Maifield tops free practice in China
Ryan Maifield has topped free practice at the 1:10 4WD Offroad World Championships in China. The newly crowned 2WD World Champion set the fastest time in the fourth & final round of free practice at Xiamen ARC International Raceway with just over a tenth of a second advantage over Bruno Coelho, the reigning 4WD Champion also registering his quickest time in FP4. Having found himself at the top of the time sheets after three rounds, Joern Neumann would end up third overall after failing to better his FP3 time. The early place setter after the first two practices, David Ronnefalk would have issues in the final practice, completing just 5-laps. Second fastest in FP3, that time would leave him 5th fastest behind Ty Tessmann and ahead of Naoto Matsukura who completed the Top 6.
Summing up free practice, with 2 rounds of controlled practice left on today’s schedule, Maifield said, ‘It going good. We are still kind of throwing shit at the wall and seeing what works’. The Yokomo driver continued, ‘I am still playing with tyres. There is not much you can do because its a handout tyre but I am still deciding on gluing or not gluing the foam to the wheel’. For CP1 he will also make a shock adjustment by moving to a smaller hole piston. Noticeable hotter today than during the three days of 2WD action, Maifield said, ‘the track is definitely getting loose in spots’ but concluded, ‘overall it still feels nice’.
While describing things as ‘getting better now’, Coelho continued, ‘we are still working on the car because it is very far from perfect’. With the track having ‘less traction every run’, the Xray driver said, ‘some parts of the track have so much traction but then other parts have no traction. At the triple, the surface is polished and the traction there is just getting worse and worse so we have to work on the car for this’.
‘I’m only 2/10th off so its going OK’, was Neumann’s thoughts on his performance in practice. The former World’s Top Qualifier and multiple European Champion changed to a different front and rear spring on his privately entered Gerd Strenge modified Xray for FP4 reporting the track as being faster while the car ‘felt OK’ but wasn’t much different to the run before. Setting a faster single lap time but unable to get 3 good laps due to traffic, with his rivals going faster he will revert back to his FP3 set-up for controlled practice ‘to see if it’s better’ for how the latest track conditions are. Describing the track as ‘very difficult like 2WD’, the German added, ‘the four doubles are hard to get right every lap.’
Tessmann said he is ‘getting closer’ and his Xray ‘felt good that time’ but added ‘it’s not quite the feel as I’d like’. Planning ‘a couple of changes’, the former 1:8 World Champion said he is looking to get ‘more stability at high speed’ from his XB4. On track conditions he said it is ‘a little more polished’ and while ‘everyone is going faster there is not so much change in how to feels’.
‘It felt good so I’m not worried’ was Ronnefalk’s reaction after his limited FP4 run time. The reigning 1:8 World Champion said, ‘we changed a few things to get more speed without sacrificing consistency. Unfortunately we forgot to put an o-ring in when putting back the centre shaft and when the chassis flexed it popped out. We managed to get it back in with an o-ring to get some laps and I could get a 24.0 lap so I know we improved the car a lot from the few laps I did. I will run it the same for the next one’.
Matsukura summed up free practice by saying, ‘the track is hard, it fun but hard’. The Infinity driver would be the fastest Associated driver bettering the American brands team drivers of which Dustin Evans was quickest in P8. Describing his car set-up as ‘ok’, the reigning 1:12 World Champion said it is suffering from ‘a little bit of understeer’ adding ‘we need to make it more stable in the rear’. On track conditions the Japanese driver said, ‘It starting to get a little bumpy now’. Behind Matsukura Dakotah Phend would continue to lead the TLR challenge ending free practice 7th quickest.
View our event image gallery here.
