There’s been a lot of talk about Ryan Maifield’s 1/8-scale nitro buggy prowess over the last few weeks, and rightly so. After all, 2014 is an IFMAR Worlds year for the class and the biggest race in RC less than two months away. Ryan is certainly among those favored to have a strong showing - if not win it all.
Winning any IFMAR Worlds, let alone the grueling 60-minute final after bumping from the semis in 1/8-scale buggy, takes the perfect recipe of car, driver, preparation, and luck. This year, Ryan Maifield has perhaps his best mix of ingredients yet: he’s in top form, coming within a last lap crash of winning the ROAR Nationals; he has already shown plenty of speed in his debut with his new TLR 8IGHT 3.0, arguably the fastest and most successful platform of the last half decade-plus; and he’s now under the tutelage of Adam Drake, often regarded as the most prepared nitro racer ever.
I was lucky enough to watch Ryan’s 1/8-scale nitro career start at the very beginning. Back in the early 2000s, he and Billy Fischer, armed with a pair of sticker-less privateer Kyosho buggies, used to carpool from Arizona to attend the Southern California Saturday Series that rotated between The Dirt in Hemet, and Pro-Line’s test track in Banning. I hadn’t started racing 1/8-scale yet, so my dad and I would pit for the two of them in the main events.
Ryan was already an accomplished electric racer by that point, but hadn’t yet begun racing nitro on a large scale. His first ROAR Fuel Off-Road Nationals was in 2005 at Gears R/C in Harlingen, TX. He only ran 1/10-scale gas truck and finished 4th (one spot ahead of yours truly).
In 2006, ROAR split the national championship for 1/8-scale buggy into its own separate event and scheduled that year’s title-deciding race to be held at The Farm II in Charlotte, NC.
By this point, Ryan and nearly all of his Team Associated teammates were running the Thunder Tiger EB4-S3 that had been released the year prior - and most of them hadn’t found much luck getting the car to work.
Ryan and a few other TTR pilots went to the ROAR Buggy Nationals with a flat chassis made by Titan Tech that had considerably more flex than the stock plate, which featured an extruded tunnel down the center that made the car too stiff for American tracks.
The Buggy Nationals in 2006 was also the major debut for Team Losi’s new 8IGHT buggy, with only four cars in attendance being driven by Adam Drake and Travis Amezcua, along with mechanics Gil Losi Jr. and Ron Rossetti. Travis dominated qualifying by winning all four rounds, and The Drake showed similar speed by qualifying fourth. Ryan started the 60-minute final from the sixth position.
The rain and mud at the Nationals that year was only a warning for what the IFMAR Worlds would be like two years later.
Ryan drove extremely well and had all the luck he needed. An early flameout knocked Amezcua down the order, leaving him to scratch and claw his way back to a seventh-place finish two laps off the lead. Similar problems plagued second qualifier Jared Tebo, who finished eighth. Third qualifier Chad Bradley dropped out of the race just past the halfway point. Meanwhile, Maifield had worked his way to the front and started to pull away.
The race came down to five cars on the lead lap - Ryan, his Thunder Tiger teammate Taylor James, 2003 champ Mark Pavidis, Drake, and defending champion Ryan Cavalieri. Maifield crossed the line twenty seconds clear of James to take the win.
One year later, as the Top Qualifier behind the wheel of the brand new Team Associated RC8, Ryan pulled out to a nearly one-lap cushion on the field with less than 25 minutes to go. Looking like a shoe-in to become the first two-time winner of the ROAR Nationals, let alone the first to do it back-to-back, an electronics malfunction sent his car flying off of the front straightaway into the catch fence.
Needless to say, if Ryan can find his luck from 2006 rather than that of 2007, he may be hoisting his biggest trophy yet in just a few weeks.
8/1/2014
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