VOLUME 56 ISSUE 45 NOVEMBER 12, 2019 P25
(Above) Ryan Surratt made a late-race pass to claim
second overall. (Below) Ricky Dietrich was left to collect
third after running out of fuel on the last lap.
to eat dust, so I went full send
and got by him. It was a little
squirrely but I made it and was
able to lead from there on.
Dietrich ran second for much
of the race, gaining a gap over
third when Surratt suffered a flat
tire in the early going. He admit-
ted that racing the 450 event
would have probably given him
the edge he needed to maintain
the early lead.
"It took me a couple laps to
learn the course then around
the middle of the race I pulled
on Seeds and got pretty close
to him," said Dietrich. "I think
he picked up the pace a little
bit and just with the dust… I felt
like I would have had to take re-
ally big chances to get by him."
Dietrich ran into his own
misfortune on the final lap when
he ran out of gas. But with a
lap over the rest of the field,
the SLR Honda rider was still
credited with third overall.
"I was going to ride it in to
a steady second place and
then last lap up on the ridges,
the bike ran out of gas," said
Dietrich. "Just a small little error
in calculation. I was able to get
fuel from sweep, and as it turns
out, all top three of us lapped
up to third place, so I only lost
the one place to Surratt. Not
too bad at the end of the day.
It's good to push your bike
home and still get third place.
You can't say that very often."
[laughs]