Tebo, Maifield & Hartson tied at Reedy Race after 2WD
After six rounds of head to head 2WD racing the stage is set for an exciting second half of the Reedy Race of Champions as the switch is made to 4WD with Jared Tebo, Ryan Maifield and Steven Hartson tied for the points lead. The final round of 2WD racing would produce one of the more heavily loaded title contender encounters in which Tebo would get the better of defending champion Ryan Cavalieri. That win would see the Kyosho driver, when the race time tie break is taken into account, top the final points table for the 2WD part of the event with Maifield, who drops his Round 6 4th place finish, second and Hartson third having ended off with a 2nd that allowed him to discard an earlier 9th place finish.
Starting third on the grid behind Cavalieri and 10-year-old pole sitter Daniel Kobbevik from Norway, who did an impressive job of holding the two World Champions at bay for the opening lap, Tebo said ‘that was a good race for me’. Running second to great rival Cavalieri, the reigning 2WD World Champion would go to the front on lap 6 when the Associated driver’s B5M kissed the piping through he Associated esses causing him to run wide allowing Tebo to slip through. This set the stage for an exciting dual for a crucial win which on lap 9 Tebo looked to give away. At the triple his RB6 landed on the piping putting the car on its roof but such was Cavalieri’s focus on the leader he too took the exact same line which result in a carbon copy mistake. As both cars got marshalled it was Tebo who came out still in the lead. Cavalieri would make a move a few laps later at the end of the straight but getting on the dust he would run wide causing him to have to turn his attentions to a hard charging Barry Baker, the Round 5 winner setting the fastest lap of the race. Behind them, the order not changing for the rest of the race, from 10th in the grid Maifield would get up to fourth but the result didn’t improve his final points tally for 2WD. While ‘Really happy to be sitting tied at the top at the end of 2WD’, Tebo added ‘there is a lot of 4WD racing to go’. Believing he has as good 4WD car as he did in 2WD, he said he ‘can only control my own car and not anyone elses so the aim is to just try not to crash myself’.
Cavalieri, who sits fourth, 2 points off the leaders, said he found the ‘track had so much grip’ in the last round making his car edgy to drive. Describing his contact with the piping that allowed Tebo to the front as a ‘slight error’ he said while he tried to go for the win, in the end he knew he needed to get second and he settled for that over the final laps. Feeling the result put him back in the hunt, the three time winner able to drop a 7th but still having to count a fifth, he said the key to the rest of the event is going to be ‘about being patient’ but he thinks he can turn around his points deficit in 4WD with him starting out with a good draw of starting positions.
Starting his Round 6 encounter from 5th on the grid, Hartson said he lost too much time ‘trying to get by some jammers’ and there was nothing he could do about the gap built up by race winner Tanner Denney who had started on pole. The 4WD World Champion said 2nd was still good as it allowed him to drop a bad Round 4 result. Running at his home track he said he is sitting good for the second half of the event as 4WD is his better class but added the most important thing was going to be patient coming through from his back of the grid starting positions.
In the other race, Ty Tessmann claimed his first win of the event so far after a late mistake by pole starter and double race winner Kody Numedahl. The Associated driver, who sits fifth in the standings just 1-point behind Cavalieri, said his tyres were done and once he got on the dust after the step down he couldn’t get on the power, his B5M stepping out and glancing off the pipe with Tessmann able to capitalise and go to the front. Wishing the event could continue running 2WD, the Associated designer said he could not have expected any more in terms of his overall position so far but admitted he did ‘kind of give a way one place’ in the last one. Asked about the switch to 4WD he said ‘4WD is going to kill tyres’ which could become a big factor to the final outcome of the event.
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