Tessmann heads 4WD practice at Reedy Race

After two rounds of 4WD practice at the Reedy Race of Champions in California, HB’s Ty Tessmann heads the pace with the Canadian setting the fastest lap time from Ryan Maifield and World Champion Steven Hartson.  Defending champion Ryan Cavalieri would end up fourth quickest despite pulling an arm off his Associated in the second practice.  With a best lap of 20.457, Tessmann was fastest by 0.140 from Maifield with Hartson running an almost identical time around the OCRC Raceway track to his former team-mate.

The reigning US National Champion, Tessmann described his D413 as being ‘really good’ around the OCRC track. Running the buggy unchanged for the opening two rounds of practice, for the third & final practice which brings Day 1 of the 21st running of the Reedy Race of Champions to a close, the 1:8 World Champion will use the track time try a kick up and the anti squat change with drivers not set to run their 4WD cars again until Saturday as the heads up racing gets underway tomorrow with 2WD.

‘(I) liked the way it felt and thats all that matters’ was how Maifield summed up his TLR22-4’s performance.  The Arizona driver said ‘I havent been watching the times but I thought it was good and its comfortable to drive’.  For the final practice he said might go down in the front oil and lower the rear roll.

Hartson said he thought his LRP powered B44.3 was good to drive but at the same time he felt something was not right with it. On stripping it down afterwards, he found that it had both a cracked t-plate and diff casing which he hopes once replaced will leave him with an even better car for the final practice.

Cavalieri said his B44.3 ‘was going good until he clipped the pipe’.  Suspecting he caught one of the pipe couplers leading to a broken front right arm, he said other than replace the arm he would again run the car unchanged as it ‘felt good’ to drive.

Having missed the opening two 2WD and first 4WD practice runs due to sitting final exams at school, Drew Moller got his Reedy Race off to a good start as he set the fifth fastest time on his first run around the track.  One of HB’s new signings to a greatly expanded team for 2015, Moller said his D413 was good with him adding that he is ‘loving the track’.  For P3, the 18-year-old plans to run his car unchanged and just let the tyres come in more.

With late Reedy Race invitation class entry Barry Baker completing the Top 6 times driving a D413, it was a strong overall showing for the HB team with David Ronnefalk making it four D413s in the Top 10 as he posted the 7th fastest time.  The Reedy Race debutant said while his car is very easy to drive he is making too many driver errors.  The Swede is over jumping a lot of the jumps and while he has improved this he said he still needs to work on his timing of the jumps adding he ‘should be alright’ once he gets it figured out.

Dakotah Phend would set the 8th fastest time with his TLR22-4.  Struggling somewhat with his 2WD, the 17-year-old said his 4WD is ‘really good’ and he has changed nothing on the set-up, focusing instead on just breaking in tyres, the 4WD classes running a handout Pro-Line Electron tyre front and rear.

Running Serpent’s soon to be released first entry in the 4WD buggy market, former Reedy Race Champion Billy Easton set the 9th fastest lap time with the Top 10 being completed by Kyosho’s Jared Tebo.

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