BREAKING: Cavalieri drives RC8B2 in public for first time - and Moller won! [UPDATED]

0 Aug. 30, 2014, 11:01 p.m.

8/31/2014
By Aaron Waldron

LiveRC.com

It's no secret that Team Associated has been working on a new 1/8-scale buggy in 2014. The team showed up to The Dirt Nitro Challenge with an all-new prototype designed by Josh Alton, best known for the Hot Bodies D8 that stormed onto the scene with an IFMAR World Championship win in 2008. With the chassis reportedly very close to production ready, Ryan Cavalieri and Ryan Maifield drove the cars in a live, and very public, test on an international stage.

The AE test mule, however, struggled to a subpar showing in Arizona - and it didn't help when test cars and prototype parts were rumored to be stolen from Alton's car in the pit area. Maifield ran the car again at the Silver State but had electrical issues on the opening lap. He ran it again at the NEO Race, TQ'd a round but made the final by the skin of his fingernails, and retired early.

Despite the teething problems, the RC8.2 was discontinued by the end of April - as was Josh Alton's employment with Team Associated. There was no official statement about the split.

With both Alton and his project vehicle gone, Team Associated started from scratch - with word leaking about an all-new buggy around June. Ryan and Ryan ran an RC8.2 fitted with the rear end of a Kyosho MP9 at the ROAR Nationals in Texas, and Maifield came within a few corners of winning his second championship as the race came down to the final lap in a battle with Ty Tessmann. Less than a week later, Maifield left Team Associated.

All has been quiet on the 1/8-scale front for the two months since, as there's been plenty of electric racing going on, but with the IFMAR World Championships in Messina less than a month away everyone in the pro ranks has turned their heads toward nitro full-time. Team Associated chose to race the new RC8B2 prototype in its first competitive outing on Saturday, at the third round of the Mugen Grand Prix Series hosted by Heritage RC Park in Chula Vista, CA (coincidentally, the same track where Ryan Maifield ran his first nitro race for TLR just last month).

LiveRC received a tip from Associated Friday evening, so I packed up my camera and made the drive down Saturday afternoon.

Ryan Cavalieri, one of only two drivers to win more than a single ROAR National Championship in 1/8-scale buggy, was accompanied by his father Louis, AE team manager Brent Thielke, engineer Kody Numedahl, and long-time nitro racer Richard Saxton to take his all-white prototype buggy for a spin. The team set up two adjacent tents a bit removed from the rest of the pit area to maintain privacy and warded off anyone from coming by when the car was in plain sight.

The shakedown race was considerably lower profile than debuting the new car at a marquee event, while also giving the team extra track time ahead of next weekend's Sidewinder Nitro Explosion at the same venue, but it's not as though no one else showed up: local area fast guys Colin Herzig, Mike Morales, and Lucas Sanford, 2014's fastest rising star Drew Moller, and former World Champions Cody King and Mark Pavidis provided an adequate benchmark for Ryan's new ride.

Cavalieri set the fastest time in qualifying, eclipsing Moller by just two-tenths of a second despite Moller having the edge on fastest single lap. Seven seconds behind them, King was the only other driver close after five minutes.

The 30-minute final was an interesting one.

Cavalieri got a good start but couldn't get away in the opening laps. Moller made a mistake about three and a half minutes in, which allowed King to catch up and pass him on the following lap. King flamed out during pit stops about two minutes later and lost a couple of laps. Moller led one pass by the line after he leaped ahead of Cavalieri on a different strategy but he, too, flamed out and lost a lap. After that, Cavalieri checked out and drove away from Moller and the rest of the field.

With a one-lap lead and less than 40 seconds to go, Cavalieri's buggy rolled to a stop just after the front straightaway after making an odd noise - and then no noise. His pit crew rushed the car back to the pits and tried to get it to restart, but soon found that it wasn't a lack of fuel that caused the car to stop, but an engine failure.

Moller cruised in for the win, ruining the second high-profile debut at HRCP after having won in Maifield's TLR debut as well after Ryan's car flamed out. He also had the fastest lap of the race.

So how'd it look? Pretty remarkable. Sure, Ryan Cavalieri was at the wheel, but AE's new buggy handled the Heritage course with ease. The plush suspension settings gobbled up the track's many rough sections and made short work of the scattered jumps, and it looked like Ryan could drive the car hard into and out of corners without it getting out of shape.

The Associated guys kept the car under wraps in the pit area and asked that photos only be taken on the track. From what I understand, the car is 100% unrelated to the previous prototype, made entirely of new parts or existing AE parts that have been modified.

The first thing that I noticed was that the front suspension is a pillow ball setup. Like many Team Associated drivers did on various iterations of the RC8, it looks like the current test mule had Kyosho shocks on the front and rear (UPDATE 8/31 - the shocks are prototype AE dampers). The shock towers were cut from carbon fiber; the front looks narrower than that on the RC8.2, and the rear may be slightly as well. The rear tower looks a bit taller as well. Neither the front nor the rear arms used standoffs for the shocks, and the rear arms are secured with an aluminum rear pivot block with replaceable inserts that are held vertically, suggesting the team is trying to tune by varying roll centers or anti-squat rather than toe-in. The wing mount looks to be carried over from the old car, as does the rear diff case - at least for now. The chassis also looks to be narrower than that of the RC8.2,

Right after the race, the AE team swept the car back under covers and headed back for Orange County. Chances are they won't let much else slip about the buggy before the Worlds, but Yannick Aigoin is set to drive the car in Europe soon and we may learn more at next weekend's Sidewinder Nitro Explosion.