RACE COVERAGE: 2012 "The Dirt" Nitro Challenge

 

 

 

 

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TUESDAY -- Welcome to the race blog for the 2012 "The Dirt" Nitro Challenge! This year marks the thirteenth annual running of the race, masterminded by Joey Christensen. Originally hosted in Hemet, California, the race is now mostly associated with the hot sun of Phoenix, Arizona- as well as the one day of rain the city gets a year. 

This year the event moves from The Nitro Pit to the Fear Farm, which is just a short ways away. The wide-open spaces surrounding the Fear Farm - and Joey's knack for going to the extreme when building tracks - has resulted in not one, not two, but three different tracks at the Nitro Challenge. 

  


Track one: the main circuit. This will host 1:8 buggy and truggy.

 

 

 
Track two. This will host all short course classes.






Track three. This is where gigantic 1:5 weed-whacker engine powered cars run. 

Not much is going on today. Motorhomes and race trailers steadily trickled through the gate at the Fear Farm today as racers were quick to establish their turf and prepare for tomorrow's practice sessions. 

Speaking of practice sessions, that is exactly what will kick off our live coverage tomorrow morning!  Only two rounds of practice will go off Wednesday before we jump into the real racing on Thursday.

All Access passes will be available starting midday tomorrow, and can be purchased for $25 (or $20 for Bonus Lap members). With an All Access Pass, you will get uninterrupted live video as well as moving cameras for a majority of races.

 

 

 

See you tomorrow on LiveRC chat!

 

 

 

WEDNESDAY --  Today was a day for practice. While 559 drivers practiced driving their 1:8 buggies and truggies, the LiveRC crew practiced working on the LiveRC equipment. Perhaps "set up" would be a better term to describe it. Either way, lots of work was going on everywhere.

Nothing Earth-shattering to report from practice. The usual fast people were fast and the usual slow people were slow. The track layout is proving to be a hit amongst drivers we spoke to in the pits. Most agreed that it flowed very well and didn't pose too many head-pounding moments of frustration. Those moments of frustration will instead take place when drivers are battling each other on the track-  a style of racing I personally enjoy much more than the "me against the track" option commonly found at nitro races. Joey always builds excellent tracks that provide great racing, and this one is no different. Expect to see plenty of door-to-door running this weekend.

 

 

TLR appears to be running some new parts on their 8ight buggy. Photos were not allowed, but the cars the team are running all have what looks to be different shock towers and gear pertaining to that area of the vehicle.

 

Some Associated drivers are using carbon fiber towers on their RC8.2s. When asked about them, we heard that the geometry isn't any different and that they may be an option part in the future.

 

Pro-Line drivers are sporting the 2012 Bulldog bodies on their buggies. We've all seen the pictures of the prototypes- now they appear to be in production.

 

The Lunch Truck was somewhat low on supplies today. It appears the truck and its innards are a hot commodity amongst the racing crowd. Known for gorging on junk food for a days at a time, the nearly 600 entries at the Nitro Challenge took their toll on it.  I was disappointed in the Carne Asada burrito I ordered, as it lacked any ingredients other than meat and cheese. New setups will be tested tomorrow. 

 

 

 
The Fear Farm. Don't worry; It is not scary at all.


Godzilla, on the other hand, is terrifying. So is the sight of me and a camera, apparently. You can't hide, Doug!


Ryan Cavalieri mounting up his 2012 Pro-Line Bulldog. Louis watches.


Adrien Bertin, David Ronnefalk, and Jared Tebo study the track.


Speaking of Ronnefalk, he was allegedly practicing at Thunder Alley R/C Raceway in California for a handful of days leading up to the event. It showed- he looked very quick.


The relentless Arizona sun beats down on another heat of practice...


Everyone's favorite Czech- Martin Bayer even made the trip to break in his Xray on American soil.


In case you haven't heard, Dustin Evans is running nitro this year.


Tanner Denney awaits a practice run. Note the carbon tower.


The Lunch Truck may not have had enough food during the lunch rush, but it did have Boston Terriers- which instantly made it the coolest place to hang out. 


Today was Jared Tebo's 25th birthday! He probably has spent more of them at Nitro Challenges than anywhere else at this point.


Here is a picture for the ladies. What you can't see are the police officers and Cops camera crew running after him.


