The surprises continued in the second round of Pro Truck with fresh faces in the top ten including some of the drivers missing in the opening qualifier. After a few delays in the program - and a change to the race format moving the third round of Pro Truck to Friday morning rather than run into the wee hours of the night - the cold temperatures and dark conditions changed the running conditions considerably. Even the drivers within the top five chose to tackle the adversity in different ways, from simply switching tires to making extreme chassis changes involving many different adjustments. The top five drivers were separated by less than five seconds - and second through fourth were barely a half-second apart!
“Finally, it was really good!” said former DNC champ Jared Tebo, who improved six positions from the first round to earn the TQ. Part of that was due to driving, and part of it was due to making “pretty much a wholesale rear suspension change” - including shock oil, spring, mounting position, and anti-squat. The adjustments made his Kyosho ST-RR Evo squat less, enabling him to get on the power sooner coming out of corners. “I just didn’t have any bonehead crashes, so that was a plus,” said Jared, who had a little bit of traffic in the beginning but nothing that created an issue. For tomorrow morning’s final round, he’s planning on changing the front shock location to improve the trucks balance after such extreme changes to the rear.
Making a huge splash in his Tekno RC debut on an international stage, Joe Bornhorst was almost smiling too big to answer any questions. At the last minute, Bornhorst decided to mount up a set of Super Soft Grid Irons in place of the Soft compound tires he ran in round one, and said his NT48 was “unbelievably good.” Locked comfortably in the Pro Truck A-Main after the first two rounds and sitting third overnight, Joe was understandably excited while preparing for his final E-Buggy race of the night. “I don’t even remember the run,” said Joe, who added, “and my mind is going a million miles per hour. I don’t even know what to say.” After two rounds of qualifying in his first ever visit to the Dirt Nitro Challenge, Joe’s driving has done the talking for him.
“It was good,” said Carson Wernimont of his new Team Associated RC8T Championship Edition, validating hours of wrenching since running earlier in the day. “Round one was decent, but I came back and changed a bunch of stuff and just kind of rolled the dice, but I definitely went in the right direction.” Carson changed the front and rear shock oil and piston combos, camber link height and length on the front and rear, wheelbase, ride height, anti-squat, hub height, and the sway bars. “I changed everything - if it had an adjustment I changed it a little bit.” Carson’s run got off to a pretty clean start with a little bit of traffic, but he “pulled a tear off and got through it, then just cruised around and tried not to crash.” The run went well until the last lap, when he “squidded out in the whoops and had to single-mingle-jingle through.” Even after a less-than-stellar run in the first round, Carson said he wasn’t phased knowing that his second and third rounds. “I wasn’t at all nervous,” said Carson, “it’s just another race. I know what I need to do, and had to just go out and do it. Now I’ve got some momentum going into round three instead of just sitting in neutral.”
Thrilled again with the performance of his D8T Tessmann Edition, first round TQ David Ronnefalk said, “It was really good!” Ronnefalk started the race with a half a lap cushion to the next car ahead of him and thought he would get to enjoy an open track for much of run, but caught the cars ahead of him within a few laps and ended up running into a car that crashed ahead of him in the whoops. The wreck caused him to fall back but he caught the same group of cars quickly. “They didn’t want to move,” said David, “so I tried to pass and crashed again.” David noted that just one wreck cost him four seconds, which was more than the difference between his finishing time and TQ. Like many AKA drivers who chose Super Soft Grid Irons for the colder weather, Ronnefalk remarked that his truck had tons of traction when others had problems with grip. With no changes planned for tomorrow morning, David’s plan was simple as he said, “As long as I keep it on the wheels, it will be dialed.”
“The truck felt great,” said Josh Wheeler, who said his XRAY XT9 was great yesterday as well. In the first round of qualifying, however, he suffered from glitching problems that he traced back to having not performed a software update on his Futaba 4PX radio. Able to complete the run without those issues, Wheeler said perhaps his shock oil was too thick in the cold weather and that it wasn’t forgiving in the whoops. “The run was clean, and I didn’t have any traffic issues - it was just a good, clean run.” Reshuffled into a slower heat due to his first round problems, Josh had to push as hard as possible without any way to know how fast he needed to do. “I thought I was on pace but I didn’t know for sure,” said Josh, who admitted that “he’s still a bit nervous because I still needs another one, but at least I can go to bed knowing I had one good run.”
Here's the top twenty for round two of Pro Truck:
Here is the overall qualifying order by points after two rounds:
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