Foggy's Four - Glendale Recap

Pictures and words by Ryder Koch

What a night for Kickstart Kenny! Honestly, Ken is just always so good at stringing an entire track together and flowing. There has yet to be a round this year that I’ve watched him in qualifying and not thought that he could win. He always looks freakishly fast, and Glendale was no different. Ken led the heat and main gate drop to the checkered flag. He looked smooth, confident, and comfortable. I’m a bit biased, as I work with the whole HEP team daily, but this win sure did feel good. Ken mentioned “I cherish these moments so very much as they don’t come around very often anymore lately but man” in his post-race Instagram post but I think Ken and the HEP team are just getting started.

It’s a fairly common thing in our sport, riders often mention struggling with being sick on race day. Whether it be the flu or a common cold. Shane Mcelrath mentioned he’d been struggling with a nasty cold all week and it only got worse as the week went on. The more I thought of it the more I thought how rough I feel when I’m sick and how little I want to do. Usually, I lay in bed all day playing games on my phone between naps and complaining when I have to do so much as to get up to walk to the bathroom. These guys have three practice sessions, a heat race, potentially an LCQ, and a 20-minute main event to finish off the night. Not much of an observation, just more of a kudos to all the riders out there who have endured race day under the weather. Seeing firsthand how much it affected Shane gave me a far greater perspective of how gnarly it can be.

3. Red Flags

Wowza. It sure seems like we’ve had a lot of red flags this year, heck we had two red flags in one night! A good handful of them is from first-turn pile-ups, which have also been abundant this year. Someone raised the question in the post-race press conference asking if these first turn pile-ups and red flags could be caused by the recent change to a grate start, leveling the playing field and giving all 22 riders an even drive off the starting gate. What do you think?

4. Heating Up

Six rounds into the 2024 season you’d think there would be a clear championship favorite, but honestly… there isn't. With five winners in Six rounds, the podium is like musical chairs and few have been able to find much consistency. One weekend someone is battling for a podium and the next they are barely within the top 10. I guess that just speaks to the depth of the class. Things are just getting started and we have lots of racing action left in the season. Jett Lawrence leads in the points, but the top 5 are only separated by 11 points. Needless to say, things are heating up!