Evans leads Reedy Race at the end of Day 1

With Day 1 of racing at the Reedy Race of Champions in California complete, it is former champion Dustin Evans who leads after four rounds of racing.  Posting 2 wins, a third, and ending the day with a second, the Team Losi Racing driver has a 1 point advantage over multiple champion Ryan Cavalieri and World Champion Spencer Rivkin with two more rounds of 2WD racing left to run. Reigning champion Ryan Maifield, whose first day saw him draw three back row starts, leaves OCRC Raceway this evening sixth in the points, him turning around a P5 in Round 1 to take a win, a 2nd and a 3rd in the next three encounters. On a day that produced eight different winners the other Round 4 winner was last year’s 2WD Open Champion Kevin Motter, the 17-year-old capitalising on mistakes from Jared Tebo, Marc Rheinard and Dakotah Phend.

‘There is a long way to go but it feels good to be leading at the end of the first day’, was Evans’ reaction sitting at the top of the points table.  Commenting on his latest race, the 2011 Champion said ‘I wish I could have raced Cavalieri that one’.  Starting on the second row alongside Billy Easton he said, ‘Billy was very aggressive that one and I got the short end of the stick’.  Finding himself at the back of the field as a result of the contact, he said ‘getting back to second in that one was as good as a win’.

Summing up his day, Cavalieri, a driver who knows better than most what it takes to win the Reedy Race, said ‘I started the day good and ended it off good so it’s all good’.  Suffering his worst result in Round 2 when he collected a marshalling Billy Easton’s foot, he said everything with his B5M is ‘super dialled’ allowing him to take an easy tone to tone win in Round 4 from pole.  Winning the third of his titles when the Reedy Race moved to OCRC in 2014, he said for tomorrow he would just ‘refresh the shocks and re-glue the tyres’.  Team-mate Rivkin said while his final race was ‘a rough one’ he was happy with his first day having finished all his races in the Top 3.

Maifield was positive about his day, particularly pleased that he turned two of his back row starts into Top 3 finishes.  Marking his switch to TLR with the Reedy Race win last year, he said, ‘I still have a shot. You can lead Day 1 and end up nowhere so we are still in the hunt’.  Commenting on his latest race he said ‘I should have got second but made a mistake’ adding ‘the track is super tough and even having a front row start doesn’t mean it is going to bring a good result’.

Having topped the points table after 3 rounds, the most frustrated driver at the end of Round 4 was Kody Numedahl.  Opening the day with a win and repeating that in Round 3, the Associated driver said his fourth race was ‘A trademark Reedy Race blowout’.  From 8th on the grid he had worked his way to second in the most loaded race of the round only to throw it away with a mistake on the main straight.  Dropping to sixth he was only able to recover to 4th behind Cavalieri, Evans and Maifield.

With drivers allowed to drop one result per class, if this is taken into account one driver who jumps up the order from 8th to sharing the lead with Evans and Cavalieri is Dakotah Phend.  Having broke in Round 2, the TLR driver has a 10 to drop.  With two wins and a second, the 17-year-old said it was ‘not a bad first day’ and looking to tomorrow’s final two 2WD races he said he would target ‘safe Top 3 runs’ adding ‘its crazy out there’, a reference to some of the driving standards.

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Maifield gets first win in Round 3

Reigning Champion Ryan Maifield claimed his first win of the 22nd running of the Reedy Race of Champions taking advantage of a pole position start for Round 3 to win ahead of 10th place starter Jared Tebo.  In the other two encounters, the round would also see a first win for Maifield’s TLR team-mate Dakotah Phend while Kody Numedahl added a second win to his tally.  Half way through the 2WD schedule it is Numedahl and Dustin Evans who sit at the top of the points, R1 & 2 winner Evans recovering from a disastrous first lap to get a third in Round 3 behind Maifield & Tebo.

Having started the first two encounters from the back row of the grid, resulting in a 5th and a 2nd, Maifield would lead away the field from the No.2 starting Schumacher of Michal Orlowski.  Once in front his Orion power 22 would pulled clear of the field as he laid down a new fastest lap, being the only the second driver to negotiate the OCRC track in 17-seconds.  ‘I didn’t crash so it was good’, was how Maifield summed up his first win.  Admitting that starting at the front was a help, the Arizona ace said he ‘just put (his) head down and did (his) own laps’.  Very happy with his car, he said the controlled JConcepts Dirt Webs where also getting better making the track a little less tricky adding he was hoping for ‘another decent run to end the day’, round four bringing the first day of racing to a close.  For a time it looked like Tebo might be setting himself up to mount a challenge on Maifield until the Kyosho driver crashed with four laps to go and needed to be marshalled.  This in turn turned Tebo in to the prey of a recovering Evans but the former champion ran out of laps and had to settle for 3rd.

