Maifield does TQ triple at ‘The Dirt’

Ryan Maifield pulled off the TQ triple at The Dirt Nitro Challenge as he added the overall buggy TQ to yesterday’s Truggy and eBuggy haul.  Having topped the opening round of buggy qualifying at the Fear Farm, the reigning champion again led a TLR 1, 2 from Dakotah Phend to wrap up one round early the overall TQ for the blue ribbon class at the 17th running of the Joey Christensen event.  Again it would be HB that provided the closest challenger this time Ty Tessmann finishing third as David Ronnefalk, 3rd in Q1, ran out of fuel on his penultimate lap.

Having inherited the TQ in the opening round after a late error by Spencer Rivkin, in Q2 Maifield controlled the pace from start to finish over the 7-minutes.  Making ‘quite a few changes’ to his 8ight 4.0 having found it ”edgy’ in Q1, this made the buggy ‘super predictable’.  Also making changes to ‘smooth out’ the power of his Reds Racing engine he said this also ‘helped a lot’.  Sticking with Tessmann at the start of the run as his benchmark, he said when they called the Canadian second he ‘chilled’.  With no laps being called until the end, he said he didn’t know how he was on pace compared to team-mate Phend who ran a TQ pace the round earlier but ‘luckily (he) was going fast enough to beat Dakotah’. ‘Stoked to TQ all three (classes)’, he said ‘hopefully in the mains I’ll have good runs’ adding ‘the driver without mistakes is the one whose going to take the win’.

Making further changes to his Orion powered example of the 8ight, Phend said he ‘felt more comfortable’ with the car second time round.  The 19-year-old said the track was ‘more grooved up and a lot more slippery but overall he and his car are ‘getting better & better’ each run.  Suffering ‘one big mistake’, that cost him 3-seconds on the third lap, looking to make it a Team Losi Racing 1-2 on the grid for Sunday’s 45-minute Main, he said ‘I dont think I’ll change anything as the car is really good’.

‘It started good. I thought I was in the clear with Maifield behind me but then he was right there’, was how Tessmann summed up Q2.  Four laps in the 2-time DNC Buggy Champion would case the far right triple allowing Maifield past after which he said he followed him for the rest of the heat.  Considering his mistake which cost him over 2-seconds, the World Champion said he was happy with a 3rd.  Having struggled with his tyre choice in Q1 he said a switch to Pro-Line X3 Holeshots made his D815 ‘much better’.  With his main goal for the third & final qualifier ‘no mistakes’ he will ‘maybe run lighter shock oil and M3s (tyre compound)’ for the cooler night time conditions.

Despite a ‘first lap tumble’, Rivkin said the second heat went ‘really good’.  The Associated star said his RC8B3 was ‘so easy to drive (he) could drive it blind folded’.  Admitting to getting a little anxious towards the end, the 2WD Offroad World Champion said ‘Maifield put in a good run and deserved it (the overall TQ)’.  Confident in his car he said he would ‘go for it in the last round and see how it shapes out’.  His senior team-mate Ryan Cavalieri would have a bad run, transponder issues leaving him with no time for the round.

Making his first nitro race outing with Team Losi Racing, Tanner Denney posted the fifth fastest time.  Describing track conditions as ‘really hard’, changing to a softer tyre, going from X3 to M3 Holeshots, as well as a stiffer rear swaybar, he said his 8ight was a lot more stable and forgiving. Looking to the final qualifier the 20-year-old said, ‘hopefully I can keep it going for Q3’.

Completing the Top 6 Jared Tebo summed up the second round of qualifying as ‘a lot better than the first one’.  With all four tyres coming unglued on the first lap, in Q2 the Kyosho driver ‘had a good run’ except for a ‘really big mistake’.  Getting his MP9 up on two wheels he said as he corrected it it clipped the piping sending his buggy bouncing across the track and into a spin all of which resulted in the loss of almost 4-seconds. The 2011 Champion, that win coming at the Nitro Pit before the event moved to the Fear Farm, said as his buggy ‘felt OK’, he doesn’t plan to make any changes for the final qualifier needing a good run to book a direct spot in the A-Main.  Behind last year’s podium finisher his team-mate Cody King would post the 7th fastest time followed by TLR’s Cole Ogden and HB’s Tanner Stees, with Adam Drake rounding out the Top 10 for Mugen.

