Supercross
Supercross Champion Ken Roczen is coming to Crandon World Cup
One week before the start of the SuperMotocross World Championship Playoffs, Roczen heads to Crandon, WI, where he will slide into a Pro 2 truck and race the Champ Off-Road series.
This is how Ken Roczen rolls; he does what he wants, when he wants and leaves us marginally-talented mortals shaking our heads at his ability to pivot and adapt to his chosen surroundings.
After winning the 2026 AMA Supercross Championship – a title he spent 13 years working on – Roczen took the summer off. Sort of.
For the first time since 2020, Roczen did not race at least one AMA Pro Motocross event. Instead, he went surfing at Slater’s, watched F1 in Montreal, rode enduro bikes in Yosemite and England, celebrated with Suzuki in Japan, pounded reps in the gym, typed a letter to Motocross that left us on the edge of our seats, and tested a Pro 2 off-road truck in Crandon, Wisconsin.
Ken Roczen wins the SMX World Championships
© Garth Milan / Red Bull Content Pool
The mid-August Crandon diversion wasn’t only ‘for fun’; it was to prepare for the Polaris World Championships at Crandon International Raceway, his first race since the Salt Lake City Supercross finale on May 9. A part of the Amsoil Champ Off-Road series, Crandon draws 75,000 spectators each Labor Day weekend. Three and a half hours north of Milwaukee, WI, it’s the Daytona 500 of short course off-road competition.
The pinnacle of this sport, the event turns 57 in 2026 and Roczen – in a Red Bull/Yokohama/Ryan Beat Motorsports truck – will race Pro 2, one of the premier classes in the series. Short course off-road racing, which is like Supercross on four wheels, with double jumps, rhythm sections and bowl turns, has seen lots of moto crossover. Jeremy McGrath, Brian Deegan and Ricky Johnson were all serious competitors in now-defunct series; Travis Pastrana and others have dabbled.
Crandon will be Roczen’s second go in the sport. In Sept. 2025 he competed in Pro 2 at the Glen Helen National, where he finished 7th and 6th in the two-day event. Haley Shanley, the director of media and trackside reporter for Champ Off-Road said Roczen’s presence at Glen Helen had a measurable impact on attendance.
“A massive driver behind ticket sales was Ken and his announcement that he was going to be there,” she said. “The grandstands were completely full, and I think they have to bring in new ones this year.”
“I was really surprised at how well he did for the first time being in a truck like that,” said Ryan Beat, owner/operator and driver at Ryan Beat Motorsports. “He only had two days of testing prior to the event. To be able to come out and run top 10 is impressive.”
Before Glen Helen ’25, Roczen had never met Beat, whose backup truck he borrowed. Now, Roczen will get back into one of Beat’s trucks and he’s feeling feisty after the recent test session at Crandon, which is 1.5-miles in length, a half-mile longer than the Glen Helen course.
Ken Roczen at SMX World Championships
© Garth Milan / Red Bull Content Pool
“I'm pretty good at learning things rather fast,” Roczen said in a phone interview. “A year later and sitting back in the truck, I just felt a lot more familiar and knew what I was getting myself into.” Ken even got himself a simulator, which helped him learn counter-steering and setting up for turns.
The premier divisions in Champ Off-Road are the Pro 4 and Pro 2 classes, the biggest differentiator being four-wheel drive vs. two-wheel drive. Built on tube frame chassis, they have 18+ inches of suspension travel with 750+ horsepower V8 engines. The truck’s minimum weight (including driver) is 4,100-lbs. Beat said a competitive Pro 2 truck costs $250,000 to build.
For Roczen this off-road foray started when a mutual friend connected him with Beat for a potential truck tryout. Roczen wanted more than just an afternoon of thrills and social media content. He said, “if we’re going to learn to drive one of these, why not race, too?”
Beat, whose own professional motocross and supercross career ended in 2009, just a couple of years before Roczen first came to the United States, also discovered off-road racing after borrowing a vehicle. Now he’s a two-time Pro Lite champion and a Pro Spec champ, but he’s still looking for a Pro 2 title. He’s finished second overall in the points so many times he’s lost count. “Four or five,” he said with a chuckle.
Ken Roczen
© Garth Milan / Red Bull Content Pool
Unlike moto, it’s logistically (and financially) more difficult to get seat time in a real truck but Roczen said he feels more prepared coming into Crandon than he did Glen Helen a year ago. He only got the one test day before Crandon, but it was helpful.
“I understood more how to drive and steer the truck with the throttle as well,” he said. “I'm driving more aggressive as I've gotten more comfortable. And then I think I'm a lot more sure of how to set up turns, what brake to hit. (Pro 2 trucks have two brake pedals). Toward the end of the test I was really getting comfortable.”
After Crandon, Roczen will resume his usual professional life and compete in the three round SuperMotocross World Championship Playoffs. One week after that ends, however, he’ll climb right back into a Pro 2 truck in the series finale at Glen Helen, the same event where he made his debut a year ago.
He’s not setting finish expectations for the off-road races but he knows what would raise eyebrows, including his own.
“If I could be a top five or something like that, that'd be insane.”