Tebo opens Reedy title defence with first round win
Reedy Race Champion Jared Tebo has opened his title defence with a win in the first race of the 26th running of the iconic event. Starting from pole position with Ty Tessmann alongside, Tebo and the Canadian would go at it for the full 5-minutes with Dakotah Phend joining the battle for what was the most exciting race of the opening round. A mistake by Tebo would allow Tessmann to go to the front until he then had a moment handing the lead back to Tebo. In the end the Top 3 would cross the line covered by less than 3/10th of a second. In the second encounter, Spencer Rivkin took the win over Ryan Maifield, Maifield having started from pole position but dropped down the order after any early mistake in the centre rhythm section. The third race saw the No.4 starting Ryan Cavalieri avoid contact between early leader Shin Adachi and young French driver Clement Boda and once in front the Reedy Race’s most crowned champion pretty much controlled the race.
‘Not a bad start at all’, was Tebo’s reaction to winning the first of his 12 races. Winning the event for the first time last year on his switch to the Tekno team, he continued, ‘It was a tough nerve wrecking 1st race. The car was good, I was just fighting the first race nerves. It was a good clean fight with Ty and we just swapped mistakes. It’s good to get the nerves out of the way with a win’. Asked about his car, the former World Champion said, ‘I’m going to stick with the same set-up for the next one because I know I can drive better in a couple of spots. The car is consistent and that’s key’.
Commenting on his opening attempt, Tessmann said, ‘It could have been better but it was a safe start. It is always nerve wrecking starting the first race from the front row’. The Xray driver continued, ‘the car was good and I had got by Cavalieri but made a mistake on my own and lost the lead. I knew third was not far behind so I didn’t want to risk anything’. Regarding his car set-up, the Canadian said for Round 2 he will, ‘stick with what we’ve got’.
Having set the pace in 4WD practice yesterday, Phend summed up Round 1 as ‘not too bad a result’ but the former Champion was less happy with his start from 4th on the grid’. The TLR driver explained, ‘I had a bad start. I just messed it up.’ Set to start his next race from the back of the grid, the races this year each featuring 8-starters, Phend concluded, ‘The car is really good so I will just keep plugging away in the next one ‘.
Rivkin described his race as a ‘solid run’. The Associated driver said, ‘I started 4th and took advantage of everyone else’s mistakes and then hung in there till the end’. Chasing his first Reedy Race title, the newly crowned 2WD World Champion said, ‘my car was good but coming of the drivers stand I was thinking I need to make it easier to drive but then looking at the lap times its one of the fastest out there so maybe I was just a little too excited for the first race. I think I will pretty much leave it as is for the next one’.
‘A good start to the day. I got a good jump off the line and capitalised on mistakes from a few guys in front. Once out in clean air I could dictate the race from there’, was how Cavalieri summed up his race. The Sworkz driver said in the latter part of the race he could feel something wasn’t right and afterwards found that his rear swaybar mount had disconnected. Looking to Round 2, he plans to make a couple of changes including shock oil change saying, ‘the pace os close but I could use just a little more speed’.
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