2020 Tampa Supercross | Ken Roczen GoPro Onboard
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2020 TAMPA SUPERCROSS | COMPLETE COVERAGE
Time for more GoPro videos from the 2020 Tampa Supercross. The revolutionary camera company is back on board as a sponsor to the Monster Energy Supercross Series and key riders in the field, which means we’ll get plenty of point of view footage through the seventeen-round championship. Here are clips and takeaways from Ken Roczen’s night at the seventh round of the series, including his epic Heat Race battle with Adam Cianciarulo.
450 HEAT RACE TWO | KEN ROCZEN & ADAM CIANCIARULO
Ask and ye shall receive. In Kickstart, we said that we hoped GoPro would release an edit of Cianciarulo and Roczen’s Heat Race match, and they did just that on Wednesday.
Cianciarulo got the better start of the two, which came as no surprise since starts have been one of his stronger traits this season. Once through the first turn, AC faded to the right, blocked the outside line, and set up a pass on Zach Osborne in the first 180-degree turn. He used an identical move on Vince Friese in the 450 Main Event…
Roczen hugged the inside line through the first turn, which allowed him to make up a lot of ground and get near the front of the pack early. A small mistake did cause Roczen to drop a spot to Justin Barcia, but he didn’t make a counter-attack in the next turn. Instead, he waited just a moment and built momentum through the hairpin, hucked the triple-out, and simultaneously went back by Barcia and reeled in Zach Osborne for second place.
The sand section caught nearly every rider out at some point in the night, including Cianciarulo, as he got out of sorts when he jumped into the straightaway, which allowed Roczen to close the gap and then make the pass.
Cianciarulo made sure to push all the way to the end and was within feet of Roczen through the final lap, only to come up short at the checkered flag. Listen close and you can hear the two riding partners talk after the finish.
450 MAIN EVENT | KEN ROCZEN
Roczen’s Main Event start put him deep in the running order, which then created a pretty good duel with Justin Hill for a position. After a few moments behind the MotoConcepts rider, Roczen waited until the right moment to go for his pass and went to the inside of the 90-degree turn, rolled the first jump in the endzone rhythm lane, and pushed left to effectively block Hill.
The video jumps from Lap 3 to Lap 16, when Roczen was in a three-way dice with Malcolm Stewart and Cooper Webb. Why the jump? This is when Roczen pushed the front-end of the CRF450R too far on the slick track and went down, a mistake that cost him a spot and lots of time to Stewart. The crash didn’t seem to rattle Roczen because he was back on the bike in a split-second and spent the final portion of the race at full-speed, which allowed him to make another late pass on Stewart and secure a spot on the podium.
