COVERAGE: Maifield, Cavalieri, Truhe win 2011 Cactus Classic!

0 March 16, 2011, 10:32 a.m.

Wednesday, 1:30 p.m. PT

Good afternoon, everyone! It's the middle of March and kids are out of school on Spring Break (at least in the Midwest)...you know what that means- it's time for the Cactus Classic in sunny Arizona!

The LRC rig is in place and the cameras and broadcast gear are going up as I type. We will spend the day getting settled in here before we move on to a weekend full of what should be some excellent electric racing action!

We hear that this year's Cactus has exceeded the current record for number of entries, and it shows. The grounds are packed, and the teams have come out in full force. The resurgence of electric racing is truly present here at this year's Cactus.

Stay tuned throughout the weekend for pictures, video and our LIVE broadcast! Bob is with this weekend to provide his camera skills, and LRC newcomer Mike will be helping out come main time as well. So you bonus lap members will be getting free moving cams for some of the races this weekend!

Friday, 10:00 a.m. PT

First round of qualifying is now underway! Watch it live HERE!

Friday, 11:30 p.m. PT
Qualifying: Day One

Day one of qualifying is now over, and racers have vacated the track area in a hurry. Everybody must be in a hurry to get back to their hotel and shower a day's worth of heat and dust off. Either that, or get a square meal. Both options were sacrificed by the LRC team in order to work on LRC related items. ;)

Rounds one and two weren't much of a surprise, results wise. Anyone who has the slightest modicum of racing knowledge could have bet their mortgage on Maifield being fast here. And if they did so, they are going to recieve a nice payout. 'Mans' TQ'ed R1 and R2 of 2WD leaving himself in an excellent position to wrap up the top spot early today and focus on his other classes...such as 4WD SCT, where Maifield is the lone driver sporting the new SC10 4x4.

Other notable results include, Dakotah Phend sitting high in all of his classes, Jared Tebo proving that the new AKA 1/10th rubber is dialed right off the bat (Tebo has shown TQ speed in every class. Gee, what a surprise), and multiple Durango 2WDs sitting within striking distance of the A-Main (Fischer, Neumann, Amezcua).

You can find the entire results listings from R1 and R2 here!

Also, the first batch of photos is now up in the 2011 Cactus Classic photo gallery!

Saturday, 11:15 p.m. PT
Qualifying: Day Two

Day two of qualifying at this year's Cactus Classic was all about Ryan Maifield. The local hero-turned-pro reminded everyone in attendance that SRS is his home track, and that the Cactus Classic is about as far in his 'wheelhouse' as a race could possibly be. Coming into the day having already put up zeros in R1 and R2 of 2WD, Maifield took it upon himself to go out and wrap up the top spot in every other class he is running this weekend as well. That's right, Ryan will start atop the pole in all four classes he entered; an unprecedented feat at the Cactus Classic that has never been done (granted, before SCT not many people ran four classes).

The mains are set to go off tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m. local time. Tune in to LiveRC to see if the homegrown superstar can continue to put on his toy car driving clinic in the triple A-Mains. He will have to get by a Jared Tebo who may be hitting his stride going into the mains. Tebo TQ'ed R4 of 2WD, and turned in the fastest run of the weekend in the class. Also, don't count out young Dakotah Phend, who has put his TLR 22 3rd on the grid. Dakotah has a slew of TLR teammates behind him in the main, so don't be surprised if we seem some team strategy taking place, especially by the time the third main rolls around.

Full qualifying results and main listings can be found HERE.

Sunday, 3:15 p.m. PT

Ryan Maifield wins the 2WD and 4WD overall title! Truck, 2WD SCT and 4WD SCT will go down to A3!

Photos from the entire event can be seen HERE!

Sunday, 8:10 p.m. PT

The 25th Annual Cactus Classic is in the books! LRC is in full tear-down mode as we try to get on the road for our 879,934,098,902 hour drive back to the Midwest, but we wanted to give you a quick update as to how things wrapped up here at SRS.

As you know from before, Ryan Maifield wrapped up the 2WD and 4WD titles after A2. He added to his win list after A3 by driving away from the entire field and grabbing the overall victory in 2WD SCT with his Team Associated SC10.

The Maifield clomp-fest was interupted by TLR's Mike Truhe in the 4WD SCT class, as Truhe wheeled his Losi four-wheel-pick-up to victory and the overall title (4WD SCT used a double A-main format).

In the 'classic' but dwindling modified truck class, it was a battle of best friends off the track Ryan Cavalieri and Jared Tebo. In the end, it was Cavalieri who would get the best of Tebo by winning A2 and A3 to take the overall title.

NEW IN THE PITS

We want to mention a few new products that were spotted in the pits this weekend.

-First off, the new AKA 'Rebar' tire was spotted on all of AKA's drivers. Word is they provided excellent wear characteristics and provided consistent traction.

-Also new this weekend, was Team Orion's brand-new brushless ESC and motor combination. As many people know, the old Orion electronics were merely re-badged Ko Propo equipment. Well, their new stuff is entirely their own, and Orion driver's have been giving the system high marks. We'll have more info on this later.

-X Factory's Paul Sinclair was spotted using their all-new prototype 4WD car which was designed from the ground up by Paul.

-Lastly, as you may know, Travis Amezcua has recently left TQ and has signed with Team Durango for electric. However, Travis was spotted running a 2WD SCT this weekend (Durango does not make a 2WD SCT). It was, in fact, a prototype conversion kit for the Traxxas Slash. The kit was developed by a group who have been working hard as of late to develop new and mysterious (for now) products. The group is called 'Anza,' and includes well-known industry guys, such as: Jason Corl, Mike Gillette and Gil Losi Jr. The conversion kit is aimed towards Slash owners who would like to bring their vehicles up to more of a 'race' spec, and includes all of the necessary hop-ups to do so. We hear the kit should be on hobby store shelves within the next couple months. We also have heard that Anza expects to be releasing many other products in the near future. Stay tuned to LRC for more info on Anza as it becomes available.

THANKS!

LRC wants to thank all of the SRS crew for being such gracious host this week! And to all the participants of the 25th Annual Cactus Classic for putting on such a great show that we were able to broadcast.

Most importantly, we would like thank ALL of you folks out there who tuned into the broadcast, checked out our picture galleries, and read this coverage thread!

Later!

-A hastily packing LRC crew