Maifield ups the pace in Q2
Ryan Maifield upped the pace in the second round of Truggy qualifying at the Dirt Nitro Challenge to take the round from Team Durango’s Ryan Lutz and defending champion Jared Tebo. Setting a new fastest lap of 39.736, Maifield ran 11 laps in 7:20.335, knocking almost 4 seconds of Ty Tessman morning TQ run here at the Fear Farm. Switching to blue compound JConcepts Hybrid tyres on his Associated and running a lighter clutch on his LRP engine, the American Truggy Champion said it was decent run and other than switching back to Green compound for Q3 his set-up was ‘all good’.
After a disastrous opening lap in Q1 which saw his Durango DNX408T involved in three incidents resulting in a 51 second lap, Lutz described Q2 as ‘much better’. Adding ‘a lot’ of droop to his Alpha powered truggy he said it felt really comfortable and he was able to put in a clean 7 minutes. Running soft compound AKA Ibeam in both qualifiers Lutz plans to switch to the Impact pattern for this evening’s final qualifier as a test for Saturday’s Mains.
The man who last year wrapped up overall TQ honours in the second qualifier, Tebo said his run was really good until he hooked a pipe on the final lap. The Kyosho ace said without the mistake it would have been very close on time with Maifield. For Q3 he will make a few changes to his Orion powered ST-RR including switching to a thicker oil in the centre diff and running less rear toe.
Team Losi Racing’s Adam Drake said his Novarossi powered TLR 8ight-T was really good but but ‘one bad mistake’ meant it needed to be marshalled. Despite the 4 seconds lost he still managed 4th for the round just 2 seconds off Maifield’s time. Having made up half the Top 10 for Q1 this time round Drake was only joined by TLR team-mate Matt Castellano who set the 6th fastest time.
Having only set the 11th fastest time in the opening round Ryan Cavalieri was fifth in Q2. The Team Associated driver switched from M3 to M2 Proline Holeshot which he said was not the right call as the compound was too hard for the conditions. Considering he was one of the few leading drivers to use the harder tyre he said he was pretty happy with his run which was error free.
Setting the 8th fastest time behind Kyosho’s Cody King, Ty Tessman had a potential overall TQ securing run ruined when a truggy he was lapping stopped right in front of him. Running at a pace that the timing system was predicting would be 2 seconds up on Maifield’s TQ time, Tessman said he was cruising and running well within his limits but expecting the slower truggy to move over rather than just come to a sudden stop there was little he could do to avoid the costly contact. Having flamed out twice in Q1 Hot Bodies team-mate Jessie Robbers said he just focused on keeping his D8-T on four wheels and he was happy to finish up ninth fastest. Team Associated’s young up and coming talent Tanner Denney completed the Top 10.
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