Maifield e-Buggy Top Qualifier at DNC
Ryan Maifield is the e-Buggy Top Qualifier at the Dirt Nitro Challenge, the Team Losi Racing ace backing up his Q1 performance with another TQ in the second qualifier to wrap things up early at the Phoenix, Arizona, event. Again setting the pace from reigning champion & last year’s Top Qualifier Ty Tessmann, the gap this time round was a reduced 2-seconds. Fifth in the opening qualifier, Team Associated’s Ryan Cavalieri would set the third fastest time followed by former champion David Ronnefalk, Joe Bornhorst and Spencer Rivkin, the latter losing time with a big mistake over the 7-minutes.
Pleased to notch up his first TQ of what is a home race for the Arizona driver, Maifield said ‘(he) got a little tight at the end (of the qualifier)’ adding ‘leading a race is different as you can see where you’re at compared to the other drivers. In terms of his Orion powered buggy, he described it as ‘easy to drive’ adding ‘it floats over the bumps really well’ with the ‘power band also really nice’. Having been using eBuggy to gather tyre data for tomorrow’s nitro buggy qualifying, the defending Buggy Champion said he knows already from the two qualifiers what tyre he will use and so while he will run the final qualifier he doesn’t really have any changes or different tyres he needs to test.
Tessmann said a set-up change on his D815 left him with a better car but opting for a softer compound Pro-Line tyre this was not as good. For Q3 the World Champion said unless track conditions get worse he doesn’t need to do anything to the car and it would be just down to selecting the right tyre compound, it set to be much cooler than in the first two rounds.
Describing his P3 as ‘a solid run for eBuggy’, Cavalieri said his second qualifier ‘went great’. Making a rear sway-bar change on his RC8B3e, he said this made it ‘a lot better to drive’ with the buggy having ‘good speed’. Suffering ‘one little mistake at the beginning that lost him around a second he said he was able to ‘bounce back’ from that and planning a few more set-up changes for Q3 he is confident there is more to come.
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