Image: Octopi Media.

Team manager for the HEP Motorsports-operated Progressive Insurance Ecstar Suzuki team Larry Brooks has sounded off on the dangers of lapped riders – and lack of penalties – in Supercross following the incident involving Ken Roczen during Tampa’s main event on Saturday night.

Roczen was making forward progress throughout the main after a slow start to round five, finding himself on the rear tire of Monster Energy Yamaha Star Racing’s Cooper Webb, who was P3 at the time just after the midway mark.

Unfortunately, at that point it would all come unraveled for the German, who after colliding with two lapped riders in the sand section, went down in spectacular fashion and would subsequently draw an end to his night with a derailed chain.

The incident raises a topic that is hotly contested within the sport, related to the front-runners having to make their way through lapped riders during a race, and what the etiquette ought to be between riders. For Brooks, the current system is broken and doesn’t do enough to protect the lead riders.

“The AMA does not do anything to penalize the riders that are being lapped – they only give them a blue flag and let them kind of dictate what they want to do, and it hasn’t worked,” commented Brooks. “It’s been this way for years and years and now we just got 18 points taken away from us because of a lapped rider and a DNF. It’s super disappointing.

“It is the sanctioning body’s job to take care of the lapped riders and the officiating, and it just seems like we have not been taken care of. They are here to keep the riders safe, and I don’t think that happened tonight. It put our rider in danger.”

It was a fall that could have had drastic consequences for Roczen, who managed to walk away unscathed after narrowly missing being landed on by another bike. Nevertheless, surrendering 18 points in the current championship landscape is a huge blow to his campaign and reignites a topic of how best to tackle this issue.

Despite the costly DNF, Roczen sits in fourth place in the 450SX standings, 18 points from the championship lead.