Maifield & Evans quickest ahead of Reedy Race of Champions
Ryan Maifield and Dustin Evans are quickest going into the start of racing at the 24th running of the Reedy Race of Champions tomorrow morning. The former champions set the fastest times over the 3 rounds of practice with Maifield going top in 2WD when he was fastest in the final practice. In 4WD, Evans maintained his earlier form to remain quickest while finishing second fastest in 2WD. Ty Tessmann would end the day 2nd quickest in 4WD in between Evans and Maifield while clocking the 3rd quickest 3-consecutive laps of the OCRC Raceway track in 2WD. Failing to improve on his time in the third round of practice, reigning champion Ryan Cavalieri ended up 5th and 6th fastest in 4WD and 2WD respectively.
‘Its been a good day’, was how Maifield summed up practice. The Yokomo driver continued, ‘I’m still farting around with the jumps. It’s easier to not jump than jump them so I’ve been working on getting them right’. On his cars he said, ‘they are lacking a little speed in the fast lap department but the average pace over 5-minutes is good’. On 2WD he added, ‘the tyres need to come in more but once we get to running 2WD the track will have come in so it wont be as big a problem’, the racing starting with 4WD tomorrow before switching to 2WD on Saturday afternoon.
Evans declared himself ‘extremely happy’ with his performance in practice. The Associated driver ‘made small changes to each car for the final practice’ saying he ‘thought that they were a little better’. Happy he has good cars for the heads up racing, the Colorado driver said, ‘now its all about racing. The track is super technical and it will reward patience. I have got the speed so let see how it falls but the Reedy Race is always crazy’.
‘Both cars are really good but in 2WD the big triple I need to figure out more’, was Tessmann’s view on practice. The Xray driver added, ‘when the grip comes up it will be better’. On his 4WD, the Canadian said, ‘I am really comfortable with that. I made more changes for the last one to make it easier to drive and the consistency is really good.’
Ending up 4th fastest in both classes, unfortunately for Dakotah Phend he is feeling under the weather and has gotten worse with the TLR driver going for medical attention as soon as practice concluded. Improving his 4WD in the final practice he was unable to improve his 2WD from the second round of practice.
Completing the Top 5 in 2WD would be Phend’s team-mate Tanner Denney. Running a new set-up he found from a lot of testing at his home track, he said, ‘it seems to be working really well’ adding ‘the more the grip comes up the better the car is getting’. On 4WD, his best 3-laps only good enough for 17th quickest, he said, ‘its just not as fast and we need to find the right balance’. He continued, ‘all the team have been working together to figure it out and I think we are on the right way and once racing starts we should be a lot better’.
Asked how he felt he was looking ahead of racing tomorrow, Cavalieri replied, ‘I don’t really know whats going on. It feels like it is going alright but we are couple of ticks off being fastest’. In his final 4WD practice, the 4 time champion would would strip his spur gear. Behind Cavalieri, team-mate Spencer Rivkin completed the Top 6 in 4WD while ending the day 8th quickest in 2WD.
View the event image gallery here.
