Tessmann heads 4WD practice at Reedy Race

After two rounds of 4WD practice at the Reedy Race of Champions in California, HB’s Ty Tessmann heads the pace with the Canadian setting the fastest lap time from Ryan Maifield and World Champion Steven Hartson.  Defending champion Ryan Cavalieri would end up fourth quickest despite pulling an arm off his Associated in the second practice.  With a best lap of 20.457, Tessmann was fastest by 0.140 from Maifield with Hartson running an almost identical time around the OCRC Raceway track to his former team-mate.

The reigning US National Champion, Tessmann described his D413 as being ‘really good’ around the OCRC track. Running the buggy unchanged for the opening two rounds of practice, for the third & final practice which brings Day 1 of the 21st running of the Reedy Race of Champions to a close, the 1:8 World Champion will use the track time try a kick up and the anti squat change with drivers not set to run their 4WD cars again until Saturday as the heads up racing gets underway tomorrow with 2WD.

‘(I) liked the way it felt and thats all that matters’ was how Maifield summed up his TLR22-4’s performance.  The Arizona driver said ‘I havent been watching the times but I thought it was good and its comfortable to drive’.  For the final practice he said might go down in the front oil and lower the rear roll.

Hartson said he thought his LRP powered B44.3 was good to drive but at the same time he felt something was not right with it. On stripping it down afterwards, he found that it had both a cracked t-plate and diff casing which he hopes once replaced will leave him with an even better car for the final practice.

Cavalieri said his B44.3 ‘was going good until he clipped the pipe’.  Suspecting he caught one of the pipe couplers leading to a broken front right arm, he said other than replace the arm he would again run the car unchanged as it ‘felt good’ to drive.

Having missed the opening two 2WD and first 4WD practice runs due to sitting final exams at school, Drew Moller got his Reedy Race off to a good start as he set the fifth fastest time on his first run around the track.  One of HB’s new signings to a greatly expanded team for 2015, Moller said his D413 was good with him adding that he is ‘loving the track’.  For P3, the 18-year-old plans to run his car unchanged and just let the tyres come in more.

With late Reedy Race invitation class entry Barry Baker completing the Top 6 times driving a D413, it was a strong overall showing for the HB team with David Ronnefalk making it four D413s in the Top 10 as he posted the 7th fastest time.  The Reedy Race debutant said while his car is very easy to drive he is making too many driver errors.  The Swede is over jumping a lot of the jumps and while he has improved this he said he still needs to work on his timing of the jumps adding he ‘should be alright’ once he gets it figured out.

Dakotah Phend would set the 8th fastest time with his TLR22-4.  Struggling somewhat with his 2WD, the 17-year-old said his 4WD is ‘really good’ and he has changed nothing on the set-up, focusing instead on just breaking in tyres, the 4WD classes running a handout Pro-Line Electron tyre front and rear.

Running Serpent’s soon to be released first entry in the 4WD buggy market, former Reedy Race Champion Billy Easton set the 9th fastest lap time with the Top 10 being completed by Kyosho’s Jared Tebo.

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Rivkin sets early 2WD pace at Reedy Race

Up and coming offroad star Spencer Rivkin set the early practice pace in 2WD buggy at the 21st running of the Reedy Race of Champions. Having only signed a multi-year agreement with Team Associated and Reedy last month, the 16-year-old set the fastest lap of the morning at OCRC Raceway ahead the TLR’s JP Richards, Associated team-mate Steven Hartson and defending back to back champion Ryan Cavalieri.

While being fastest has never been the key focus to achieving success at the Reedy Race due to its heads up multiple race format, Rivkin was no less pleased with his early pace describing his Reedy powered B5M as ‘really easy to drive’.  Setting a fastest lap of 21.643 seconds in P2, the Arizona driver said while the track layout is ‘not too hard to get used to’ he likes how it feels to drive. A team driver for the 2WD class’ hand out tyre brand JConcepts, he said for the remaining practice, drivers running 3 rounds of practice per class, his focus is just to break in his Dirt Webs tyres and leave the car’s set-up as is.

Reigning champion Cavalieri, who last year became the most crowned champion of the event when he claimed his third Reedy Race victory, was pleased with his start to the day.  One of only 6 of the invite’s 30 drivers to break into the 21-second lap times, the multiple World Champion said his Orion powered B5M felt pretty good with the second run better as the tyres came in.  Declaring himself ‘confident’ with his car he said he is still working out a few of his lines adding there is room there for a little improvement.  Commenting on this year’s track layout he said it was ‘fun so far’ but once the grip comes up it should get ‘more interesting’.

A driver who knows the OCRC better than most, as its his home track, Hartson said the layout was easier than what they normally run with this years layout having ‘a lot of rollers and singles’ but he thinks it will make for good racing with ‘lots of passing spots’.  Pleased with the early performance of his Reedy power B5M, the reigning 4WD World Champion said the second practice was better as the tyres scrubbed in and he will use the final 2WD practice to scrub in a second set of Dirt Webs.

The only European to win the event, and the last driver to hold the title before Cavalieri’s reign, Joern Neumann said he needs improve his motor timing for the last practice.  Currently running without a chassis sponsor, the German is using a Yokomo in 2WD.  Running an 8.5 turn Orion motor he felt he was lacking low end punch and will make a timing change for P3.  Also looking for a little more steering the European Champion described the layout  as ‘better than last year’.

While Yokomo have no official team representation at this year’s Reedy race their YZ-2 is also the car of choice in 2WD for new HB signing David Ronnefalk and S-Workz’ Atsushi Hara.  Ronnefalk, who is making his Reedy Race debut, was also looking to get a little more steering but overall the Swede said it was ‘so far so good’.

Hara, who hasn’t raced 1:10 offroad since this event two years ago put in some testing at SDRC in preparation for the event but said having set-up the car on that track it wasn’t so good in the first practice as the grip at OCRC was much lower.  With Shin Adachi having built the car for Hara, he said he had to get out the manual out to put a set-up for P2, running the car’s standard set-up which he said felt pretty good.  With the rear end much better he said he will now try to get the front more aggressive.

Having come so very close to his first Reedy Race win last year, then driving for Associated, TLR’s Ryan Maifield said his Orion powered 22 felt ‘comfortable’ and he was just waiting for his tyres to come in a little more.  With the track conditions not warming up as much as he expected he said for the last one he will probably go a little softer in shock oil.  In terms of the layout he said the front jump section was an area that he could improve his driving.

TLR team-mate and 2011 Champion Dustin Evans said initially his car felt pretty good until he suffered a stripped servo.  Describing the track layout as ‘polar opposites’ to last year, he said he ‘sucks’ on the double at the right side of the track.  Hoping that the track will be good for racing he said he is slightly concerned over the 180 at the end of the straight saying it could cause chaos particularly at the start of races.

Finishing on the podium last year behind the two Ryans, Ty Tessmann declared himself happy with his second run after making changes to his car.  Running a prototype car which himself and his father Gord have created, as HB don’t yet have a 2WD buggy,  the 1:8 World Champion said the track is ‘more fun to drive’ than last year adding that we would ‘have to wait to see how good it is when racing starts’.

Of the 30 invited drivers, which this year features a number of young up & coming European talents, only one change had to be made to the original starting list.  Having got away with serving Jury Duty last year to attend the race, former World Champion Neil Cragg was again called up and although they still had some of hope of attending on Tuesday it wasn’t to be and the Team Associated drivers place was allocated to the one and only Barry Baker.

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