"Air Maifield"
...See what I did there? Yeah, I'm not too happy about it either.

 

 

That's it for practice day! I'll update again tomorrow. There will definitely be more important things to talk about then, I promise. 

 

 

 

Thursday --  A long day of truggy qualifying has just wrapped up at the Fear Farm in Phoenix (say that three times fast). Actually, it seemed like a long day but will end up being the shortest of the week. Three rounds of only 15 heats of truggy were on the schedule today, making for a fairly fast-paced schedule for both the drivers and LiveRC- at least compared to the normal interval between races at large nitro races. In contrast, we heard race announcer Kenny Brosh say that we will be lucky to get done with buggy qualifying by 11:30 tomorrow night. Yikes!

The track has settled in nicely today- very similar to last year surface, even though we are at a different track. Like we suspected after practice, the circuit has been smooth and free-flowing and we haven't seen too many people struggle with any one part of the track. The "rhythm-section" is giving some drivers fits, but nothing slowing down a little can't counter. For the most part, drivers have only gotten caught up in this section when pushing too hard. 

Best two of three qual points were used to determine the overall starting positions. 12 drivers qualify directly into the A-main with three available bump-up spots. Truggy mains will take place on Saturday.

 

 

Arizona's own Ryan Maifield is enjoying a home-track (and home-bed) advantage so far this week. The pro from Team Associated marched his way through all three rounds of qualifying finishing 3rd, 1st, and 1st to secure the overall TQ.

TLR's Adam Drake put on an impressive showing of speed all day and had a strong chance to become the overall TQ half-way through his R3 run. In the end, he came up just a 1.8 seconds short. He will enjoy the third spot on the grid come main time, though.

 

We heard that Canadian Ty Tessmann has been living with Pro-Line's Tim Clark in Southern California the past few months. Ty has been enjoying the warm California winter while getting plenty of nitro practice. The practice shows, as Tessmann has stayed extremely sharp compared to some other nitro racers from the north who haven't seen top-level competition since last season. He will start second on the truggy grid.

 

Jared Tebo will not repeat last year's dominant performance...at least not to the extent that he did a year ago when he TQed and won both classes. Today, he surrendered the top spot in qualifying to Maifield and a handful of other drivers. Tebo didn't have the normal speed we are used to seeing out of him during truggy qualifying- ending up sixth overall. It's been a while since he has started that far back at a major race as far as we can remember. Look for him to improve on buggy day. 

 

Pro Truggy A-Main Qualifying Order: 

 

 

 

 
Danny Stojakovic knows how to survive early morning racing.


The Arizona sun does a job on the soil used for the track. Here, Pro-Line's Tim Clark measures the track surface temperature to help dial-in his team's tire choices.


Joey does his part to maintain the excellent track conditions at the Fear Farm


NeoBuggy and RedRC bro-ing out in the Pro-Line tent


Billy Fischer had a rough day of truggy qualifying. This happy shot was taken before that rough day.


Ryan Cavalieri had a quiet but strong day of qualifying. He often does that.


Maifield had everyone covered today




Hot Bodies driver Ty Tessman had a chance to TQ overall, but had a few slip-ups in R3 that cost him too much time.

That will do it for truggy day, tune in tomorrow for buggy qualifying!

 

 

 

 

Friday -- This was the longest day of R/C racing in the history of the world. OK, probably not, but that's what it feels like. After 16 grueling hours of racing, we can officially say we headed to the main events. In case you haven't heard, Saturday we will run all of the truggy mains, and the buggy mains will be run on Sunday. 

 

 

 
Today was all about Ty Tessmann. The Canadian wheelman drove his Hot Bodies D8 past the field in R1 and R2 to lock up TQ honors. Speaking of the Tessmanns, we've heard that they are playing a pivotal role in the on-going development of Hot Bodies' truggy program. Ty's truck appears to feature many prototype parts, including lowered shock towers with the rear shocks mounted in front and what looks like Kyosho truggy shocks in the rear.

A new tire from JConcepts was spotted in the pits today. The tires, called "Black Jackets," have a similar block-style tread as the Double Dees only slightly larger.

