Saturday night saw Ken Roczen claim his first win of the 2025 season and a maiden victory at the iconic Daytona Supercross, while RJ Hampshire returned to winning form, securing a breakthrough 250SX East success at his hometown race. Both riders were available to the media following the main events for this Debrief feature.

450SX

Image: Octopi Media.

Ken Roczen, your first Daytona win. Where does tonight rank among your most meaningful career accomplishments? This one has to be up there.

Yeah, I said it on the podium. This is definitely up there on the best like single main event wins. I’ve been wanting to do this for 10 years and never been able to pull it off. I don’t know, this is it’s a little bit surreal, honestly, just because I’ve been pretty far away from getting a win here. So to finally pull it off is just an absolute dream come true. The team and I, we’ve really excelled today making bike changes, and they were all spot on, then we just put our head down.

You got to the front and kind of started to break away, then [Cooper] Webb started creeping back up towards you. Take us through what was going through your mind? Because we’ve seen the outcome be different before. Why was it different this time?

I don’t know. I stayed calm, and I really took it section by section. Like in the beginning, everybody was going really fast, and kind of yo-yoing a little bit here and there, you know? Also, you had to be really on somebody to make a pass, unless somebody made a mistake. Once I made the passes happen, I knew that I had to go, because these guys retaliate really quickly, so I just had to keep putting my head down. I had some really good lines, and I knew that I had to speed to stay up front, so I just kind of trusted and believed that I could pull it off. Of course, once it comes to later stages, I mean, the nice thing is even when you have quite a bit of time to go, it’s not that many laps because it is such a long lap time, so I really just took it section by section. Some of out of these bowl turns and the ruts to triple out were a little tricky at times, so I knew that those were spots that we could mess up, I think we all made a couple of mistakes here and there. So yeah, I just really kept my focus and felt really good throughout the whole main event. That was really important to pull it off.

You said yesterday that you really didn’t make very many changes during the week and that you didn’t work on anything different, you trusted the speed. So how gratifying is it to have gotten the win without making any huge changes during the week?

I mean, it’s very reassuring. What was this round eight, I think? I’ve never really done that good at Daytona, but I really have nothing to lose, I know that. So I just kept doing my thing and trusted my decisions throughout the week, and I trust in them also on the weekend, and right now, it’s paying off.

The track itself broke down so much, was there any point that you had to make decisions on basically what rhythms were worth still attempting versus backing it off and being consistent? Namely, the end of the sand section, the triple you were doing, it was really technical into the corner.

Honestly, I think that was the easiest part of the whole track. But for the most part, some of these bowl turns, like if you wanted to come out and triple, or your plan was to triple, if you didn’t, there was always a backup rhythm, as you would go two, three, and then I would try to miss the five footers, the big ones, to not go so high. But you kind of, depending on what the turn gives you, you kind of always had a backup rhythm that you could do. I wasn’t too stressed about it, as you can come back from it, but that was one time after, before we get to the whole straightaway by the finish, like that rhythm section before out of that tight left hander, where I really made a big mistake. I doubled my way through the whole thing and kind of bounced off that. It was fairly early in the race, and I didn’t like that, but that was really the only big mistake that I made. Other than that, you can kind of make a mistake and then usually triple your way out of it into the turn and stuff, so it was doable.

Simple question. How important is this win to your championship?

I mean, anytime, you know, once the gap goes to 19 points, you don’t want to see that gap get any bigger. So not that I made up a lot of points, but it’s very important just to keep it at to a minimum. We can see that things can just happen so quickly and we have a lot of racing to go. So it’s just really fun for me to be in it, and then this win just came at the right time and it feels really good.

If we’re not talking about points, how important is just this win for your push?

Yeah, if we don’t talk about points, like no matter what this win is, it’s different than winning in a normal stadium and everybody always talks about how special this one is. So yeah, all this aside, it’s truly special, any win for me nowadays is really special. I feel like when I win now, they feel better than they used to just because there are less, at least as of right now. So yeah, I need to go back and be by myself a little bit and just sit down for a couple of minutes and let it sink in.

250SX

Image: Octopi Media.

RJ, you were on point all day, and you appeared to have a level of fight that you just didn’t have at the last round. What was the difference maker tonight?