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Reigning Champion Maifield tops Q1 at DNC

Reigning Dirt Nitro Challenge Champion Ryan Maifield got his quest to retain his buggy title off to a good start this morning in Arizona as he topped the opening qualifier.  The 3-time champion lead a TLR 1,2 from team-mate Dakotah Phend, the pair separated by 1.5 seconds.  Having enjoyed a successful day at the Fear Farm yesterday when he TQ’d both Truggy and eBuggy, Maifield took the first of the three qualifiers after a late mistake from Team Associated’s Spencer Rivkin, while behind the TLRs, HB’s David Ronnefalk was best of the rest with the 3rd fastest time. Following Rivkin’s costly 8-second last lap crash which dropped him to 6th behind Ty Tessmann, Ryan Cavalieri would be top Team Associated in 4th.

‘I don’t think its the fastest car out there but I knew what it could do’, was Maifield’s reaction to his TQ run.  The Arizona driver added ‘I tried to push in the middle but it wasn’t safe so I backed it down. Spencer drove good and I was happen to settle for 2nd.  When he made his mistake I just made sure to bring it home safe over the last lap’.  Describing track conditions as ‘super gnarly’, he said, ‘its probably the hardest track I have driven on’.  Running on JConcept’s Triple D tyre, he said for Q2 he might make some small adjustments to his Reds Racing powered 8ight 4.0 to ‘keep up with the track’ adding ‘it is (the track) going to get more interesting as weekend goes on’.

‘It was a good start’ was how Phend summed up his opening run.  Running in the second fastest heat, he said ‘I went out there focused on driving smooth and putting in consistent laps and I just had one bobble’.  Making ‘subtle changes’ to his Orion powered 8ight 4.0 he said they worked well adding ‘everyone is on a similar pace and its down to who is having no crashes’.  Like Maifield he is finding the track is ‘very tricky’ saying the ‘square edges (of the surface) throw (the buggy) all over the place’.  ‘Pretty happy for the most part’ with his buggy set-up the 19-year-old might make some further small changes for Q2.  In terms of tyres, running on Pro-Line’s X3 Holeshots he said ‘they were a little too hard at the beginning but this helped (the buggy) to safely slide over bumps while still having good acceleration’.

Ronnefalk said the qualifier ‘started out really good’ as he ran behind Rivkin and they ‘paced each other’ until he touched a pipe and had a rollover. Later the Kyosho driver, who posted the fastest lap, would suffer a spin through the back section feeling both incidents cost him around 4-seconds and without this he would have been close with Maifield.  Running super soft AKA Grid Irons on his D815, the Swede said ‘everything felt good’ but with the track now ‘pretty bumpy’ he will change his shock package for the next qualifier.

‘It was alright, a safe run’ was Cavalieri’s view of Q1.  The former champion said the key to his run was he ‘didn’t have any real mistakes’.  ‘A little slow at the beginning’, the Californian said he ‘picked up the pace’ adding making no mistakes was the ‘big positive’ of the qualifier for him.  Team-mate Kody Numedahl would post the 7th fastest time, the Associated designer also putting his result down to ‘just no wrecks’.  Describing his RC8B3 as ‘a little uncomfortable’ due to the ‘gnarly’ track conditions, he felt he had ‘a little too much power’ and he will ‘tone it down a bit’ for Q2.

The DNC’s most winning driver, Tessmann said he made a wrong tyre choice.  Running Pro-Line X3 Blockade’s on his OS powered D815, he said they were ‘not very good’ and ‘slow’ and he ‘tried to drive around’ but had ‘a mistake on (his) own’.  Then on the penultimate lap he would get tangled up in a pile up involving Jared Tebo at the second step up which would cost him 3-seconds and leave him with a P5 for the round.  For Q2, the World Champion said he will run a different tyre as well as try to ‘not make mistakes’.

Rivkin said his RC8B3 was ‘super easy to drive’ but towards the end his OS engine starting getting ‘really lean’ leading to his mistake.  Giving too much throttle for the leaning engine he said it shot out of the corner leading to his flip with the 17-year-old adding ‘it was still my own fault’.  Describing his selection of JConcepts’ Triple D tyre as an ‘amazing choice’ he said he will leave his car unchanged and ‘try to do the same thing in Round 2’.

Making his first big race outing since joining Mugen where he is reunited with former TLR team-mate Adam Drake, Mike Truhe posted the 7th fastest time.  Only having the car a month, he described the qualifier as ‘a nice solid safe run’. A former DNC Champion, doing the double in 2007, he would like to get his MBX-7R to pull straighter out of the corners and is considering adding rear under drive for Q2.  Behind Truhe, Tekno’s Ryan Lutz and Kyosho’s Cody King completed the Top 10.

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