Neumann takes overall TQ at Cactus

Joern Neumann is Top Qualifier of 4WD Buggy at the Pro-Line Cactus Classic, the Team Durango driver becoming the first European to secure the honour at America’s longest running international offroad event.  The 28th running of the race, Neumann topped the final qualification ranking thanks to his two TQ runs in yesterday’s qualifying.  With only Jared Tebo able to deny the German in the final qualifier, Dakotah Phend prevented that from happening as he claimed the final qualifier ahead Tebo and Neumann.  Tebo will line up second on tomorrow’s A-Main grid with Phend third and defending Champion Ryan Maifield fourth.

Finding the starting order of the final heat a little confusing, expecting to start first as the points leader rather than his Q3 finishing position of 7th, Neumann said he was pleased with his final run and at becoming the first European to TQ in Buggy.  Planning only a new set of tyres for the finals saying his Orion powered DEX410 is working really well, he said the only thing he will do different is to scrub his Pro-Line tyres in more, feeling they were still a little too fresh for the first few laps of the final qualifying.  Asked about the racing,  the World Championship Top Qualifier said the track will make passing difficult and so his plan for the race is to just try to make no mistakes and hope those behind him do.  Having finished 3rd in 2012 and second last year, he said he hopes he can continue his upward trend and complete the full set of steps on the podium.

Suffering a roll over on his first lap through the uphill section, Tebo said he ‘lost (his) shot at the overall TQ right there’.  Apart from this he said his prototype ZX6 felt really good adding he couldn’t be happier with how it is running.  Expecting a pass will only possible if Neumann makes a mistake he said his plan for the race is to ‘stay right with him and pressure him into a mistake’.

Having secured his first buggy TQ run of the event this morning in 2WD, Phend was happy to back it up with his first 4WD TQ.  The 17-year-old said after a good start to the run he just reverted to keeping the rest of the 5-minutes free of mistakes and he was happy with how that turned out.  Planning to try a few ideas with his TLR22-4 set-up in the morning’s open practice, he said while the track is going to be hard to pass on it is inevitable that all drivers will have at least bobbles if not mistakes so its all to play for.

Chasing a fourth consecutive win in 4WD Buggy, Maifield joked ‘coming through’ when asked about his 4th place on the grid.  Commenting that the ‘track will make for interesting races’ he said any of the top half of the grid has a shot at the win.  Admitting his rivals could run at a little faster pace in qualifying, he said pushing that hard is going to be too aggressive for a final.  The Arizona ace also said today Neumann didn’t appear to be as ‘super smooth’ as he was yesterday and so he is confident the race will be wide open.

Set to start fifth on the grid Ty Tessmann said changes to his HB D4-13 made it better and ‘it was all going well until (he) crashed’.  Feeling he is ready for tomorrow’s finals, the US National Champion said mistakes will be the only way a pass is possible and his aim is to force those ahead of him into such mistakes adding hopefully he can do that without ending up hitting any of them.

4WD Buggy A-Main Grid
(11th driver to bump up from B-Main)
1. Joern Neumann – Durango – 0 pts
2. Jared Tebo – Kyosho – 2
3. Dakotah Phend – TLR – 3
4. Ryan Maifield – Associated – 5
5. Ty Tessmann – HB – 6
6. Ryan Cavalieri – Associated – 7
7. Billy Fischer – Associated – 10
8. Carson Wernimont – Schumacher – 13
9. Daimon Borkowicz – Associated – 15
10.Ryan Lutz – Durango – 16

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Champion Cavalieri TQs 2WD short Course

Defending Champion Ryan Cavalieri put himself in the best position possible to defend his Pro-Line Cactus Classic 2WD Short Course title as he TQ’d the final round of qualifying to secure the honour of Top Qualifier.  Having topped Q1 & 3, only Associated team-mate Ryan Maifield could deny him the No.1 one starting position on the tricky SRS Raceway but the local hero could only manage second in Q4, the position last year’s Top Qualifier will start tomorrow’s triple A-Mains.  TLR’s Chris Wheeler will line-up third with Durango’s Travis Amezcua fourth,  young gun Spencer Rivkin fifth and Dustin Evans sixth.

While he already secured the TQ honours for Mod Truck in Q3, Jared Tebo completed a clean sweep of qualifying with another fastest time in the fourth & final qualifier.  Behind the Kyosho driver, Joern Neumann will start second with his prototype Durango with last year’s Top Qualifier Cavalieri third, Billy Fischer fourth and 4WD Buggy World Champion Steven Hartson fifth.

