Practice complete at Worlds, Evans fastest
Practice for the 15th IFMAR 1:10 Electric Offroad World Championships is completed with Team Losi Racing’s Dustin Evans posting the fastest time in the ninth & final practice round ahead of Tamiya’s Lee Martin and Associated’s Ryan Maifield. Defending champion Ryan Cavalieri appeared less than happy with his final practice in which he posted the 5th fastest time behind Pre World Race winner Ty Tessman.
The top seed for qualifying, having posted the fastest 2-consecutive laps in last night’s first controlled practice, Evans described his final practice as ‘very good’ adding it was nice to run with 10 evenly matched drivers allowing him to finally get a clean 5-minute run in. Happy with his Orion powered mid motored TLR22, the former US National Champion and Reedy Race winner said despite the cooler conditions this morning at the Silver Dollar R/C Raceway the buggy felt ‘awesome’ and he planned to run it as is for the opening qualifier. Team-mate Mike Truhe, who posted the sixth fastest time, was also very happy with his Novak powered TLR22 adding that the buggy was there to get the job done and it was now just down to the driver. Making one mistake in the final practice he said this was a result of him over driving it in order to find the limit of what he said is a very easy buggy to drive.
Martin, who is happy he has cured the electric glitches he suffered in the 6th round of practice, shared Evans comments regarding the 10 car heats saying it was ‘nice to have less traffic’. Suffering one ‘excursion’ when he put his Viper powered TRF201 XM onto the piping, he said other than a fresh set of tyres, all drivers having to use Proline Suburb rears and Martin opting for Scrubs on the front, he was happy to leave his buggy as is for the first of the four qualifiers on today’s schedule.
Maifield said he lacked a little steering but put that down to the cooler conditions, there being a noticeable cold breeze today. Running JConcepts front tyres he said he plans to stick with them as the temperatures should come up by the time his first qualifier comes round although he said he probably will make a few minor tweaks to the set-up he ran this morning. Associated team-mate Cavalieri wasn’t giving too much away. Running in the second fastest heat, he said the only plan ahead of qualifying was to refresh his shocks but his body language hinted that the multiple World Champion who is chasing a 5th title is not happy with how things are going so far. Setting the 7th fastest time Associated designer Kody Numedahl reported a similar lack of steering to Maifield but also feels once the temperature comes up all will be good adding that his Centro converted B4.2 is ‘really easy to drive’.
Running in the second fastest heat, HB’s Ty Tessmann was pleased with how his Orion powered Kyosho RB6 ran but said the wind was a bit of an issue. Marshalling the top heat, the Canadian said the wind totally died down for their run but with much higher winds forecast for tomorrow this might having a bearing on the outcome of the finals.
In the Kyosho camp it was recently crowned Japanese National Champion Yusuke Sugiura who was quickest with the 7th fastest time. Best of the drivers posting a 10-lap run, he outpaced fellow Japanese driver and 2011 Finalist Naoto Matsukura who was 9th by 6/10ths of a second. Top European Kyosho driver 17-year-old David Ronnefalk posted the fastest lap time for the round, but the Swede said two mistakes cost him a total of around 5-seconds. Very happy with his RB6, he said the pace is there but he just has to cut out the mistakes and keep off the pipes. Kyosho’s big hope for the World title Jared Tebo ran a soft compound front AKA 3 Rib due to the cooler conditions but said it made his buggy very inconsistent. Switching back to the same medium compound he ran yesterday, the former 4WD World Champion said he is feeling pretty confident going into the opening qualifier.
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