Naoto fastest at halfway point of Worlds practice

With the first half of free practice for the 1:10 Electric Offroad world Championships complete in Chico, California, it is Team Yokomo’s Naoto Matsukura who set the outright pace posting a 28.629 lap of the Silver Dollar R/C Raceway.  The Japanese ace was one of only four drivers to break into the 28-second lap times in FP3 with Associated’s Ryan Maifield second fastest followed by Kyosho pairing David Ronnefalk and Jared Tebo.  In terms of total laps, and consistency, it was Associated’s Kody Numedahl who set the overall pace with 10 laps in a 4:56.156 with reigning champion Ryan Cavalieri the only other driver to clock up 10 laps.

A finalist at the 2011 Worlds, Matsukura was pleased with his pace saying a rear set-up change had made his mid-motored B-Max2MR easier to drive than in the opening two runs.  Running Proline’s Scrub front tyre, drivers having the option to run any front tyre in combination with the controlled rear Proline Suburb, the 3-time 1:12 Onroad World Champion said he will make a further small tweak to the rear end.  Liking the high traction, something the World class onroad driver would be used to, he said having in the past struggled with bigger jumps he is really liking the big jumps here with his confidence getting the landings right growing every run.

Summing up his 10 lap run, Numedahl said his C4.2 was ‘consistent but not a rocket ship’.  The Team Associated designer said his main focus over the three practice rounds was on getting the right tyre balance.  Running JConcepts Dirtweb on the front in FP3 he said for the fourth practice he will try the same tyre but with a closed cell insert as he looks to get the balance between the buggy being too easy or too hard to drive which he added is a fine line on the high traction sugar treated track.

Team-mate Maifield, who ran a 28.714 lap time, said he is still ‘battling some things’, struggling in particular with his slipper set-up, but overall summed up his early runs as ‘not bad’.  With Proline Scrubs proving the front tyre of choice, Maifield like Numedahl is running JConcepts on the front of his Reedy powered mid motored C4.2, the Arizona ace choosing orange compound Barcodes.  Another of Associated’s title contenders, Neil Cragg, who had a strong opening run, hasn’t had much luck since.  In his second practice the British ace had a servo horn break while in FP3 his slipper came loose but the former World Champion said when his C4.2 was running it was ‘working pretty good’.

Current European 1:8 Nitro Offroad Champion Ronnefalk was very happy with his RB6 adding that it was the driver that needed to be worked on and not the mid motored buggy.  Switching to a geardiff which gave him more forward traction and installing a rear sway bar which improved stability through the sweeper, a set similar to which he ran last week during his testing at Norcal Hobbies, he said the buggy feels ‘awesome’.  Very comfortable with the jumps he said the flat section in front of the drivers stand is a weak point and will be his focus for the remaining 3 free practice runs.

Making changes to his diff for FP3, Tebo said the run didn’t start well with the diff feeling like it was broken but by the end of the run it had sorted itself out with his Orion powered RB6 feeling really good by the end of the 5-minutes.  Running the same set of Proline Scrub front tyres in his three runs, he said they are now done and he will fit a new set for FP4 along with making a small change to the rear shock set-up.

Fastest in terms of overall pace in the opening practice, Pre Worlds race winner Ty Tessman didn’t have a good 3rd practice. The Canadian suffered from a lack of bottom end and was also unhappy with a front spring change he made on his Kyosho RB6.  For FP4, he will change his speedo settings as well as going up a motor along with reverting to springs he ran in his earlier runs.

Posting the fastest lap time in FP1, TLR’s Darren Bloomfield suffered a lack of brakes in his lastest run but said his biggest problem was his set-up.  The British driver said having been very dificult to drive he went too far with the set-up and now he has a buggy that he could ‘drive around the track all day without any mistakes’ adding its ‘too slow’.  Looking to ‘get speed back’ he will try to make it a little more difficult to drive by changing the position of his front shocks.

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