Interview: Ken Roczen on his WSX performance in Cardiff – and the quad!
We caught up with Ken Roczen to discuss his night in Cardiff that saw him take second place to Eli Tomac but he had the speed to win – and we discuss doing the quad!
Ken, a good night overall but you probably thought you had the pace to win it, your pace was impressive…
Yeah, absolutely, I feel like I had the speed and everything to win but a couple of bad starts and obviously washing the front in the first one made it tougher on me. Obviously Eli was doing really well and I was a little bit more in the back of the pack, that made it hard. Nonetheless, I had a blast and that’s really all that matter to me at this point.
And hitting that quad, how do you even know how to hit it, you did it in the middle of a superpole lap – that’s a pretty intense time to do it!
I saw Josh Hill do it once and like I said, I made a couple of little mistakes at the beginning and I didn’t have that clean of a lap so I just figured if I get the three before it clean, then I’m just going to hit it wide open because you couldn’t really over jump a size like that so that’s what I did.
Looking ahead to next year, we saw what Eli did when he switched teams and you talked about atmosphere with this team you are with tonight, is that something you are looking for next year, a nice atmosphere looking at what Eli has done this year being happy and relaxed?
Well, here’s the thing, I don’t really know what I am doing for 2023 yet, but these guys I have enjoyed going to these guys so much, they are so after and it’s been, not caught off guard, but honestly I am a little bit suprised how much I like it. Obviously the bike is the same, but it is quite a bit different for being the same bike, I was trying to achieve that with HRC, just trying to get a different feel and characteristic and I never was able to to and with those guys we do whatever the heck we want and we throw whatever link on we want and the combination of obviously the suspension with the factory connection guys and they have my back. We only had a couple of days so I am kind of curious to see where we could go with some more time.
Just finally, on your talent level, I remember watching you winning Grand Prix at 15, is riding a bike easy for you? Even today you are so smooth and light on it!
It’s never easy for you let me tell you, it might look easy but it’s never easy.
Did you have to work at it when you were young with your dad or did it just come natural?
Part comes natural but a lot of work over a lot of years have gone into that.
Interview: Jonathan McCready
Images: WSX
