DNC: Tessman late charge to TQ first round of Truggy; Maifield in E-Buggy [VIDEO]

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By Thomas Tran
LiveRC.com

With two of just three rounds of qualifying counting toward each driver's overall qualifying performance, the first round of qualifying on Thursday morning tested the nerves of every driver to hit the track at Fear Farm RC Raceway. It's no surprise that two of the most successful racers in Dirt Nitro Challenge history set the fastest times in both Pro classes. Here's what happened in the first round.

Qualifying is underway here at the 17th annual Dirt Nitro Challenge with today only running qualifying for the 1/8th scale truggy and e-buggy classes with 3 rounds of qualifying in each. 

The excitement increased, the track was prepped, and the action started early between the best 1/8th nitro drivers in the world battling for the highly coveted DNC crown. Taking first swing in round 1 of truggy was TLR's Ryan Maifield who had an early lead, but the competition is extreme here as he had previous DNC double winner, HB's Ty Tessman and Team Associated driver Ryan Cavalieri slowly chipping away at his lead. With a costly mistake on the 7th lap, Maifield lost a lot of time and, more importantly, got mixed up with a lot of traffic giving the lead to Tessman. Once in the lead, it seemed Tessman was only getting stronger thoughout the race as he found his groove and held on to take the early round 1 TQ. 

Later in the race, Cavalieri also his way around Maifield as well to finish second with Maifield slotting into third for the round only .2 seconds behind. 

Next up was E-buggy and class top-seed, TLR's Ryan Maifield, got off to a horrible start - he finished the first lap near dead last in his heat after an early mistake. His teammate, Dakotah Phend, shot to the top spot but he, too, made a few mistakes and handed over the lead to HB's Ty Tessman. After putting in several consecutive 39-second laps, Maifield charged through the pack and re-took the lead and dominated the rest of the heat finishing almost 4 seconds ahead of Tessman and Team Associated's Ty Tessmann, who set the third fastest time from an earlier heat.