Maifield takes early Reedy Race lead with 1st win

Having opened with a second place from 9th on the grid, Ryan Maifield has taken an early lead at the Reedy Race of Champions after registering a win in the second round of 4WD action at OCRC Raceway.  Starting from pole, the Yokomo driver took a tone to tine win over Team Associated team-mates Dustin Evans and Spencer Rivkin despite a roll over. After making the perfect start to his title defence with a Round 1 win, Dakotah Phend had a tough race finishing 6th from 5th on the grid.  Kicking off the 2nd of the 6 scheduled rounds of 4WD action, pole sitter Kyle McBride took a relatively straight forward win over European young guns Michal Orlowski and Joona Haatanen.  In the other affair, multiple Reedy Race Champion Ryan Cavalieri would progress from 5th on the grid to win ahead of Jared Tebo after pole sitter Rob Gillespie made a mistake in the closing stages.

Commenting on his race Maifield said, ‘we made a couple of changes to get more grip but traction came up and I had all the grip I could handle.  I got a little lucky, it traction rolled but landed back onto its wheels’.  The 2015 Champion continued, ‘After that I backed it off and the car was fast without even having to push it hard’.  Looking to the next round which he starts mid pack, he said, ‘the big thing is to try keep up with how much the track is changing’.

Having ‘got bumped around more than (he) needed too’ in Round 1 when he ended up 4th, Cavalieri said while he again ‘got bumped around at the beginning’ he ‘thought it was a pretty good race’.  Describing his Muchmore powered B64D as ‘pretty good to drive’ he said his first battle of the race with Tebo was ‘good’ and while Gillespie ‘handed him the lead’ he felt it would have been ‘a decent battle’ for the win with his AE team-mate.  With Round 3 his best starting position so far, him lining up 3rd, he concluded the win ‘puts me in the right direction’.

Capitalising on his first pole position start, lining up in the same race as Phend, McBride was also a lot happier with his car for the second race.  Finishing 1.3-seconds clear of the Orlowski’s Schumacher, the Australian said ‘we tamed down the car after first one so it was easier to drive. It was a clean run apart from one roll over’.  While considering a set-up change to ‘try get more corner speed’, he said ‘otherwise the car was now pretty good’.

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Champion Phend opens Reedy Race with a win

Defending Reedy Race Champion Dakotah Phend opened the 23rd running of the event with a win, the TLR driver cruising to victory in the most heavily stacked race of the opening round of 4WD racing.  Starting from the pole, Phend was never challenged for the lead eventually able to go an extra lap to win ahead of Ryan Maifield who came through from the back of the grid.  In the other races it was Tanner Denney from 6th on the grid who won the first encounter ahead of former champion Dustin Evans while Spencer Rivkin got a late win over Cole Tollard in Race 2.

‘I was starting from the front and it was a stacked heat so I had to make it count’, was how Phend summed up his win over Maifield, the race also featuring Ryan Cavalieri and Jared Tebo who finished 4th and 5th respectively.  The Michigan driver continued, ‘I got a good start and once I got into a rhythm I was able to run a smooth clean round.  He added, ‘having a clear track I also got a good feel for the track.  My car was super easy and on pace so I’m happy’.

Runner-up to Phend last year, Maifield described his result as ‘a good start’.  The new Yokomo signing said, ‘I was super patient and starting at the back I didn’t want to push the issue.  There were a couple of incidents which I crept around’.  Working his way from 9th to 3rd he said, ‘I was thinking this is not a bad result to start.  Then JP got a little loose and we touched mid air.  I spoke to him after and he said it was just a racing thing.  2nd was good’.  On his Orion powered YZ-4 he said ‘the car was a little loose so we’ll make some changes’.

Commenting on his win from 3rd on the grid, Rivkin said, ‘It was a good confidence boost.  I’m glad to get a good start but there is a lot more racing ahead’. Debuting Associated’s new B64D, the 2WD World Champion said a change to the car after the morning practice had made it ‘easy to drive’ and he was ‘more comfortable with it’.  Having one mistake over the race, he said, ‘I need to learn from that for the next time’.

Denney put his win down to getting a ‘pretty decent start’.  Following early leader Brian Kinwald, having come from the third row of the grid, he would make a mistake behind the former Champion but was able to catch back up before ‘finally’ getting passed the RC legend.  Out front he said he couldn’t let up as ‘Evans was hauling mail’ with the pair providing the closest finish of the first round, Evans basically pushing Denney across the line there separation on the clock 0.035.

‘9th to second, I’ll take that’, was Evans reaction to his opening race.  The 2011 Champion continued, ‘I had a good start and an opportunity to win but I came up on Kinwald faster than expected at the end of the straight and had to check up and ended up in the corner but the end result is a pretty good to start out with’.

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