Drake fastest in second Truggy practice

Team Losi Racing’s Adam Drake has set the pace in the second round of controlled Truggy practice for the 2011 US Nationals this morning, topping the 7-minute run from former champion Ryan Maifield and A-Main Hobbies team driver Chad Bradley. Despite running on a freshly watered track which caused a little understeer on his AKA Gridiron shod 8ight-T, Drake said his truck was really good to drive and should get better as the track gets more packed.

After a troubled day yesterday Maifield was much happier after his team made the call to switch him from Reedy to LRP engines, AE being the distributor for LRP in the US.  While the other members of the Associated team are happy with the performance of their Reedy engines, Maifield struggled for bottom end powered with his units and so the team made the decision to switch him to LRP for the remainder of the event. Running JConcepts Hybrid Green tyres on his RC8T, the 2009 Champion said other than changing to a softer front spring for CP3 he will leave the everything else as is.

Running a Losi in Truggy, Bradley said he put Drake’s set-up on his OS powered truck when they sent it to him and he has not had to touch it since.  Running Proline M3 Holeshots he feels the biggest issue is the watering of the track which if done just before your run will cost half a second a lap for 3/4 of the run and its important that for qualifying that they either water the track between every run or not a all to make it fair for everyone.

Setting the fourth fastest time, Serpent’s Billy Easton said he needs to find more steering and felt that the rear of his 811 Cobra-T was too stiff.  Running the same set-up as team-mates Jared Tebo and Cody King, Mark Pavidis outpaced them both in overall time to be the top Kyosho driver with the fifth fastest time.  In terms of fastest lap times however it is King who is setting the bench mark with a 29.583 while team-mate and defending champion Tebo is also quick with a 29.748.

The pace setter in yesterday’s opening practice Ty Tessmann could only manage 6th fastest.  The Hot Bodies driver, who won the Warm-up race for the event, ran early this morning and said this meant the track was very loose but once the line cleared his Proline Holeshot equipped D8T was pretty good, however for the second of today’s runs he plans to run a lighter oil in the centre diff.

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