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Chassis Focus – Ryan Cavalieri

Chassis: Team Associated RC10 B5M
Motor: Team Orion 6.5T VST
Batteries: Team Orion 5500 saddle
ESC: Team Orion Vortex R10
Body: JConcepts Silencer
Tires FR/RR: Pro-Line Scrubs X2 / Suburbs X2
Radio/Servo: Airtronics M12 / Airtronics 94971

Chassis: Team Associated RC10 B44.2
Motor: Team Orion 5.5T VST
Batteries: Team Orion 5500 saddle
ESC: Team Orion Vortex R10
Body: JConcepts Finnisher X-Flow
Tires FR/RR: Pro-Line Scrubs X2 / Suburbs X2
Radio/Servo: Airtronics M12 / Airtronics 94971

Chassis: Team Associated T4.2
Motor: Team Orion 6.5T VST
Batteries: Team Orion 4000 VTS
ESC: Team Orion Vortex R10
Body: JConcepts Finnisher T4.2
Tires FR/RR: Pro-Line Ions X2
Radio/Servo: Airtronics M12 / Airtronics 94931

Chassis: Team Associated Sc10.2
Motor: Team Orion 7.5T VST
Batteries: Team Orion 4000 VTS
ESC: Team Orion Vortex R10
Body: JConcepts H-Flow SCT body
Tires FR/RR: AKA Gridirons Soft / Typo Soft
Radio/Servo: Airtronics M12 / Airtronics 94971

Remarks – The 4-time World Champion has been working through the event to get his cars less edgy. On his 4wd buggy he has added a front sway bar and gone up half a weight on the rear shocks going from 30wt to 32.5wt, something he has also done to the rear of his 2wd buggy. On his Short Course truck he is using the B-Hub towers which feature a wider top hole mount than the standard tower which when used allows the car to roll through the corners better. On his truck which has had the most amount of work to get it working he moved the upper rear link out on both the rear brace and the hub. He also changed the front pistons from 1.5mm hole to 1.6mm, to match the rear shocks, and moved the shocks on the front to the top mounting hole. Finally he moved his speedo from on top of the battery brace to its standard position to make the car roll less.

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First Buggy TQ for Phend in Q3 of 2WD

Team Losi Racing’s young star Dakotah Phend took his first TQ of buggy at the Pro-Line Cactus Classic, the US National Champion taking Q3 of 2WD to become the third different driver to top a round at the Scottsdale event.  The 17-year-old headed the times by almost 1-second benefiting from a coming together between Q1 and Q2 pace setters Jared Tebo and Ryan Maifield.  Maifield would recover to take second for the round ahead of team-mate Ryan Cavalieri while defending champion Tebo ended up 9th fastest.

Almost throwing away the run on the last lap, Phend was happy to finally top a round having been the top seed for qualifying after topping Thursday’s controlled practice.  Having handed Q1 to Tebo in the last lap,  Phend nearly repeated that when got his Orion powered TLR22 up on two wheels through the same left hand section in which he crashed twice in yesterday’s 2nd qualifier.  Having backed off for the final lap he said he got caught out by his slower speed through the corner and turned ‘a bit too early’, saying in future he will just take the corner at the normal higher speed.  Happy with his Pro-Line equipped buggy, he said he plans to leave everything the same for the final qualifier when he goes head to head with Tebo & Maifield for the overall TQ honours.

Maifield was happy to get another good points finish for the round to go with last night’s TQ run saying the run ‘went alright’. Leading away the top heat following the reseeding after yesterday’s two qualifiers, the Arizona driver said he was forced to drive tight lines as he was lacking a little steering which left him not very comfortable with his driving.

‘It’s OK’ was how Cavalieri summed up his run.  The former World Champion said  he ‘really (hasn’t) been happy with his buggy’ but getting a second solid run was a positive.  Lacking pace he said he will try a few changes for the final qualifier as he looks to ‘get  more speed out of it’.

Making a big improvement in Q3 to recorded his best time and position finish of qualifying with fourth, Ryan Lutz was very happy with his first run of the day.  Changing to a geardiff in his Durango DEX210 along with going up in shock oil, he said this gave more predictable rotation through the corners.  Running AKA’s new Pinstripe front and Deja Vu rear, he said for Q4 he needs to scrub the tyres more before the start.  He also plans to raise his rear camber link by half a millimetre to try to get the buggy to ‘not dump as much on power’.

Also recording his best run was team-mate Travis Amezcua.  Changing nothing on his car over Q2 he said the main improvement came from him putting in his first clean round.  Running Panther tyres on his DEX210, he said for the final qualifier he will fit a new gear diff.  Running the same oil as Lutz ran, he said after the run when he compared the two his was a lot tighter as if it was running twice the weight oil.

Completing the Top 6 was another Durango, this time that of European Champion Joern Neumann.  The German said he needed a good run so he just drove safe and the result for 2WD was ok.  Running Pro-Line’s VTR wheel/tyre combo he said for Q4 he will consider reverting to the regular option but he needs first to see how the weather is, there being over 4-hours between runs.

Posting the seventh fastest time was a very disheartened Dustin Evans.  The TLR driver crashed in the run saying he is ‘struggling’ most probably with the track.  Not feeling comfortable with any of his cars this weekend he said its proving ‘very frustrating’.

2WD Buggy Qualifying Round 3
1. Dakotah Phend – TLR – 14/5:20.542
2. Ryan Maifield – Associated – 14/5:21.514
3. Ryan Cavalieri – Associated – 13/5:00.453
4. Ryan Lutz – Durango – 13/5:02.960
5. Travis Amezcua – Durango – 13/5:03.652
6. Joern Neumann – Durango – 13/5:03.783
7. Dustin Evans – TLR – 13/5:04.858
8. Steven Hartson – Associated – 13/5:05.091
9. Jared Tebo – Kyosho – 13/5:05.194
10.Tanner Dennehy – Associated – 13/5:05.408

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