Tebo wins opening final

Jared Tebo has won the opening leg of the A-Main at the 2WD Electric Buggy World Championship.  Starting from fourth on the grid the Kyosho driver took a convincing win over the Associated’s of Ryan Cavalieri and Top Qualifier Neil Cragg.  Running only the seventh fastest lap time of the race, the American proved speed was not the key to success at the Vaasa track as he benefited from mistakes early on by Cavalieri and Maifield before pulling off a very nice pass on Cragg for the lead.

Running a clean race, Tebo said afterwards he just listened to his pre-race notes one of which was to not have a marshal touch his car.  Once he hit the front the American said the pressure was on the chasing pack and he felt really good allowing him to open up a comfortable gap.  Backing right off on the last lap he still managed a 1.4 second winning margin.

Cavalieri, who finished in the same position he started, said it was a decent race but the double single in front of the drivers stand caused him some problems.  Comfortable with his B4.1 on every other part of the track he said for some reason in the final it flew differently every time over the front section jump leading to a few moments for him.

The only driver in the final to have held the World title before, Cragg had an up and down race eventually finishing third almost a second off team-mate Cavalieri.  Afterwards the softly spoken British ace admitted that ‘maybe’ his nerves got the better of him.

Finishing fourth, 5 seconds down on Cragg, Dustin Evans was disappointed with the result after a coming together with Ryan Maifield ended his chances of a strong finish.  Not wanting to go into too much detail, Evans said about the incident that ‘it is was it is’ but it was ‘unfortunate to get taken out when running in the freight train for the race win’.  Maifield, who set the fastest lap of the final, felt it was a racing incident caused by the pair touching wheels and was clearly upset by the decision of IFMAR officials to make him wait which let four cars passed.  In the end the American, who started 3rd, finished 5th.

Starting from ninth on the grid Team Durango’s Joern Neumann completed the Top 6 a massive 9 seconds ahead of the Tamiya of Lee Martin who had a terrrible first run.

Full results can be found here.

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