no room for casing no room for overshooting you have to land perfectly on it and it’s not so much about how fast you’re going but how high you’re going and to do that and get that extra height you have to preload the suspension by seaing into the lip and then getting up higher so you can hit that small window of landing on the back side of it the lip was smaller The Landing was bigger and Dirt Works they’re very creative they made it very challenging for those guys and it was really a huge separator between the top guys and the Not Top [Music] guys all right so Moto 2 for me another fourth place I think I’m the fourth best guy today but uh this is Justin Lee this is the guy who’s behind the scenes on the mxa fantasy league app we just gave away an a full aer’s plastic kit to the winner of the Glendale Supercross obviously no Supercross this weekend so uh fantasy will take a break for one week and then pick back up but we’re excited about it if you haven’t downloaded it yet free to download free to play and uh Justin how cool has it been to see so many people playing on your app uh it’s pretty awesome h honestly you know developing something it takes a lot of time and a lot of effort so you know to see people coming over there and actually playing you know it it feels good inside yeah I think almost 12,000 people are playing right now so I’m honestly really impressed thankful for that I think it has to do with the awesome prizes we’re giving away full Triumph 250 brand new bike for the winner of all 31 rounds um so if you guys haven’t signed up yet you still can get in on that uh full set of tires for Max’s Tires for your van your truck full set of tires so that’s pretty awesome for second place in the in the championship for Super Motocross rounds all 31 rounds not just Supercross not just Outdoors but the whole season and then third place is getting a boon uh shopping spree for $500 so that’s pretty impressive and then weekly prizes every weekend Justin not only designs apps he he’s also behind the scenes on mxa website and he’s kind of our 300 test rider today uh on the KTM 3002 stroke what was it like when Jamie Ellis remapped this bike cuz you already liked it at Mammoth last year you raced it now he remapped it we put put a pro circuit pipe on it how much better was it yeah so like you said I raced it at Mammoth last year stock bone stock and uh when we put the map on it when Jamie got in there and really did some uh developing with it it was Unreal yeah the bike was an absolute rocket ship and it’s honestly not hard to hang on to but if you’re not riding in the correct position it might pull you off the back so it’s definitely a lot better Improvement throwing the pro circuit pipe on there also gave it a lot more pull within each gear so therefore you don’t have the quick Shifty this much it could kind of pull through that gear and here testing it at Glenn Helen it’s been great nice so stock 300 raced the last year now Jamie remapped the stock ECU which is pretty cool uh up until just recently nobody could really access the stock ecus on the new 2023 24 KTM models so stock ECU has been remapped we didn’t have to pay for a Vortex so that’s nice and then the pr circuit pipe works wonders on this thing so uh good stuff hit up Jamie Ellis from twist and development and and motto today for both of us we’re getting arm pump so uh it’s more of a training day for us but getting back in shape getting back in shape good [Music] [Music] stuff Theo y budy how’s it going today pretty good uh helping a kid from China and uh riding the 30 and 40 class nice and uh bought my dad a cheeseburger so we’re pretty good you go to Miguel’s spot yeah I go to Miguel’s spot yeah definitely it was pretty good that’s awesome I don’t know how good uh it is before Moto but put a smile on my face and uh how’s the Honda working the day Honda’s working pretty good we got 23.5 right engineering clamps nice we got the 5 mil back foot pegs not down nice standard gearing we have a set of ahm suspension is that a bigger seat or stock yeah no it’s a little bit taller I was testing it to see if I like it um it’s just tall enough I would need to bump the bars up if uh it was something that I really wanted to do uh we have yoshira pipe on it we have some Dunlop 33 and 3s front and uh Works connection Works connection starting deve and uh rear brake master cylinder cover why do you like that on the Honda I feel like when I tuck my heels in a little bit I feel like it it just gives me a place to have like a lot of pressure I can feel the bike a little more yeah little more traction on the bike a little more uh surface area yeah and then uh obviously a little bit of grip tape not enough to destroy my gear or anything like that uh we haven’t even messed with it enough to uh change the grips or anything just call it good and uh Chinese Rider Dean we call him Dean how’s how’s he doing American name’s Dean yeah what what’s that situation like you know it’s intimidating for him in China you know there’s four to 10 kids 20 Max uh they had two divisions here so he was okay he hovered 17 18th and then in mini senior one in the lcq they took eight and we got eigh so he gets to ride the final and one class out of the two today nice and uh he’s only a six time riding in America never got to ride the uh main track with the hills or anything cuz we had so much rain yeah so uh during the week he rode really good he’s just a little bit shy of uh how big this event is and he’s here for exposure training and he’s here for a couple months right yeah so he’s here for 60 days um their goal is just to learn and have fun and uh the dad’s really calm and it’s just for him to see what Motocross is all about here in the states I like it ktm85 almost my number I’m 171 he’s 771 it’s good stuff all right guys so good times here at Glenn Helen for the mammoth qualifier it’s the first mammoth qualifier of the 2024 season three motos on the KTM 450 Factory Edition then one Moto on the Yamaha YZ 450f with hydraulic clutch MX Tech suspension luxon triple clamps and FMF exhaust system with pelli tires gut seat cover so fairly stock machine but uh honestly it was really nice today I’m glad I switched to this bike for the last Moto but it wasn’t by choice it was a last minute scramble I got a flat tire on this mx34 on the rear of the KTM swap the transponder over fill her up with gas checked tire pressure I went out there and had some fun I got third overall in both classes Trevor Stewart Parker Ross handed it to me Parker Ross was on a 250 and he still handed it to me but uh good times here at Glenn Helen um this week we are leaving that’s what one of the reasons why I’m recording this today on Sunday after the Glendale National Glendale Supercross cuz we’re leaving on Tuesday to go to South Carolina to test new off-road bikes from Yamaha yz15 YZ 250X and YZ 450f so uh not YZ 450f RX is it w no FX YZ 450f FX something like that and then we’re racing the big buck GNCC this weekend so excited for that one two-hour Moto for me I think I’m in the Sportsman a class my first time doing GNCC if you guys haven’t checked out our Factory Edition Honda CRF450 Works Edition tested video it’s on our YouTube channel now really excited about that that one also we tested the new 2024 Yamaha YZ 252 stroke that’s a fun video be sure to check it out on our Channel Glendale Supercross was a wild one last night no racing for us this weekend so uh stay tuned next week where we will be racing the GCC and uh documenting the whole [Music] experience a