Ryan Lutz double win at Byron Fuels Offroad Challenge

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Mike Garrison

0 Aug. 8, 2012, 8:35 a.m.

This past weekend was the Byron Fuels Heartland Challenge at the HobbyTown Hobby Plex in Omaha, Nebraska. This was my second time to this great facility and I enjoyed it very much. I arrved in Nebraska / Iowa 2 days early to take the ‘grand tour’ of the Byron Origionals factory. World Famous Bobbi from Byrons picked myself and the Kings up from the airport and drove us 2 hours to Iowa. We got there just in time to experience a nice thunderstorm (their first in over a month!). The next day we had a golf outing and then a ‘factory tour’. We got to see Byron’s influence on this small farming community. He had a thing for castles it seems and his buildings and architectural influence are seen in much of the town. Byron himself is the current COO Ryan Godbersen’s Grandfather and we got to learn a bit about him and his passion for so many different things. A couple decades ago Byron’s was known for their 1/4 scale model airplanes. Many are still on display in pristine condition. Today besides just doing most popular fuel in the world, Byron Origionals also does pool spa steps as well as solar lights among other things.

It was a great experience to get to see these things. Also having an opportunity to see where the fuel is blended and bottled and learned about the process. Many things that go unnoticed by most R/C inthusiests are taken very seriously by the Byron Fuels group. They use Food grade plastic jugs to bottle the fuel and that seal on top when you first open a new jug ensures peak freshness every time! We learned about their reputation and ability to provide consistency on each and every bottle of fuel sold. Needless to say that after our tour I am more confident than ever that I have the best fuel on the market and as always I truly enjoy supporting those that I believe in!

Now on to the racing. It was an ‘easy’ weekend for me this weekend as I was only racing 2 classes. I bought along the Nitro vehicles Buggy and Truggy to really represent the Byron Fuels that I now believe in more than ever before! In qualification there were 3 rounds with the now nearly standard qual point format. In Truggy my Durango DNX408T was running strong with the my Ryan Lutz Edition Alpha Plus Engine! The handling was superb the whole weekend and I didn’t change anything from my previous weekend in Texas even with this track being entirely different. I was able to go out and TQ all 3 rounds and felt very confident going into the mains.

In Buggy I started off struggling a little. My set-up wasn’t quite right when I arrived and I did a few changes each round to try to get it more dialed in. I had a couple opporutnities to TQ a few rounds but just made to many errors on my part and ended up qualifying 4th overall. Hoever each round my DNX408 felt better and better and with a couple changes for the slickening track for the mains I was dialed in.

In the Truggy main I got out to a good start and never looked back. I pulled a bit of a lead a the get-go and started to put it in cruise control. However I soon realized that cruise control wasn’t quite the pace I needed to be running as Cody King started making up some time and with a bobble or two by me he got back within 10 seconds. However soon thereafter with a flame out on his part I was able to get over a lap lead and start to extend it even further to take the victory by about a lap and a half. My truck was dialed and many there I believe were impressed by this newcomer to the truggy market! The Durango is here to stay!

In Buggy I had a solid start and within a few laps had worked my way up to 2nd place behind King. I would shadow him around the track for the first 7.5 minutes until I came in for my first pit. The track had developed a very slick groove and it was like ice in spots. So I wanted to be conservative and make sure I didn’t run out of fuel with all the wheel spin. This strategy worked in my favor as King would run out of gas trying to reach the 9 minute stop. This would give me nearly a lap lead (about 22 seconds). Over the course of the next 25 minutes I would lead but slowly give up that lead with some mistakes in traffic and on my own and some slower/cautious pit stops. With about 10 minutes to go the battle was back on as King and I duked it out swapping positions. I was able to get about a 6 second lead when a backmarker took me out in a hard to marshal area. Once the marshal got me he got me down right into Cody who then flipped. I waited for him to get going and off we went me shadowing him again. We would each come in to pit one more time and I would be about 8 seconds back. I started wishing for some of my Karma points to do some work for me and low and behold Cody made a couple mistakes and I ran as clean as I could and I was able to regain the lead with a couple minutes to go and hold on to a 2 -3 second gap for the last few laps to take the victory!

Congratulations to Ryan on his wins – Team Durango is only going to get better!