Champion Cavalieri opens Reedy Race with win

Defending back to back champion Ryan Cavalieri got his quest for a fourth Reedy Race of Champions title off to the perfect start as he opened the 21st running of the event this morning at OCRC Raceway with a win in the first round of heads up racing.  The first of 12 rounds of racing also saw wins for former Champion Joern Neumann and 4WD World Champion Steven Hartson. One significant result for Round 1 was that of Ryan Maifield, the TLR driver & 2014 runner-up, having been drawn to start 9th, managed to work his way through the field to finish 2nd behind Neumann.

Starting his race from 4th, the first of the event, behind a number of key contenders, namely former Champion Dustin Evans and Jared Tebo, Cavalieri said the start was a little confusing and for much of the first lap he expected a restart to be called.  Just as the computer announced 1-minute to the start the start tone went with a number of drivers including Cavalieri not making the best of starts.  Once he ‘settled in’ Cavalieri said he was fortunate enough to benefit from a few people hitting the piping adding this meant he never had to ‘force the issue, which was nice’.  Cavalieri utlimately went to the front when Evans made a mistake on lap 6 of 14 taking the win from Durango’s Travis Amezcua, Tebo & Tessmann with Evans falling to 5th.  Other than one scary moment when Cody King got it wrong at the triple sending his Kyosho across the path of his B5M he summed up the race as ‘a conservative run but got what I wanted’.

Winning the second race of the round Neumann said switching from an 8.5 to a 7.5 Orion motor in his Yokomo had made the YZ-2 much better than in practice.  The German, who became the first European driver to win the Reedy Race in 2012, said he knew Maifield would push but he just drove a ‘smooth and controlled race’.  Having opened up an early gap he said even though Maifield did close him down, the final gap being 1.2 seconds, he never really had any cause for concern from the American.

‘Not bad to get up to the Top 3 starting from the back’ was how Maifield summed up his opening race.  Having built up a gap over 3rd placed Carson Wernimont he said for the last couple of laps he decided to go for it but after a mistake at the triple on his penultimate lap he said he settled for the second.  Describing his TLR22 as predictable he said it could do with a little more steering but ultimate performance is not what this race is about.

Hartson took the most convincing win of the first round, leading home an impressive drive from Spencer Rivkin by 7.9 seconds.  With OCRC his home track, the Associated driver said the win was ‘a lot easier starting from the front row’ but it was important to capitalise on his draws to start up front.

Starting from 10th on the grid, Rivkin said he ran ‘really patient at the start’ and as those ahead of him crashed he just picked his way through and ‘kept it going’.  The winner of the Open class in 4WD last year, which booked him his place in this year’s 30 driver Invitational class, Team Associated’s 16-year-old future prospect said it was a really positive start to the event considering his starting position and he hopes to carry that through the remainder of the day.

Having started his race from the pole position, 2011 Champion Evans said nerves got the better of him adding his mistake at the chicane was at one of the easiest parts of the track.  Happy with the pace of his TLR22 he said he just didn’t drive it well.

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