Rockstar Energy Suzuki World MXGP Team Principal Sylvain Geboers has expressed his pleasure with recent rumours that former FIM Motocross World Champion and AMA West Coast SX number one Ken Roczen could be re-joining Suzuki later this summer.
The Red Bull KTM star has enjoyed a positive breakthrough season in the AMA 450SX category finishing third overall with eight podium results. Roczen has been the subject of numerous rumours about his contract for 2015 with gossip as early as February linking the 19-year-old to Ricky Carmichael’s RCH Suzuki team with factory material.
If true then Roczen would return to the brand that helped launch his international career at the age of 15 in MX2 racing back in 2009 and lasted until 2011.
“If it happens then great, just great,” said the Belgian when asked how he’d feel seeing Roczen back on RM-Z technology. “He is a good boy and for me always was a Suzuki boy and if you said he is going together with Carmichael then that is a positive point. Carmichael was his idol when he was racing and I know he went to his facilities with Eric [Geboers] and was riding and training.”
“I think it will be a great combination,” he continued on the prospect of Carmichael and Roczen working together. “If it works out then we might expect great results; not only for racing but in something wider because Europe looks to him.”
Roczen broke the record as the youngest Grand Prix winner ever by claiming his home Grand Prix in 2009 (at Teutschenthal) on the RM-Z250 as part of a team that Geboers helped build with Suzuki International Europe to give the teenager the best support at FIM World Championship level. “There are many Suzuki people who want him to come back, for sure, we all feel that he is yellow,” Geboers added.
Last month KTM Sport Director Pit Beirer claimed there was still a “50-50” chance of keeping Roczen and that the Austrian factory would push hard to re-sign him. Apparently under the terms of Roczen’s current contract an official announcement is unlikely until after the AMA Pro Nationals this summer.
