Maifield TQ’s opening 4WD Buggy Qualifier

Ryan Maifield has TQ’d the opening round of 4WD Buggy qualifying at the JConcepts Clash, the Team Associated ace topping the time sheets at the Mississippi event from TLR’s Cody Hollis with defending champion Jason Ruona completing the Top 3.  The 7th running of the annual event, Maifield’s main rival Dustin Evans would retire from his opening run with a broken font shock tower.

Finishing almost 9-seconds clear of Hollis, Maifield said apart from a few traffic issues it was a good opening run as he still trying to get used to the limits of certain sections of the track.  Running JConcepts Blue Barcodes on his B44.2 he said his buggy felt good and for tomorrow morning’s second qualifier he only plans to fit a fresh set of tyres.

Making his Clash debut, Hollis was pleased with his qualifier. Having earlier TQ’d the opening round of Mod Truck, he said he just kept everything smooth and the result was a clean run.  Running Green Barcodes, the 20-year-old said for Q2 he will leave his XXX-4 set-up as is and just change tyre to harder Blue compound.

Ruona declared himself ‘pretty happy’ with his run to third adding that it was ‘something to build on’.  The JConcepts boss said that his B44.2 felt good and has the potential to be closer to the lead pace but he drove a little to much on the conservation side.  He said it was not until Maifield ran behind him that he started to push a little harder and although his star driver passed him he was happy with how well he was was able to stick with the World Championship title contender albeit only for a few laps.

Setting the fourth fastest time was Brett Kingsbury driving an Associated.  Despite having ‘one wreck’ the Florida racer said he was happy with his run especially considering his lack of top speed.  Running a 7.5 turn motor he said he plans to switch to a 6.5 turn for Q2 having been left standing on the straight by a number of drivers in his heat.

Driving an Xray XB4, Team Novak driver Jack Genova posted the 5th fastest time.  The 16-year-old said despite making the wrong tyre choice he was his happy with the run.  Having ran Proline’s Holeshot on the front and Square Fuzzy on the rear he said for tomorrow he will switch over to ION all round on the Xray, the set-up of which he will leave as is.  Behind Genova, Blaine Cavin completed the Top 6.

Having TQ’d 2WD Short Course from Maifield earlier, Evans said his 4WD buggy run started off ‘super good’ with two ‘great’ opening laps that put him on target to better Maifield’s TQ time, his rival running a heat earlier.  Hitting traffic which hampered his progress Evans would retire 2-minutes in when the front shock tower broke, something he believes may have been the result of to a heavy tumble earlier on the main straight.

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