Tebo completes clean sweep at Nitro Challenge

Jared Tebo has completed a clean sweep at ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge in Arizona by backing up his thrilling Truggy win with victory in the buggy final over former winner Mike Truhe and World Champion Cody King. Starting from the TQ spot, the Team Kyosho driver dominated the 45-minute race to become the first driver in the annual event’s 12-year history to TQ and then go on to win both classes. Summing up his first big 1:8 race outing of the season Tebo said, ‘It doesn’t get too much better than this’. Winning the 45-minute encounter by almost 20-seconds, a mistake on the second lap meant he had to work for the win but climbing back from 10th position, it was clear that he had the best package of the race highlighted by the fact his fastest lap was 8/10ths quicker than the next best which was set by his team-mate King.

Following the excitement of Saturday night’s Truggy final the buggy race was a rather dull affair especially after the demise of Ryan Maifield who was the only one of the 14 drivers to really pose any serious threat to Tebo. Chasing their fourth consecutive Nitro Challenge success it was a bad day for Team Associated as both their star drivers failed to finish.  Maifield led the race twice but suffered a plastic rod end failure on a front shock.  Told to stay out on track while his team prepared to change the part during his third scheduled fuel stop, the Motorama race winner lasted another lap & a half before it was game over due to a broken steering rod end on the Reedy powered RC8B. Calling the race start to be delayed as his Orion powered RC8B needed a new rim & tyre, Ryan Cavalieri had to call it a day just inside the final 10-minutes of the race when the rest of the tyres parted company with the rims.

Aware of Maifield’s retirement, that handed him a massive lead over Team Losi Racing’s Truhe, Tebo said he didn’t back off his pace as he felt comfortable with his MP9 and didn’t want to break his rhythm by slowing up. King, who was running his first big race since being crowned World Champion, said he tried sometimes too hard to stay with his team-mate but is still pleased to leave the Nitro Pit with a podium which is something to build on for the rest of the 2011 season.

‘Hats off to Jared he drove awesome’ was runner-up Truhe’s response to Tebo’s killer performance.  The 2007 winner said racing at night under the flood lights caused him a real problem with judging his depth of field and he was happy to come away with second. Truhe and his TLR team-mate Adam Drake gambled on running different tyres for the final to cover all possibilities and for Drake his choice gave him little option but to cruise around netting him fourth position in the end.

While the Top 4 finishers were all well spaced out, the main interest was the battle for fifth between Hot Bodies’ Ty Tessmann and Tamiya’s Lee Martin until the latter rolled at the cross over on the penultimate lap.  This allowed Canadian teenager Tessmann passed to claim fifth but afterwards 26-year-old Martin said he was pleased to be competitive on his first outing with Tamiya USA.

2011 ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge was Red RC’s first experience of one of the big US Off Road classics and reporting from the Arizona desert was a memorable experience. Joey Christensen and his team created what can only be described as a spectacular track in a place that is full of atmosphere.  A special thanks to Proline for providing us with a base during our time at the track and to Team Durango who made our coverage of this very unique event possible.

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