Rodriguez rises like a Phoenix to make Truggy Main
Dylan Rodriguez put in a Phoenix style rise to secure his place in tonight’s Truggy A-Main of the Dirt Nitro Challenge on a day that started out in the F-Main culminating in victory in the B-Main to put the A-Main Performance Hobbies team driver on the 15 car grid that will battle it out for victory at the 16th running of the Arizona event. Battling it out for much of the race with Austin Blair eventually finishing 4.7 seconds ahead, the Las Vegas driver will be joined by his A-Main team-mate. Securing the third a final bump up spot would be Novak team driver Billy Fischer who would come out on top of a late battle with Cody King, the Kyosho driver giving up third with a mistake at the end of the straight with two & half laps to go.
Unfortunately for last year’s only triple podium finisher Dakotah Phend, the 18-year old will not be returning to Michigan with three trophies this year. A tough qualifying left the US National Champion in the C-Main and having bumped up he was in contention to progress to the A-Main but just after the 2/3rds distance of the 30-minute encounter he suffered another steering knuckle failure having had the same issue in one of his qualifiers. Another driver who was looking strong to bump up was Xray’s Martin Bayer. The Czech driver went with a 10-minute fuel strategy and as that played out, most drivers doing 3 stops, he was right at the front but on his in lap for his 2nd stop he ran out of fuel. Afterwards he said half way through the race a loose ackermann screw lost him steering forcing him to have to steer the truggy on the throttle leading his FX engine to just miss the second stop.
A very popular win, Rodriguez described his day as ‘crazy’. Ending up qualifying second to last after radio issues in Q1, a front drive failure in Q2 and further issues in Q3, all three qualifying heats coming to a combined 10-laps of the Fear Farm track, he said for the B-Main he was just trying to keep out of trouble and coming from 14th on the grid ‘opportunities came (his) way’ allowing him to work his way to the front. Describing his HB D8T Tessmann Edition as working really good, the recently turned 21-year-old said after such bad luck in qualifying he was delighted to turn things around and line up in the A-Main.
Blair, who is running an S-Workz truggy, was equally happy to bump up having started the race from second on the grid behind Drew Moller, the HB driver leading for the first 5-minutes before a series of mistakes dropped him down the order. The 20-year-old said having watched some ‘hectic starts’ to the earlier finals he just tried to stay out of trouble for the early laps and not hit anyone. Swapping the lead with Rodriguez and Fischer, he said he enjoyed his battle with his team-mate he was looking forward to taking part in the A-Main having missed the cut last year.
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