I mean, just two extra weeks, really. I mean, I came in, didn’t really have much of an off season. I knew I would get stronger and just trusted in that. The team worked hard to kind of get me comfortable on the bike, and we tested right after Detroit. I think everybody could tell I was struggling there, so we’ve found a good setting since, and yeah, lucky it kind of played into the Daytona style track. I felt comfortable from as soon as my wheels hit the dirt here on Friday, really, and press day, which is something I haven’t had at the first two rounds.

Another red flag tonight… seeing as though we’ve had more of these this year, have you guys worked on anything to reset, like even during the week, or is it becoming maybe a pause in the race to where you can regroup and then have a big push in the back half?

Yeah, man, it sucks to even have these red flags. Like, you know, seeing Levi [Kitchen] go down like that was definitely hard. I mean, it’s just part of it. I’m yet to have one of these red flags actually play into my favor, you know, everybody kind of seen what happened and then had no fight in me in Detroit. Then in this one, I finally felt like I was pulling a gap before it. Man, it’s just tough, we were past the halfway I’m pretty sure once the red flag came out and then you lose, you know, the two laps or whatever it was before he crashed. So really, we go longer than our normal main events. Now you’re all dirty, like, sand in your goggles, everything, and you literally have to reset with the guy that’s trying to pass you right on your rear wheel again. Yeah, you really can’t practice that. I just hope it doesn’t happen, really.

We expected this from the beginning of the year, the two champions battling against each other. Can you talk about what it was like to actually be able to race against Tom [Vialle] for the lead?

Yeah, I mean, we actually battled in Detroit quite a bit also. I feel like that’s going to be the rest of the season, we’re both pretty good starters and pretty close in speed. We raced each other hard, but both of us are pretty clean also. So yeah, it’s fun, it’s good for the fans, and it’s a cool story.

It looked like it was all coming to you really easily tonight, you looked cool, calm and collected. Usually we’re used to seeing you look like you’re riding at 110 percent effort, but tonight you looked like you were only at about 90 percent. Was the bike set up better? What made it look that way?

I mean, it’s a combination of a lot of things. Like, definitely the bike setting played in my favor a lot. It’s really no one to blame but myself. Like, coming into the season, I was setting my bike up to jump whoops, I couldn’t blitz, I couldn’t hold on. I didn’t blitz whoops until about a week and a half before round one, I just couldn’t hold on. So my setting coming into Tampa was based off of being really good at my corners and everywhere else I struggled. It bit me, like that crash I had in Tampa was all me. I just went a little bit too long, my forks were softer than what they needed to be and they gave out, and my wrist kind of gave out with it. It’s hard to test really when you’re in Florida and then you have a race that next week. So we did everything we could to try to, you know, find some comfort before Detroit and we didn’t find it, so then you’re trying to find it on race day, which usually doesn’t really go well, especially for me. Like man, I’ve been doing this long enough and I would much rather ride a bike that doesn’t handle good as long as I know what it’s going to do. I was guessing so bad in Detroit, bit I was lucky enough to still podium there. But I knew that there was definitely a lot more and each week I was going to get stronger. I told the team that also and I still think this week I’ll get stronger, like I’m going to keep getting better now. I think that’s what you guys kind of saw today, I just had more strength, more aggression and more fight in me, especially after the restart, which I didn’t have in Detroit.

You’ve always been known for your killer speed, but up until last year, you kind of throw it away a lot. But now that’s changed and you got that championship last year. What sort of mental training have you done to be able to change that and focus all the way through a race?

No mental training. I just put myself in the situations more often and try not to make the same mistakes that I’ve made before. I don’t know. Everybody has their own story, mine just took a lot longer than a lot of other people. Nothing’s really changed, like you’re just going to get my best and that’s what you get every weekend. Sometimes it doesn’t play in my favor like how Tampa did, it’s not me kind of throwing it away, it’s just wanting it almost too much sometimes.

I see that this is Husqvarna’s first ever win at Daytona in either class. Were you aware of that? If so, how much does that mean to you?

Oh yeah, I had no idea. It’s definitely cool. Any time one of our Austrian bikes are on the podium here is awesome. Daytona is special, especially for myself, growing up, coming to this race as a kid, I’m pretty sure this was the only supercross I really came to, ad I was always dreaming of being able to race here and then now getting a win with my whole Rockstar Husqvarna Racing Team, like it’s special. It would be a lot more special if I was on 450, but also it’s still a huge milestone for our team.