ROAR NATS: Tessmann and Lutz trade top times in first seeding round

0 June 18, 2015, 5:44 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Thursday morning started with a round of three-minute heats in order to give the drivers a chance to shake out their cars after any changes made since yesterday, as well as allow late arrivals to learn the layout before the two seeding rounds. As per ROAR rules (as well as the format now used by most other major racing events), each driver's three best consecutive laps from either of the two official practice runs on Thursday will be used to sort the drivers into qualifying heats with drivers of a similar speed - essentially turning practice into a "race within a race."

In the first round, two drivers stood clear above the field - in both classes.

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"My truck was good!" exclaimed Ty Tessmann, who had the fastest lap of the round (31.642) as well as the best seed time by seven-tenths of a second over Ryan Lutz. Despite the performance of his HB D8T Tessmann Edition, the three-time former Truck class national champ went to heavier shock oil for the second round due to the escalating heat. "My truck was really good around the track, so we're just trying to gain some high-speed stability."

Lutz may have come up just short of the fastest seed time in Truck, but the Tekno RC team driver turned the tables on Tessmann in Buggy. He set the fastest lap (31.789) and the top seed time by .328 seconds over the defending champ despite struggling with how his NB48 landed off of the large jumps. "Overall it was good, just blew through the front travel a little too easy," said Lutz, who imitated a barking seal to explain how his car slapped upon landing. Last year's third-place finisher had changed the front shock damping of his buggy before that round but will make yet another change for the second timed run. Even still, he was happy with his driving around the layout. "The left side of the track was my worst section at the warm-up, and now I'm passing people through there," said Ryan, "and my car is great in the 180s - just full throttle."