During round three of the AMA Supercross series, in its second and final stop to Anaheim’s Angel Stadium, he scored a strong second-place result and assumed an early lead in the title chase.
Once again, Roczen started the night on a strong note, battling to a win in his heat race. When the gate fell on the main event, the German impressed everyone, rocketing down the start straight with the holeshot and early lead. He opened a small gap on the rest of the field but as the race progressed his struggles in the whoops caused him to come under fire from Eli Tomac. At the 13-minute mark, Roczen relinquished the lead, but he continued to lay down solid laps and took the checkered flag in second.
“My night was pretty good. I had a good battle with Adam [Cianciarulo] in the heat race, which was fun and good to come away with the win,” said Roczen. “That put me in a good position for the main event and to be able to pick a decent gate. Tonight though, pretty much every gate on the start was super rough and there were a lot of holes, so it was hard to decide which one to pick. But I hooked up really good and got my first holeshot of the year, so that was nice. We’ve been putting in a lot of work on my starts, so it’s been paying off. For me to be able to win tonight, I had to be a lot better in the whoops. I was just struggling there the entire race, so that didn’t help me out; I feel like I lost all my time there. I was trying to skim them, then went to jumping them, which was horrible too; I lost a lot of ground so went back to skimming and just was all over the place and that was where Eli [Tomac] made up a lot of time and closed in on me. We definitely have some work to do but don’t want to get too crazy. We just need to keep doing what we’re doing. We’re in a good spot right now and we just have to keep it up. First last weekend and second this weekend, plus the red plate is really great. I’m really happy.”
