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June 19, 2014, 12:59 p.m.
6/19/2014
By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC
With timed practice now complete, and the qualifying heats set, it's a long Thursday night full of stomach butterflies for the racers as they await their first meaningful runs on Friday morning. Track conditions improved and the lap times dropped over the first round, shaking up the order in both divisions. Though a three-lap burst in practice isn't always a great indication of how a driver may perform over four rounds of qualifying with more than bragging rights and a heat seed on the line, several names stood out today and identified themselves as drivers to watch tomorrow.
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Ty Tessmann's first round time was good enough to hold up for the first seed overall, but Ryan Lutz made it close - with a three-lap best that was less than a half-second off of the pace of the defending champion. Lutz improved from sixth after the first round to second overall, saying his truck was "uh, AWESOME!" and remarking how much fun he had drifting around the whole track. Ryan made no changes to his truck from the first round, and plans none for tomorrow aside from refreshing his shock and diff oils - commenting that they were probably pretty wrecked after how hard he drove.
Former champion Jared Tebo was also among the biggest improvers in the second timed practice, dropping his time by nearly a second to jump from ninth to seventh. Visibly shaken after a tough run in buggy, in which he said his car was easy to drive but just not very fast, he's waiting "for the grip to come up" and doesn't have any changes planned for his Orion-powered ST-RR EVO.
TLR's Adam Drake moved into the top 16 in the second round, finishing with the ninth-fastest overall time, saying that the biggest change was the track conditions having run after the water break in the first round. He also switched from Pro-Line's X3 compound to the harder X2, and plans to change the rear camber link for Q1 tomorrow in order to "free up" his Novarossi-powered 8IGHT-T 3.0.
Kyosho's Cody King said his ST-RR EVO was "pretty good," though like many others today he spent today "battling the track" and "fighting to find the right tires" to cope with the slippery conditions. He said that the X2 compound tires he ran "felt greasy" and "everyone is trying to find grip by running harder rubber, which doesn't make sense." He says he'll likely go for M3 rubber in the morning since he doesn't expect the track to change much other than breaking up as the weekend goes on.
1/8-Scale Truck Top 16 (after round two):
- Ty Tessmann (Hot Bodies/O.S./Pro-Line) 134.919
- Ryan Lutz (Durango/Alpha/AKA) 135.234
- Mike Truhe (Serpent/TOP/Pro-Line) 135.496
- Ryan Maifield (Associated/Novarossi/JConcepts) 135.549
- Dakotah Phend (TLR/Orion/Pro-Line) 135.926
- Joshua Wheeler (XRAY/O.S./AKA) 136.019
- Jared Tebo (Kyosho/Orion/AKA) 136.216
- Ryan Cavalieri (Associated/Orion/AKA) 136.366
- Adam Drake (TLR/Novarossi/Pro-Line) 136.711
- Carson Wernimont (Mugen Seiki/O.S./AKA) 136.734
- Austin Blair (Mugen Seiki/RB/AKA) 136.957
- Cody King (Kyosho/Orion/Pro-Line) 137.345
- Mark Pavidis (TLR/O.S./AKA) 137.555
- Steven Hartson (Associated/LRP/JConcepts) 137.832
- Tyler Vik (XRAY/FX/AKA) 138.018
- Taylor Petersen (TLR/Novarossi/AKA) 138.171
Inside the truck of A Main Hobbies' Austin Blair
Chassis: Mugen Seiki MBX7T
Engine: O.S. Speed Spec II
Servos (steering/throttle): ProTek R/C PTK-170T/PTK-170S
Transmitter: Airtronics M12
Tires: AKA Impacts, Soft
Notes: Having campaigned a Kyosho ST-RR Evo for the last few seasons, Austin switched to the MBX7T "just to try something different" and brought it to the Nationals with just two weeks of practice. Following setup advice from Mugen USA's Tim Long, Austin said he has only changed tires and focused on trying to drive the best he can.
Just like in the Truck division, the leader's time in the first round held up through the final runs on Thursday evening - but that's mostly due to the fact that Ryan Lutz's three-lap score was ridiculously fast. Despite laying down several sub-45 second laps in the second round the Team Durango ace was unable to improve his seeding time, but it didn't matter. Last year's dominant TQ, TLR's Dakotah Phend, cut one full second off of his time from this morning and yet still sat over one second behind Lutz at the end of the day. Tebo moved up three spots to eleventh by dropping just over two-tenths. Josh Wheeler crept from 16th to 15th by dropping over half a second, and was followed into the top 16 by A Main Hobbies' Austin Blair.
As the second round wound down early Thursday evening, leaving plenty of time and daylight for the Thornhill Racing Circuit "Racers' Social" barbecue (which was delicious, by the way), most of the top drivers packed up early and headed back to the hotel as soon as possible, seeking refuge from the heat and humidity in order to prepare for tomorrow's qualifying rounds.
Among the drivers who chose to stay and wrench at the track, Dylan Rodriguez was elbow-deep in the middle of rebuilding his Kyosho ST-RR Evo and Hot Bodies D812 vehicles for Friday. Looking forward to a new facility being built near his Las Vegas, NV home, the A Main Hobbies team driver has only raced twice since the Silver State Nitro Challenge - yet still sat 12th after practice. With two cars in pieces, he said he had "a lot left to do."
1/8-Scale Buggy Top 16 (after round two):
- Lutz, Ryan (Durango/Alpha/AKA) 135.689
- Phend, Dakotah (TLR/Orion/Pro-Line) 136.856
- Tessmann, Ty (Hot Bodies/O.S./Pro-Line) 137.163
- Maifield, Ryan (Associated/Novarossi/JConcepts) 137.796
- Drake, Adam (TLR/Novarossi/Pro-Line) 138.197
- Truhe, Michael (Serpent/TOP/Pro-Line) 138.224
- Fischer, Billy (TLR/Novarossi/Pro-Line) 138.541
- King, Cody (Kyosho/REDS/Pro-Line) 138.664
- Cavalieri, Ryan (Associated/Orion/AKA) 139.191
- Wernimont, Carson (Mugen/O.S./AKA) 139.347
- Tebo, Jared (Kyosho/Orion/AKA) 139.519
- Rodriguez, Dylan (Hot Bodies/O.S./Pro-Line) 139.526
- Kortz, Jeremy (Agama/Werks/Pro-Line) 139.545
- Rieck, Gunnar (Associated/Novarossi/AKA) 139.635
- Wheeler, Joshua (XRAY/O.S./AKA) 139.681
- Blair, Austin (Kyosho/RB/AKA) 140.000
Check out Ryan Lutz's buggy - fastest in timed practice
Chassis: Team Durango DNX8 prototype
Engine: Alpha Ryan Lutz Worlds Edition
Servos (steering/throttle): Futaba S9353HV/S9353HV
Transmitter: Futaba 4PKS-R
Tires: AKA Soft-compound Impacts (clean Catapults only used for photos)
Notes: Ryan was unhappy with the additional anti-squat he added before the final round of practice and will revert to his original setting for tomorrow's first round of qualifying. With no additional changes planned overnight, Ryan will simply tear the car down for inspect and refresh the diff and shock oils before Q1.
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