Commenting on what has been a very strong start to his event, Numedahl said ‘the track is getting more grippy now which is making it hard to make up positions, the triple is not so hard now’.  Starting from 3rd, having started the previous rounds 9th and 7th, he said he had to check up while challenging pole sitter Billy Fischer for the lead but the contact with the rear wing of the Tekno team driver’s TLR meant Fischer would get out shape over the jump allowing Numedahl to take the lead. Out front Numedahl would start to come under pressure from team-mate Ryan Cavalieri but the 3-time champion would have a bad landing off the first triple on lap 5 and drop back to fifth from where he would recover to 2nd with Chad Due completing the Top 3.

In the concluding race of the round, starting from third on the grid Phend would take four laps to get a lead he would hold to the finish.  Having pulled a rear corner off his TLR22 in Round 2 after landing the first triple on the piping while running second, the 18-year-old said he was ‘patient at the start’ and ‘waited for an opportunity to pass’ and ‘made it happen’ when got down the inside of Rick Hohwart.  With his win and a second from the first round, Phend declared himself happy saying saying R2 was ‘just bad luck’.

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Evans doubles up in Round 2

Dustin Evans made it two from two at the Reedy Race of Champions, the former champion winning his second 2WD encounter from reigning champion Ryan Maifield.  Again a stacked race, Evans who started from 3rd on the grid would do just as he did in his opening race and go to the front after a mistake by Kyle McBride, this time the Australian flipping his Associated on the run down the main straight with 2-minutes to go.  Having started from the back of the grid Maifield would mount an attack on his team-mate but getting out of shape in the sweeper as he tried to get down the inside he would then crash at the following double to finish 1.4 seconds back.  In the other 2 encounters Spencer Rivkin cruised to an easy win in the opening race over Billy Easton & Jared Tebo.  A hectic Race 2 would see Steven Hartson win from JP Richards, the Durango driver having led 13 of the 16 laps, with Round 1 winner Kody Numedahl completing the Top 3.

‘They went my way in the first two. It doesn’t get much better than that’, said a very happy Evans.  The former champion added, ‘I just drove patient although I made one mistake.’  He continued ‘I got by Wesley (Van Helmond) and then McBride made a mistake but Maifield was on the gas. He was a man on a mission and forced me to push hard. I was trying not to make any mistakes, then he made one which lifted the pressure’. Setting the fastest lap of the race on the penultimate lap, Maifield looked like he might just get down the inside on the final run through the sweeper but his 22 got out of shape leading to a mistake at the double, resulting in him losing over 1.5 seconds. 3-seconds further back McBride would complete the Top 3.

In a race that started off with it hard to keep track of all the incidents, Hartson summed up his start to the event as going ‘better than expected’ jokingly ‘it usually starts off rough’.  Starting from 8th on the grid, the opening lap would see the former World Champion drop to last after contact with former team-mate Tanner Denney.  Fifth by the end of lap 1, he said ‘I just let everyone crash and it seemed to worked out the best’.  Chasing down JP Richards, with the first and so far only 17 lap of the OCRC track, he would get down the inside of the former Reedy Race Open Class Champion but at the double the Durango driver would make contact.  With both cars needing marshalling Richards got released first, something the race referees didn’t like, but by the time he got to Richards to give up the position he had crashed coming onto the straight handing Hartson back the lead.  Giving his view of the incident Hartson said, ‘I made the inside pass and then he Monster Trucked me but it all worked out as he ended up crashing later in the lap’.  Taking a win in Round 1, Billy Easton’s foot would end Ryan Cavalieri’s chances of doubling up.  Coming onto the straight for the first time, as Easton marshalled a car his foot would block the Associated driver dropping him to the back of the field – a rare occasion when his ‘Pudge luck’ left him.  By the end of the 5-minutes he worked his way back to fourth, a result he will be hoping is his dropped 2WD result.

Giving his view of a rather dull opening encounter to Round 2, Rivkin said, ‘I took advantage of a pile up at the start and made the most of it’.  Starting from 6th on the grid, the World Champion managed to slip through a pile up started as front row starters Carson Wernimont and Billy Fischer made contact.  Once in front Rivkin pulled clear to win by over half a lap from Serpent’s Billy Easton.  Again the race would see a bad first lap for Jared Tebo but the Kyosho driver would recover to finish third, half a second back on Easton.

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