26th Cactus Classic underway

First held in 1986, the Cactus Classic is one of the blue ribbon events on the international 1:10 Offroad race calendar and with a massive 423 entries this year the event is as strong as ever. Attracting some of the biggest names in the sport from around the world, the 26th running of the event marks the return of Pro-Line as title sponsor. The tyre company has a long history with the Arizona event and they are delighted to be back involved with the prestigious event which has been held at the current Scottsdale R/C Speedway track location since 1994. For former World Champion Mark Pavidis this will be his 24th time to contest the race, an honour he shares with Richard Lake, while for legendary race announcer Scotty Ernst 2012 marks his first time as race director of America’s longest running international offroad event.

Holding three of the five big titles up for grabs at this year’s Proline Cactus Classic, Ryan Maifield is the pre-event favourite as this is his home track. Living just 10 minutes from the Hobby Town owned track and shop, it was at the previous SRS track location in Scottsdale that the now factory Team Associated driver got his first taste of r/c racing. Competing in his 19th Classic, the 2WD Vice-World Champion, who appears very relaxed, said he is pretty confident ahead of the event adding his aim is to ‘have fun and see what happens’. Set to defend his 2WD & 4WD Buggy and 2WD Short Course titles, Maifield will also compete in Modified Truck, the class in which his team-mate Ryan Cavalieri is Champion. With enough work in preping four cars both Ryan’s will not run in 4WD Short Course, the other big class of the event.

Winner of 4WD Short Course last year Team Losi Racing’s Mike Truhe said his truck felt good to drive in open practice yesterday but added he expects the competition to be a lot tougher this time round especially from the Team Durango of German ace Joern Neumann.

Neumann is one of a number of top European drivers who have traveled over for the Classic and earlier this year created a major upset for the Americans when he beat them on their own doorstep to become the first ever European to win the Reedy Race of Champions. The current European 4WD Buggy Champion, Neumann has gained a lot of experience of racing on clay over the past year is confident he can get all three of his cars in their respective A-Mains as he competes in both Buggy classes and 4WD Short Course in which he finished runner up last year.

Team-mate Hupo Honigl, who had an event here last year he would prefer not to remember said things should be a lot better this year as their cars, in particular their 2WD Buggy, has seen a lot of development in those 12 months. Honigl is one of the most experienced Europeans to compete in the Cactus Classic, the Austrian having been a regular for many years now. European 2WD Buggy Champion Lee Martin has also made the trip over, this being his 6th Classic appearance. Racing only 2 classes, the Tamiya Racing Factory driver who finished on the podium in 4WD Buggy last year, said he is happy with how both his buggies have run in early practice.

While drivers had the opportunity to get in some track time yesterday, today the event officially kicked off with two rounds of controlled practice from which a drivers fastest three consecutive laps will be used to determine a reseed for qualifying tomorrow. After the first round of practice, which due to the size of the entry took 6 hours to run, the early pace is being set by Maifield in 2WD & 4WD Buggy and 2WD Short Course, by Cavalieri in Mod Truck and Neumann in 4WD Short Course. The second round of practice is set to end later tonight under spotlights.

View our event image gallery here.