Cavalieri denies Maifield in epic DNC final
Ryan Cavalieri denied long standing arch rival Ryan Maifield from retaining his Dirt Nitro Challenge buggy title reversing the outcome of last year’s final to win an epic 45-minute encounter at the Fear Farm. Starting 3rd on the grid, Cavalieri would take a late lead and see off a final corner lunge by Maifield to claim his first DNC title at the Fear Farm by 1.151-seconds, his last win coming in 2010 when the race was held at the Nitro Pit. With both Cavalieri and Maifield hitting trouble in Saturday’s Truggy Main when they ran out of fuel, in Buggy it was the new Truggy Champion Ty Tessmann who was to have the bad luck as he was robbed of the race lead just after the halfway mark when a stone got caught up in a rear wheel. The race’s most winning driver, Tessmann would drag his HB back to pits and while a repeat of his 2014 double was done the Canadian would still finish on the lead lap to complete the podium at the 17th running of the Joey Christensen event.
Trying to best judge the difficult track conditions Cavalieri ‘made a last minute tyre change’ going from soft to super soft AKA Impacts and while he made a ‘clean start’ he took a few laps to get a proper feel for his MX powered RC8B3. Running one lap more than Maifield between stops he said this benefited him as he was able then to drive that lap by himself which he felt put him in a good position as they did their final stops. With his car particularly good through the front section he said he over drove through there to get Maifield to do the same looking to force an error, and it would, as with 3-minutes to go Maifield got out of shape leaving him with not enough speed for the step-up allowing Cavalieri to go to the front. Once in front Cavalieri said ‘once I got the lead I felt I was at my best pace’. Admitting ‘its been a while’ since his last DNC win he added ‘its a good start in a Worlds year and now we got to try keep it going’.
‘Nothing really to be upset about’ was Maifield’s reaction to an action packed race, the TLR driver adding it was ‘the gnarliest track I have ever raced on’. Top Qualifier in all three classes at this year’s DNC, he said ‘I was the fastest guy but I just couldn’t stop crashing, it was the craziest track to drive’. ‘I tried to cut out the crashes but I had to push to catch Ryan and crashed more. At the end I sent it in to try an out jump Ryan but ended up hitting him and running wide. Without his problem Ty would have won as he had the mileage we didn’t’. Summing up his home nitro event he said ‘it was a good weekend, I TQ’d all three, took one win and should have won Truggy and so I showed my shit is fast’.
Tessmann said he was ‘not to disappointed as everything held up’ with the rock in his wheel something you cant account for. Choosing Pro-Line’s X3 Holeshot tyre for the final, the World Champion said they where a good choice with his OS speed powered D815 both ‘fast and easy to drive’. ‘Just trying not to make any mistakes’, the 23-year-old said when he got a lead over his rivals he ‘didn’t feel (he) was driving hard’. With a rock jamming up his back wheel he said he ‘limped’ back to the pitlane where it took his dad a while to figure out the problem. Rejoining in 4th, he said ‘at this level you can’t make up 14-seconds’, his deficit to the leader Maifield. Having been on target to run one less stop than his rivals this ‘got screwed up’ due to his unplanned stop during which they fuelled the car.
Top foreign visitor at ‘The Dirt’ would be Tessmann’s HB team-mate David Ronnefalk, the Swede finishing 4th after getting by one time race leader Dakotah Phend on the last lap. Describing the race as ‘pretty messy’, last year’s Truggy Champion said he ‘got a good start up to the Step-up’ getting collected and coming out of it in last place. Overcoming getting ‘taken out a couple of times’, he said mid race he was only 15-seconds off the lead but then his car would stop on track. Thinking he had suffered an engine flame it would turn out that his mini deans plug had cut the cars electric with It coming back to life and him able to continue on his way. With only himself and Phend managing 39-second lap times in the race, the 19-year-old who started 7th said ‘I was one of the fastest out there but had a shit start and thats why a good qualifying is so important’.
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