On The Pegs March 2020 - Volume 5 - Issue 3 | Page 57

On The Pegs
VOL. 5 ISSUE 3 - MARCH 2020
57
RICKY RUSSELL
Coastal Racing Husqvarna’s Ricky Russell showed up at the opening round
of the Kenda Full Gas Sprint Enduro Series at GTR Complex in Gaston, South
Carolina, not even knowing if he would compete in the event. At the very last
minute, Ricky signed up and came away with a very impressive runner-up fin-
ish. We spoke to the Washington-born rider, who signed with Coastal Racing
Husqvarna during the off-season, about the race and about his plans going
forward.
You told us Friday that you didn’t know if you were going to race.
I wasn’t sure because I don’t usually do these and I’m not really chasing the series,
but I might now. We’ll see. I’m going to talk to Timmy (Weigandt, Rockstar Husqvar-
na Team Manager) and see if maybe Husqvarna wants to help me go to these or
not. I ended up second. I’ll take it. Kailub was off in his world of his own, checked
out, killing it. Everyone else was really tight racing, so it was good fun. I was able to
make up for the beginning of the first day where I kind of lost a lot of time. I was
able to make it up towards the end of the day. Just stayed right there, consistent all
day today. Second place.
You had a good battle with Layne Michael.
Me, Layne, and Josh Strang were all within ten seconds of each other. It was tight
racing. They’d get me on the Cross test, and then I’d get them a little bit on the
Enduro test. We’d go back and forth. Then Layne ripped the last Enduro and actually
beat Kailub by like five seconds. I was right there with Kailub. So he caught up, but
we still had a good little buffer going into there.
Did you surprise yourself?
A little bit. Like I said, I’m on the new bike. We were kind of just doing it to test and
try to make some changes. We made slight changes from the beginning of day one
and it showed at the end of day one. Then we just ran it the same all day today and
ran pretty consistent. n