From the time he won four consecutive rounds of the Monster Energy Supercross Futures program and finished second in the fifth and final race at Salt Lake City in 2022, the future was bright for Ryder DiFrancesco. Later that year, he made a handful of starts in the Pro Motocross outdoor series and stood on the podium in two Futures races in 2023, but there was still much to learn.
In the Futures division, there are only a handful of riders that must be beaten on a given week. When DiFrancesco moved to the 250 Supercross West division last year, he quickly realized that given the right set of circumstances, nearly anyone in the field could be a winner.
Reflecting on his 2024 season, DiFrancesco acknowledged several highlights, such as winning a heat race in his second start in San Francisco.
“I won San Francisco; that was cool,” DiFrancesco told an assemblage of journalists in the 2024 Media Day sessions. “Getting my first heat race win and just running up front. It’s hard to take it all in as your first year because you want to do the best you can, but also, you’ve got to step back and notice what you’re doing at the same time.
“Lining up last year at A1 was a dream come true, but you’ve got to line up and race at the same time. I don’t think it will be such a shock to me this year, so I can take away and put more into racing than I can take away from my first year.”
DiFrancesco returns to the 250 West division this year and expects to contend with even greater consistency.
“Last year, I waited for a long time,” DiFrancesco said. “You want to be the best man at the supercross track and the test track, and it does put a lot of pressure, and want to have an ego over the other guy. It makes it tough. So, this year, I have one goal set, and it’s lining up at A1 to do the best I can. Now that I have a goal set and a plan, it makes it a lot easier just knowing, every day at the test track, that we’re going racing on January 11th. I’m a West Coast boy, and I belong here at A1.”
Learning to balance ego and expectations was a year in the making. The highs outweighed the lows in Motocross with six top-10s in 11 rounds, including a top-five at Washougal (Wash.) MX Park, but DiFrancesco realizes the need to improve in the stadium series. A DNF followed his heat win in San Francisco in the feature that brought reality crashing back down around his ears. His average Supercross finish was 13.2.
“I expected to be a lot further than I am, but at the same time, I feel like you’ve got to go through those struggles and grow as a person and understand that failure is a part of it, then it’ll help you succeed in the long run,” DiFrancesco said. “It’s hard to understand when it’s going on at the time, but as long as you can see through it and have those flashes. I had a couple of flashes during the outdoor season and a little bit during the Supercross season, but as long as I keep understanding what’s going on, I feel like [my progress] should continue.”
With GasGas taking its program in-house in 2025 to become a true factory team, there is still plenty of room for growth. DiFrancesco expects to be a part of that.
“2025 is going to be a big year for me,” DiFrancesco said. “It’s obviously a contract year. Last year was my first year on the bike. It took a lot longer than I thought it would to get used to it. It’s not an excuse, but it did take a lot longer than I thought.
“I already feel a lot better than I did last year. A second year is super proud, just knowing what to expect. Futures did help out, but it wasn’t anywhere close to going racing on a Saturday night. There is a lot of pressure, but at the same time, we’ve got to take it round by round.”
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