ROAR NATS: Dakotah Phend caps off brilliant Day One with Buggy TQ in Round Two

0 June 20, 2014, 3:07 p.m.

6/20/2014

By Aaron Waldron

LiveRC

Despite a strong start to the final heat of Buggy qualifying for the second round by former champion Jared Tebo, Dakotah Phend finished up a stellar Day One by speeding off to the only ten lap run (with the fastest heat of the round on the final lap, no less) to take the TQ and set himself up to make a run at the overall top qualifying position in both classes.

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Laughing, Dakotah Phend said his car "wasn't too bad" even though the track conditions made it "hard to be consistent." After driving too hard last round, last year's Buggy TQ concentrated on getting through the increasingly rough 180-degree turns cleanly. He had just one "goof-up" when he spun out after the center tabletop and cased the following double, but was otherwise clean all the way through. If the track is slimy tomorrow he may switch to X3 compound, but planned no changes for tomorrow.

"The driver showed up!" is how Carson Wernimont described his run after qualifying second by just one-tenth of a second. Having made some undisclosed changes to the front suspension, which he didn't want to discuss since he was worried other drivers may copy his ideas, his car was much easier to drive and feels he has a good setup for the main event as well. Having run Soft-compound AKA Enduros he may try Medium-compound Impacts to test for the main event.

With a third-place finish, Ryan Maifield said with a laugh that his car "wasn't too bad!" On finishing so closely behind Wernimont, he said "it's way easier to lose a tenth than to gain a tenth." Reverting back to his tire setup from the Warm-Up race last month, he said JConcepts Blue-compound Crossbows were better than what he ran when he took a step backward in the first round. Rather than making more adjustments, Ryan said he "needs to stop changing tires" and doesn't plan any changes unless the track changes drastically overnight.

Jared Tebo said with a smile that "it was almost a good run!" after finishing fourth for the round, and that he was "one mistake away from a 0 or 2." His one mistake on the left-hand 90-degree corner after the back straightaway was due to the "back corners being tough because the line is so narrow," having driven too hard into the rising corner and rolling over. "My car feels really good, though" after lowering his front ride height 0.5mm after the first round, and that he'll add more front brake to help keep his car under control tomorrow. Jared said that "outside the narrow groove it's SO loose!"

TLR's Billy Fischer said, "my run was very, very lucky" after crashing on the step-down coming onto the front straight to start his clock, flipping several times and crashing off the side of pit lane before luckily landing on his wheels. After that his run was fairly clean, despite the X3-compound Pro-Line Blockades fading badly in the heat with two minutes to go. With no changes planned for Q3 tomorrow, Billy said he simply needs a cleaner start!

Jeremy Kortz said his car was "a lot better" than the first round, having changed the shock pistons to add more pack in the front and less in the rear after struggling a bit in the first round. Finishing with the ninth-fastest time, the 2003 National Champ said, "I lost a couple of seconds when I got nervous toward the end." In the closing laps he decided to follow Ryan Cavalieri, who went wide and got into the loose stuff a few times and Kortz made the same mistakes.

After scoring a tenth-place finish with his best run of the day, Mugen Seiki's Barry Pettit said, "my car was great!" He added "it was fast and consistent through the rough stuff." Having run Soft-compound AKA Enduros, Barry said he might switch to Medium-compound Impacts to start testing for Sunday's finals depending on track conditions Saturday morning.