Ken Roczen made a welcome return to the 450 overall podium at Maryland’s Budds Creek round of the AMA Pro Motocross series, stringing together a pair of third-place moto finishes for the same position on the day.
Meanwhile, teammate Chase Sexton avoided a potentially disastrous day for his title chances, following up a crash-plagued first moto to top the second outing and finish just off the overall podium, and only one point down on rival Eli Tomac.
Roczen started the first 450 moto with a holeshot and led for three laps before being overtaken by Eli Tomac. Five laps from the end, the German lost one more spot but kept fighting for an eventual close third. Sexton had gone down on the first lap and then again shortly thereafter, leaving him buried in 29th place at the end of lap 1. The Illinois native set about reducing the damage, advancing to 15th one-third of the way in and then ninth at the two-thirds mark. By the end, he had climbed to seventh place.
Roczen once again started strong in moto 2, running in the top two through the first five laps until being passed by Sexton, who secured the lead just before the halfway point. A crash then dropped Sexton to third, but he only needed two more laps to resecure the lead, which he held to the finish. Roczen pushed hard to the line to keep third.
“We’re trying! We seem to take these for granted, but I’m super excited to be back on the podium!” Roczen said. “It was a hard battle the whole second moto, and I was excited I stayed in it. I’m pumped for my team too; it was a little bit of a drought, but we’re back on the box. That’s a step in the right direction, so we’re going to continue and hopefully finish out these last couple rounds strong.”
Sexton admitted it was not his best day but with two rounds remaining in the series is confident he can turn it around and regain the championship lead.
“Man, today was not my day,” Sexton lamented. “Even from practice, I never felt that good—just too many mistakes. In the first moto, I hit neutral and went over the bars, and then I ran into another rider and had my work cut out for me. I had a big effort and knew I had to bounce back and amass points in the second moto. I got it done—fell over but still knew I could win and just kept fighting. You don’t win championships on your good days; it’s your bad days you win them, so if we can manage the points and come back strong next weekend and ride a lot better, we’ll be in a good spot.”
Next up is the penultimate AMA Pro Motocross round of the year, the Ironman National in Crawfordsville, Indiana.
