Hartson sets early pace as drivers wait on traction

Steven Hartson has set the early 2WD pace at the Reedy Race of Champions but it is the low level of traction at OCRC Raceway that’s the big talking point among the invitational class drivers.  Laying down the fastest 3-consecutive laps, as well as the fastest outright lap of 19.197, the Associated driver topped the times ahead of former Open class winner & team-mate Rob Gillespie. Behind them reigning Reedy Race Champion Ryan Maifield completed the Top 3 closely followed by 2WD World Champion Spencer Rivkin.

The home track of the former 4WD World Champion, Hartson was pleased to top the times but said ‘its not easy to drive out there as its super loose’.  With 2WD running a handout gold compound Dirt Webs tyre from JConcepts, he said while the traction usually starts out low the tyres aren’t there yet and that’s making the popular layout difficult. Leaving his B5M unchanged as he waits for the track to come in, he hesitantly said the ‘tyres might be good by the time racing starts’.  Asked about the layout he said, it ‘will be good once the traction comes up’.  While ‘the triple is hard now’ (due to the low traction), he added while ‘its a fun layout’ if the traction doesn’t improve the 2WD racing is ‘going to suck’.

While ‘everyone is fighting the loose track right now’, Gillespie summed up his own performance as ‘so far so good’.  Looking for more overall traction, the 23-year-old is planning a rear shock set-up change on his B5M for the third & final round of practice saying he would ‘see what we can get out of it’ with that change.

Describing his TLR22 as ‘fine’, Maifield said with the track still loose his focus was just on getting his tyres scrubbed in for racing.  Making no changes to the car set-up he said he had to believe that the set-up is going to be correct for when the traction comes up.  Team Losi Racing team-mate Dakotah Phend would set the 7th fastest time.  The 18-year-old said with the ‘track slippery’ he was ‘not doing too much to the car’ and instead using the track time to break in tyres while waiting for track to come to it.  Describing the layout as ‘a lot of fun’, he feels with ‘no big jumps last year’ making it difficult to pass once the driver in front drove clean’ this year he said the bigger jumps add opportunities for making passes.

‘Going really well. Making all the jumps and not crashing’, that was how Rivkin summed up his second 2WD practice run.  ‘Not doing anything’ to his Reedy powered B5M, the 17-year-old said the layout was ‘awesome’ and he liked how it was ‘a little more difficult’ than last year adding it would ‘show the drivers from the squid’. Team-mate Ryan Cavalieri would post the 5th fastest time.  A three time Reedy Race winner, he said he had a couple of mistakes over the run but with the tyres coming in it would make it easier to judge the rights lines in the final practice.

Completing the Top 6 after two rounds of practice, Team Associated designer Kody Numedahl said his B5M was ‘easy to drive’. Running Reedy electrics which he said he normally runs with ‘tame’ power settings he feels he might need to add a ‘tiny bit more power’.  While the car has good speed on the straight he said the extra power would help at the triples.  Commenting on the track, Numedahl, who has home track advantage, said the layout is ‘so different to normal and so much faster’.  About 2-seconds a lap faster than a regular OCRC layout, he said the sweeper is going to be interesting when the grip comes up, predicting some cars ending up ‘out of the track’.

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