Tebo completes clean sweep at Nitro Challenge

Jared Tebo has completed a clean sweep at ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge in Arizona by backing up his thrilling Truggy win with victory in the buggy final over former winner Mike Truhe and World Champion Cody King. Starting from the TQ spot, the Team Kyosho driver dominated the 45-minute race to become the first driver in the annual event’s 12-year history to TQ and then go on to win both classes. Summing up his first big 1:8 race outing of the season Tebo said, ‘It doesn’t get too much better than this’. Winning the 45-minute encounter by almost 20-seconds, a mistake on the second lap meant he had to work for the win but climbing back from 10th position, it was clear that he had the best package of the race highlighted by the fact his fastest lap was 8/10ths quicker than the next best which was set by his team-mate King.

Following the excitement of Saturday night’s Truggy final the buggy race was a rather dull affair especially after the demise of Ryan Maifield who was the only one of the 14 drivers to really pose any serious threat to Tebo. Chasing their fourth consecutive Nitro Challenge success it was a bad day for Team Associated as both their star drivers failed to finish.  Maifield led the race twice but suffered a plastic rod end failure on a front shock.  Told to stay out on track while his team prepared to change the part during his third scheduled fuel stop, the Motorama race winner lasted another lap & a half before it was game over due to a broken steering rod end on the Reedy powered RC8B. Calling the race start to be delayed as his Orion powered RC8B needed a new rim & tyre, Ryan Cavalieri had to call it a day just inside the final 10-minutes of the race when the rest of the tyres parted company with the rims.

Aware of Maifield’s retirement, that handed him a massive lead over Team Losi Racing’s Truhe, Tebo said he didn’t back off his pace as he felt comfortable with his MP9 and didn’t want to break his rhythm by slowing up. King, who was running his first big race since being crowned World Champion, said he tried sometimes too hard to stay with his team-mate but is still pleased to leave the Nitro Pit with a podium which is something to build on for the rest of the 2011 season.

‘Hats off to Jared he drove awesome’ was runner-up Truhe’s response to Tebo’s killer performance.  The 2007 winner said racing at night under the flood lights caused him a real problem with judging his depth of field and he was happy to come away with second. Truhe and his TLR team-mate Adam Drake gambled on running different tyres for the final to cover all possibilities and for Drake his choice gave him little option but to cruise around netting him fourth position in the end.

While the Top 4 finishers were all well spaced out, the main interest was the battle for fifth between Hot Bodies’ Ty Tessmann and Tamiya’s Lee Martin until the latter rolled at the cross over on the penultimate lap.  This allowed Canadian teenager Tessmann passed to claim fifth but afterwards 26-year-old Martin said he was pleased to be competitive on his first outing with Tamiya USA.

2011 ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge was Red RC’s first experience of one of the big US Off Road classics and reporting from the Arizona desert was a memorable experience. Joey Christensen and his team created what can only be described as a spectacular track in a place that is full of atmosphere.  A special thanks to Proline for providing us with a base during our time at the track and to Team Durango who made our coverage of this very unique event possible.

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Rain puts Nitro Challenge on hold

Heavy overnight rain has put today’s Buggy finals action at ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge on hold with the track looking more like a mud bath than the awesome track that produced a thrilling Truggy final last night. With most of the rain clouds cleared overhead, event organiser Joey Christensen and his track crew have been working flat out this morning trying to clear the water from the track and are now waiting on the Arizona sun to finish off the drying process.

This has delayed today’s busy schedule by a couple hours already and will result in shorter races for the lower finals when racing resumes. Along with the rain there were very high winds last night which caused a lots of damage in the pits. Team Losi Racing faired the worst with their area looking like a war zone when they arrived this morning.

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Tebo wins thrilling ‘Dirt’ battle

Jared Tebo has won what can only be described as one of the best off-road races of all time.  Starting the Truggy A-Main from the TQ position the Kyosho driver saw off intense challenges from Ty Tessmann and Ryan Maifield to take a very popular win at the 12th running of the ‘The Dirt’ Nitro Challenge.  The 45-minute final saw the best in the business put on a thrilling show that kept the watching crowd in suspense throughout with the leaders never separated by more that a few car lengths.  In the end the battle for glory came down to the last lap between Tebo and Team Associated’s Maifield with the outcome decided over the mid section when the pair touched on landing, Maifield coming off worse.

