September 7, 2013

2WD Buggy a repeat of 4WD

Maifield

The opening round of 2WD Buggy qualifying at the JConcepts Clash was almost a carbon copy of the earlier 4WD Buggy qualifier with Team Associated’s Ryan Maifield setting the pace again from TLR’s Cody Hollis and JConcepts’ Jason Ruona as Dustin Evans suffered another retirement due to a broken front shock tower.

LRFri-MaifieldAct

The only driver to run 14 laps over the 5-minutes, Maifield was happy to end Day 1 of qualifying with two TQ runs from the 3-classes he is contesting but added that had Evans not retired it would have been very close between him and the TLR driver in the events blue ribbon class. Suffering a few mistakes over the run, the defending champion said his mid motored C4.1 felt pretty good helped by the fact that the traction was starting to get better. Running additive treated JConcepts Blue Barcodes, and based on the improvement in grip over the course of Q1, for the first of tomorrow’s three scheduled rounds of qualifying he plans to switch to a closed cell front foam insert along with making a few set-up adjustments to his buggy to suit the rising level of grip.

Evans

While Hollis backed up his 4WD Buggy performance by also posting he 2nd fastest time in 2WD Buggy for a strong first day of action, for TLR team-mate Evans it was a frustrating day.  Topping the timesheets in 2WD Short Course ahead of Maifield for a strong start to the event, the former US Champion and Reedy Race winner had a frustrating ending to the day.  While his 4WD buggy shock tower breakage in Q1 was due to moment of his own doing, in 2WD Buggy it was a problem with traffic that lead to his unnecessary retirement just after the half way distance of the run.  Jumping the large centre double Evans’ collided mid air with a slower buggy causing his Orion powered TLR22 2.0 to land awkwardly resulting in his second broken shock tower of the day.

Jason Ruona

Ruona said he ran a cautious qualifier but in terms of the set-up on his  rear motor mounted B4.2 he was ‘pretty happy’ as the buggy was really easy to drive.  Aiming for a Top 5 result, he said posting the 3rd fastest time was pretty good however had Evans not had his problems & JR Mitch not been hampered by traffic he is pretty sure he would have been classified in 5th spot.  1.2 seconds behind Ruona was JConcepts bodyshell designer Paul Wynn.  Like his boss, he ran blue Barcodes putting in a ‘safe run’ to secure 4th for the round.  Planning to drive a little more ‘aggressive’ for his next outing he also plans to adjust his B4.2 set-up to give himself a little more steering.

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