All the contenders in the 450 Class entered the 55th annual Daytona Supercross with hopes of taking advantage of a rare opportunity. Coming into the weekend, Eli Tomac had won seven of the last nine times at Daytona. Justin Brayton got a popular win in 2018, while Jett Lawrence was the defending race winner. No active riders had a Daytona win, which guaranteed a first-time Daytona winner in 2025.
Ken Roczen was nearly perfect and claimed his 23rd Monster Energy AMA 450 Supercross win on Saturday. He qualified fourth and started the night off by dominating his heat race. When the gate dropped for the main event, he came around lap one in fourth. On lap four Roczen was able to get by Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Cooper Webb and made quick work of Monster Energy Kawasaki’s Jason Anderson the next lap. Kenny set sights on leader, Red Bull KTM’s Aaron Plessinger, and made the pass for the lead at the halfway mark.
Roczen pulled out a five second lead after a few laps but came under some pressure from Webb with five minutes to go. It looked like we may see a repeat of Detroit, but not this time. Kenny withstood the pressure and pulled the lead back out after a few mistakes from Webb. After the race, Webb credited Roczen on his performance saying: “I started to get on it, I was able to inch up inch up, but he was riding well, and I started to ride harder, and it led me to make mistakes. He got me, straight up. It’s gone the other way a few times, but tonight he got me.”
Kenny was ecstatic about winning in Daytona: “I honestly still can’t believe it,” he emphasized on the podium. “I really put my head down, I had some really good lines. When you make those passes, you have to put your head down or else they will retaliate and come back. I was just charging the whole time trying to get a gap.”
At the post-race press conference, he claimed: “This is definitely up there as one of my best main event wins ever, and it’s pretty surreal because I’ve actually been pretty far away from it here.”
Roczen went 7-7-5 in his last three races at Daytona.
Roczen rode a nearly perfect race. He had the track dialed, even doing a few lines that nobody else was doing. He commented on the track saying, “For the most part some of these bowl turns, even if you couldn’t triple there was a backup. You could go 2-3. So, I wasn’t too stressed about it. There was one time by the straightaway after the finish, I made a big mistake and doubled my way through the whole thing. I didn’t like that but that was really the biggest mistake I made.”
With the win, Kenny asserts himself firmly into this championship battle. “It was very reassuring,” said Roczen of his title hopes. “This is round eight and I’ve never really done that good at Daytona, but I really have nothing to lose. I just keep doing my thing and I trust in my decisions and for now it’s paying off.”
Roczen now sits 16 points back of points leader Webb. He talked about the importance of gaining back some points this weekend, “Any time the gap goes to 19 points, you don’t want to see that gap get any bigger. We’ve seen that things can happen so quickly and it’s so fun for me to be in it. This win came at the right time. And if we don’t talk about points, this win is different. Any win for new nowadays is special, but I’ve won at stadiums before. I need to go back and be by myself a little bit and let it sink in.”
This was HEP Suzuki team manager Larry Brooks’ fifth Daytona win as a team manager. After the race Brooks spoke with PulpMX’s Steve Matthes about the prestige of winning Daytona. “It’s surreal to win Daytona. It’s just such a highlight on the schedule and to win it is something super special, I think for anybody.,” Brooks explained.
He also talked about Coop’s push to catch Kenny late in the race admitting, “I knew that little sucker was coming dude. The ball was in Kenny’s court. When he was in fourth and Cooper was right in front of him, it was up to him. He had to pick the ball up and run with it. He dove inside and got Webb, and then went up and got whoever, [Anderson and Plessinger] and just went to the lead right away. I was like okay, lets see what happens here and Webb kept putting attacks on him and would close it up and Ken would kind of retaliate and pull back out when Webb would make a mistake.”
Brooks also credited a midday fork change for a lot of Ken’s success on the night. “After first practice didn’t go so good, we threw some different forks on that we had built for this week. He was supposed to test them this week but he chose not to, which whatever. And so, we threw those on, and we put a different rear tire on and that just changed the guy right there. We had a paddle on. He is not a big fan of the paddle, so we went away from that.,” he explained.
The series heads to Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis next Saturday night. Roczen has had enormous success in the Circle City including a sweep of the three rounds in 2021 and his first win with the Progressive/ECSTAR/HEP Suzuki team in 2023. Going back-to-back would not only be huge for the championship but would also erase a trend of one SX win per year that he’s been on since 2022. Every time Ken wins it is just a reminder of how big a superstar he is in this sport. Love him or hate him (and there sure aren't many haters left these days), having Ken Roczen winning and relevant in a championship battle is great for the series.
