Maifield opens Reedy Race Day 2 with big win
Having ended Day 1 of the Reedy Offroad Race of Champions as the points leader with 3 wins from four races, Ryan Maifield kicked off Saturday’s action at OCRC Raceway with a big win from the back of the starting grid. Lining up 8th for the penultimate round of 4WD action, a row behind his closest points challenger Spencer Rivkin, the Yokomo driver didn’t have the best of starts. Hitting the wing of team-mate Yusuke Sugiura he dropped back off the pack in last position. Getting back in touch with the main pack, the 2015 Champion got a big break at the end of lap 4 when he somehow managed to avoid carnage and come out in third place from where he set about chasing down the lead battle between front row starters Broc Champlin and Joona Haatanen. Mistakes from both drivers gave Maifield the lead which, despite a strong comeback from Champlin, he held to the end to guarantee no matter the outcome of Round 6 he will go into the 2WD action as the points leader. In the other races Dakotah Phend opened the round with another dominant win ahead of Alex Kosciuszek from sixth on the grid to make it three wins in a row. Heat 2 of the round ended with with a heated debate between defending champion Jared Tebo and Ty Tessmann, as the duo came together at the end of the final lap in which Tessmann was able to grab the win.
Summing up his latest win, Maifield said, ‘In the rhythm section I hit Yusuke’s win and thought it is going to be tough to come back but Spencer was back there too. He cased a jump so I got passed him and then I managed to to get around the carnage and come out third. I was content with third from the back row’. Complimenting Champlin’s attempt to get back the lead he had held for more than half the race, the former World Champion said, ‘Broc raced me pretty good and he drove smart too. He could have thrown it down my inside at the chicane’. Asked about his tyres, Maifield said, ‘They are slicks. The problem is new ones have no forward traction so you’ve got to run old tyres to be competitive but it means you have to hang on for dear life at the end of the race’.
Asked about his first win of the event, which came from starting last on the grid, Tessmann said, ‘we made some changes to the car it was probably the best it has been for racing’. The Xray driver continued, ‘I was able to avoid a major pile up and pick people off. I had my own mistake at the first rhythm section when I landed down on the pipe’. On his pass on Tebo, the Canadian said, ‘It was aggressive. I pushed him the corner before when he got loose and then he tried to close and there was no where to go. I was trying to pass and he was trying to block. I didn’t think there was anything wrong and that’s why I didn’t stop’.
A frustrated Tebo, who didn’t have the best start from pole dropping to P3 for a time before moving into the lead on lap 12, said, ‘I was trying to be patient and get the win. Yesterday I took out Ty on the first lap. Today he took me out on the last lap for the lead so I guess we are even now’.
On his race, Phend said, ‘I was patient moving my way through and waited on mistakes’. Asked which tyres he ran, the TLR driver said, ‘I ran my newer ones. They were not quite as fast but it was safe to drive’. Looking to the final 4WD encounter, the former Champion said, ‘I start the last one on the front row so I’ll try to get a good start and make it happen so I can drop my four’.
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