Describing it as one the best races he’s ever driven, Tebo said he knew from the warm-up that Maifield would be fast and it would be a close race but not that close. Getting the start he wanted, the US National Champion said his focus was on building up a lead but an early mistake put that plan out the window when he got it wrong on the way up to the cross over allowing Tessmann to go up front. Eventually getting back out front after a number of lead changes he ran close with Maifield, aware that his rival was running an extra fuel stop but afterwards admitted he hadn’t planned on it being that tight at the finish.

Putting the race up there in his all time Top 3, Maifield said he was so focused on his driving and finding a way passed Tebo he didn’t hear race announcer Kenny Brosh call the final lap.  The winner of last weekend’s Motorama race, he said if he knew it was so close to the finish he would have tried to triple the last part of the mid section.  Maifield said the contact with Tebo was simply down to them both taking different lines and it was great to have been able to run such an intense race so cleanly.  Just how closely matched the pair were was highlighted by their fastest lap times with Tebo doing a 43.454 compared with Maifield’s 43.452.

Completing the podium at the Nitro Pit, Ryan Cavalieri called it a ‘lucky third’.  Starting from 5th on the grid the defending buggy champion said he had a ‘brain fart’ at the start which resulted in his Orion powered Associated RC8T leaving the track at the first corner.  Rejoining at the tail end of the 15 car field he tried to get back into contention but with so many cars to pass he knew his chance of challenging for the win were over.  Switching to cruise mode he slowly worked his way back up the order enjoying a good battle with Team Losi’s Matt Castellano for fourth.  That position  became third when Tessmann flamed out.

Setting the fastest lap of the race, last year’s winner  Tessmann was in serious contention to defend his title until he landed his Hot Bodies on the piping which caused his OS engine to cut.  The Canadian teenager who led for a number of laps said everything was great with his D8T but his luck was out.  After the race further inspection found that something had gotten into his clutch.

Best of the Team Losi Racing squad Castellano was happy with his fourth and paid compliments to Cavalieri saying it was really nice to race so close and cleanly with him.  Team-mate Adam Drake took sixth while Mike Truhe only made the first 16-minutes before he retired due to a servo failure.  Top Mugen was Dylan Rodriguez, the 17-year-old finishing in 7th a lap down on Drake. Looking competitive in the opening laps of the race as he put pressure on his Kyosho team-mate Tebo, World Champion Cody King’s challenge came to an early end when his MP9 suffered a broke wheel pin dropping him to 11th in the final classification.

Truggy final results
1. Jared Tebo – 61L 45:44.580 – Kyosho/Orion/AKA
2. Ryan Maifield – 60L 45:02.920 – Associated/Reedy/JConcepts
3. Ryan Cavalieri – 59L 45:12.482 – Associated/Orion/Pro-Line
4. Matt Castellano – 59L 45:21.220 – Losi/OS/Pro-Line
5. Ty Tessmann – 59L 45:24.866 – Hot Bodies/OS/Pro-Line
6. Adam Drake – 58L 45:23.412 – Losi/Novarossi/AKA
7. Dylan Rodriguez – 57L 45:03.632 – Mugen/OS/Pro-Line
8. Mark Pavidis – 57L 45:37.328 – Kyosho/OS/AKA
9. Chad Bradley – 57L 45:52.578 – Jammin/OS/Pro-Line
10.Josh Wheeler – 53L 45:26.118 – Xray/OS/Pro-Line
11.Cody King – 51L 44:46.090 – Kyosho/Orion/AKA
12.Drew Moller – 33L 33:35.803 – Losi/OS/Losi
13.Mike Truhe – 20L 15:55.980 – Losi/NVision/AKA
14.Trevor Clement – 13L 20:50.203 – Losi/JSR/AKA
15.Taylor Peterson – 12L 9:31.597 – Mugen/Alpha/AKA

Tomorrow is finals day for the Buggies with Tebo on target for a clean sweep of this year’s Nitro Challenge but pumped up by today’s Truggy encounter Maifield will be looking to give Associated their fourth consecutive win in the premier class.  While the rain stayed away for the Truggy finals the weather has turned nasty overnight here in Arizona and it remains to be seen what conditions will await racers in the morning.

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