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Ken Roczen hopes to know soon if Supercross is restarting May 31

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Ken Roczen joins Lunch Talk Live with Mike Tirico and discloses how he's staying sharp during quarantine in preparation to get back on the bike for the remaining seven races of the Supercross season.

After taking a break to heal at the outset of the two-month layoff, Supercross star rider Ken Roczen said Wednesday he is preparing for the possibility of racing in the next three weeks.

On “Lunch Talk Live” with Mike Tirico (click on the video above), Roczen said the 2020 season could resume by the end of the month after it was postponed by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. According to reports last month, Supercross is mulling the last seven rounds of the season at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Arizona.

“There was a thing where we were maybe going to start racing May 15,” Roczen told Tirico. “Obviously, that fell through. Right now, they are thinking about May 31. I don’t really know if that’s going to happen yet.

“We’re hopefully going to know within today or tomorrow. I’ve been putting the hammer down just trying to focus on my Supercross riding and put in a lot of work, so I’m definitely ready whenever we’re ready to go.”

The Supercross Twitter account hinted Wednesday night that the schedule could be coming Thursday.

The Monster Energy AMA Supercross season has been on hold since the Round 10 race March 7 at Daytona International Speedway, where Eli Tomac beat Roczen to take the points lead.

Roczen, who has three victories this season, said he initially spent time resting and recovering after the midpoint of the grueling season.

“Obviously when the whole coronavirus thing started, we were all in the unknown and kind of still are in the unknown of when we’re continue racing,” he told Tirico. “But it looked like (the return) was going to be quite far out.

“I took some time off and actually helped my body because no matter what, when we start back up racing, and they’re still trying to get all the races in, there’s going to be a lot of racing all in a row. And not to mention going into 2021 series, there’s going to be a lot of back to back racing with very little time off, so I decided to take some time off.

Supercross and AMA Lucas Oil Motocross executives have been working together to align their schedules so that riders can compete in both series without overlap. The start of the outdoor national season has been pushed to late June.

Roczen finished second at Daytona and trails by three points with seven events remaining. He told NBCSports.com in late March that he remains heavily motivated to win his first Supercross championship despite the layoff.