RIDING KEN ROCZEN’S SUZUKI RMZ450

“The idea was to just build the infrastructure for a pro team first, then, in 2024, we were planning on hiring a good rider to go racing,” explained Larry Brooks. “It happened a little more quickly than we expected.”

On December 7, 2022, Ken Roczen announced that he had joined the HEP Suzuki team. Suddenly, the plans for Larry Brooks and the team were put into hyperdrive. The goal was just short of impossible. The team had to take a bike that hadn’t been in the winner’s circle for the better part of a decade and forge it into something worthy of one of the greatest riders in the history of motocross. And, they had to do it in a few weeks.

Exactly 104 days after that announcement, Kenny Roczen won the main event at the Indy Supercross aboard the HEP Suzuki. The impossible was accomplished. They didn’t have to start from scratch at least. In 2016, Roczen won the 450 National Motocross championship on a Suzuki RM-Z450 that wasn’t all that different. The biggest problem was that 2016 was a completely different age in pro motocross. The electronic aspect of engine tuning had completely changed, the ante was higher and the competition had become more intense.

“Kyle Chisholm was my first test rider, and he spent days at the track coming up with the best settings,” said Larry. “We went through all those pieces and tried to get the bike as good as we could. When Kenny came on board, we concentrated on suspension, but the bike itself is what Kyle came up with.”

Early in the process, the bike ended up with KYB suspension, which is what Kenny used back in 2016. The electronics side of the problem was handled by Jamie Ellis at Twisted Development, who had been a key part of the electronic revolution. The rest was just hard work; shaving down a motor mount here, tweaking some valving there.

The season of miracles continued. In June, Roczen rode his one and only outdoor national of 2023, finishing second and becoming the only rider besides Jett Lawrence to lead any laps at all. A month later he won the FIM World Supercross opener in England, then he finished the year with a last-round showdown against Lawrence in the L.A. Coliseum. The combined Supercross, motocross and playoff points would have Roczen in second for the year.

Two days after the Coliseum, Larry and the HEP Suzuki team brought Kenny’s bike to Fox Raceway and allowed select members of the press to take it for a spin. We asked special guest test rider Carson Brown to take our turn, and he fell in love with the bike.

“The stock RM-Z has a reputation for being a bit rigid,” said Carson. “When I got on Roczen’s bike, the first thing I noticed was that it tracked really straight. It was set up stiff—kind of Supercrossy—but it went straight and cornered super well. It didn’t do anything out of the ordinary, which was nice. It still had that stock feel; it didn’t have monster horsepower and wasn’t unrideable like you might expect.

“It’s no secret that Kyle Chisholm is a really good bike setup guy, so the rideability was really good. I’ve ridden factory bikes that kind of sucked to ride. You have to ride fast to make them work. This one was fun to ride. You could go really fast on it, and it wasn’t going to do anything stupid. It would be a good bike for the average guy. The motor didn’t have a huge hit, but it did have a lot of power. It was interesting to see how they made that work. They said they took different components from different years of RM-Zs to make what they have here. It really doesn’t have any special factory parts. Anyone can go out and get most of this stuff. They just found the right keys, put them all together and made it work.”

Carson started on Kyle Chisholm’s test bike, and then rode Roczen’s race bike until Suzuki waved him off the track. It was one last perfect day of riding for bike number 94 before the end of the 2023 season. What happens to it next? We wouldn’t be surprised if it makes its way back onto a Supercross track in 2024. All the hard work has already been done.

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