Hartson sets early pace as drivers wait on traction

Steven Hartson has set the early 2WD pace at the Reedy Race of Champions but it is the low level of traction at OCRC Raceway that’s the big talking point among the invitational class drivers.  Laying down the fastest 3-consecutive laps, as well as the fastest outright lap of 19.197, the Associated driver topped the times ahead of former Open class winner & team-mate Rob Gillespie. Behind them reigning Reedy Race Champion Ryan Maifield completed the Top 3 closely followed by 2WD World Champion Spencer Rivkin.

The home track of the former 4WD World Champion, Hartson was pleased to top the times but said ‘its not easy to drive out there as its super loose’.  With 2WD running a handout gold compound Dirt Webs tyre from JConcepts, he said while the traction usually starts out low the tyres aren’t there yet and that’s making the popular layout difficult. Leaving his B5M unchanged as he waits for the track to come in, he hesitantly said the ‘tyres might be good by the time racing starts’.  Asked about the layout he said, it ‘will be good once the traction comes up’.  While ‘the triple is hard now’ (due to the low traction), he added while ‘its a fun layout’ if the traction doesn’t improve the 2WD racing is ‘going to suck’.

While ‘everyone is fighting the loose track right now’, Gillespie summed up his own performance as ‘so far so good’.  Looking for more overall traction, the 23-year-old is planning a rear shock set-up change on his B5M for the third & final round of practice saying he would ‘see what we can get out of it’ with that change.

Describing his TLR22 as ‘fine’, Maifield said with the track still loose his focus was just on getting his tyres scrubbed in for racing.  Making no changes to the car set-up he said he had to believe that the set-up is going to be correct for when the traction comes up.  Team Losi Racing team-mate Dakotah Phend would set the 7th fastest time.  The 18-year-old said with the ‘track slippery’ he was ‘not doing too much to the car’ and instead using the track time to break in tyres while waiting for track to come to it.  Describing the layout as ‘a lot of fun’, he feels with ‘no big jumps last year’ making it difficult to pass once the driver in front drove clean’ this year he said the bigger jumps add opportunities for making passes.

‘Going really well. Making all the jumps and not crashing’, that was how Rivkin summed up his second 2WD practice run.  ‘Not doing anything’ to his Reedy powered B5M, the 17-year-old said the layout was ‘awesome’ and he liked how it was ‘a little more difficult’ than last year adding it would ‘show the drivers from the squid’. Team-mate Ryan Cavalieri would post the 5th fastest time.  A three time Reedy Race winner, he said he had a couple of mistakes over the run but with the tyres coming in it would make it easier to judge the rights lines in the final practice.

Completing the Top 6 after two rounds of practice, Team Associated designer Kody Numedahl said his B5M was ‘easy to drive’. Running Reedy electrics which he said he normally runs with ‘tame’ power settings he feels he might need to add a ‘tiny bit more power’.  While the car has good speed on the straight he said the extra power would help at the triples.  Commenting on the track, Numedahl, who has home track advantage, said the layout is ‘so different to normal and so much faster’.  About 2-seconds a lap faster than a regular OCRC layout, he said the sweeper is going to be interesting when the grip comes up, predicting some cars ending up ‘out of the track’.

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Track Focus – OCRC Raceway

Track Name – OCRC Raceway
Country – USA
Location – Huntington Beach, California
Surface – Dirt
Direction – Anti-Clockwise
Previous Reedy Races hosted – 2015 & 2014

The 22nd running of the famous Reedy Race of Champions takes place at OCRC Raceway, with this the third year the Huntington Beach, California, track has hosted the world famous race.  Run by father & son duo Robert and Nick Black, the 20,000 square feet facility has been in operation since 2008.  With visitors entering through the hobby shop, the racing takes place in an area 135ft long and 60ft wide.  With event organiser Brent Thielke having penned the track layout for the past two visits to OCRC, this year Nick Black had more input into how the final track turned out.  Switching back to an anti-clockwise direct as it was run in 2014,  this year Nick’s only limitations were a pipe layout from Thielke.

Describing the 2016 track as ‘visually different’, Black said they put a lot more elevation changes into the build adding some ‘big jumps’ to create something a ‘little different’.  In terms of the build the main work was done on Sunday with the ‘final grooming completed’ Monday. Having watched the first practice of the Invitation class drivers, Black was pleased with his track creation saying ‘I’m really happy to see (drivers) have to make decisions as to how to hit the triples and that they have different lines they can take. Its a bit of a challenge’.

Last year’s Reedy Race Champion, Ryan Maifield’s initial reaction to the track was ‘its a cool layout’.  While for the first round of practice the track was ‘super loose’, the TLR driver said ‘its really fast and flows really nice’.  The only slight fault he could find with the layout was at the end of the straight, saying it was ‘not awesome but still not bad’.

Heading the European challenge at this year’s event, the only European to ever win the event Joern Neumann not making the trip and Xray denying us the spectacle of 4WD World Champion Bruno Coelho being in the mix, Lee Martin feels the track will be ‘challenging to race on’.  The Yokomo driver said there are ‘a lot of points that might lead to contact’ highlighting the triples.  The EOS & European Champion also believe the step down lends itself to being a place where drivers are going to get into the side of each other.

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