"The last race, the hillclimb got
me on the final lap, but everything
was just clicking today," said Rus-
sell. "When I got to the two-lap
board I was just really trying to
avoid the silt and save the bike.
The times kept staying the same
and I was just able to bring her in.
It kind of felt like an eternity to get
that last lap over with. I was just
like, don't throw it away. We never
fell down once today and we were
able to keep the bike running, so
that's all that counts."
Baylor got off to a decent start,
and everyone kept waiting on the
South Carolina rider to make his
notorious late-race push for the
win, but it never came.
"I threw it away on the hillclimb
on the first lap, like Ricky did in
the last race," said Baylor. "That
made my work tough today. I was
able to make it back to second
and kind of settled in. I felt pretty
confident I could hold pretty
much anybody off, so I just made
a charge at Ricky. I think we got
it down from 1:40 to 1:15 in a lap
there in the middle, and I was
like, there's no more. I don't think
I can catch him, so I just started
cruising."
Once Baylor started cruising,
Rockstar Energy Husqvarna's
Craig DeLong started to reel him in.
"I saw Craig catching up,"
said Baylor. "He was closing and
getting antsy, so on that last lap, I
just put my head back down and
tried to do what I could to make
sure that he wasn't close enough
to capitalize whenever we got
out towards the end of the track
where it was a little less dusty."
Despite Baylor's late push,
DeLong still closed to within 22
seconds of Baylor at the finish.
"I was trying my best, that's for
sure," said DeLong. "Some plac-
es weren't as bad as others, but
it seemed like when I got close
enough to Stew, we got right back
into the dustiest part of the track.
I got close to him a couple of
VOLUME 59 ISSUE 43 OCTOBER 25, 2022 P81
Russell capped off
the season with the
Ironman win and third
place overall in the
championship.
Baylor worked his way to the front but couldn't catch
Russell and settled for second place.