 

Ryan Maifield barely escaped disaster in round one after crashing hard in the warm-up session and breaking his car. It was quickly repaired and he was able to get on the track before the field force-started his clock. Maifield then ran what would have been the fastest run of the round but ran out of gas in the closing seconds of the race. Team Manager Brent Thielke was still thankful that they were able to get a ninth out of what appeared to be a lost round early on. Ryan ended up qualifying 8th overall.

 

Adam Drake had a very good run in R1, barely missing the TQ position. One unfortunate 44 second lap ruined it. He still got second for the round and will start 7th on Sunday.

 

Cody King had one of the better days of racing we've seen him put in since his world championship win in 2010. After solid top-five runs in R1 and R2, he earned the 6th spot on the grid for the main. Cody showed a lot of speed and may be a threat to win come Sunday, so keep an eye on him.

 

LiveRC's own Barry Baker TQed the over 40 buggy class in dominating fashion, but didn't have as great of luck in the pro division. When asked about his day, Baker claimed "I'm just running the pro class to practice for the over 40 class. That's the only class I care about." 

 

Team Durango's Carson Wernimont was the surprise of the day. After finishing 6th, 4th, and 4th, Carson earned the 5th overall qualifying spot. 

Jared Tebo continued to struggle today. We're not sure what exactly is causing him to be off the pace, but it will be interesting to see if the Kyosho driver can regain his form during the long main events.

 

Dakotah Phend absolutely destroyed everyone in R3 of qualifying tonight. He had second place Ryan Cavalieri covered by 4 seconds and set the fastest time of the day. Dakotah has won many big races, but a win against a full-field of pros in a "premiere" class has, so far, eluded him. This weekend may be the moment in which Phend breaks through that final barrier to super-stardom. We'll see.

 

One thing is for sure, the youth movement is in full effect at the Nitro Challenge this year. While most consider Tebo, Cavalieri, and Maifield the "new" generation of R/C legends, they may have a younger generation ready to knock down their door and take over that title. Tessmann, Phend, Wernimont, and Ronnefalk all turned in extremely impressive qualifying performances today. Time will tell if they have what it takes to hang with the "Big Three" for 45 minutes...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
New shoes from JConcepts made their debut today


If R/C racing were high school, Maifield would be the cool kid that has people hanging out at his locker all the time.


...Moments later, Maifield's RC8.2 roared to life and hit the track.


Meanwhile, Doug and Dakotah Phend watch TV. Careful, boys; the sun shining through all that red canvas will eventually melt your brains.


At first, I thought a die-hard Adam Drake fan skinned their toddler's Power Wheels truck, but it turned out to just be a 1:5 scale body.



When all is said and done, the 2012 NC might be remembered as the "coming out party" for young Carson Wernimont. Kid was killing it all day long.


Barry Baker was also killing it...in the over 40 class. Way to go, old man!


Tebo has seemed slightly off all weekend- having turned in a rough (for his standards) day yesterday, he had a equally disappointing buggy day. He is still in the main, though.


Dakotah Phend had a phenominal day of qualifying, and will start second overall. Could this be the race he breaks through to that "next level" at? We'll see come main time...


Tessmann was sick of qualifying, so he ended it early- quickly dismissing a class of 111 other pro buggy drivers after two rounds.


The strongest "seasoned veteran" of buggy day was Ryan Cavalieri- who again quietly placed himself near the top of the grid for the main. When it comes time to race head-to-head, you would be a fool to bet against this man.


It was a long day of racing...the sun was going down when we were only half way through it.


Drake gunning it under the lights.


The Drake, indeed, DOES have a posse. More like a gang. Either that, or they were staging a sit-in protest against Team Associated.


I think this "LiveRC.com" thing is catching on...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saturday -- Truggy main day has just wrapped up, and it was a doozie- in good and bad ways. From a racing perspective, it was fantastic. We saw young Canadian driver Ty Tessmann recapture the truggy championship crown he once held, doing so in dominating fashion. Ryan Maifield was poised to challenge Tessmann's easy victory early on, but a trip over a pipe and into a bail of hay ended his campaign early. Tessmann cruised away from the pack with ease and never looked back.

 

From a broadcast and race directing standpoint, there were a few trouble spots. Both LiveRC and the Nitro Challenge race directing crew were bitten by hardware failures to vital components of their operations. We had a server go down during the B-main of truggy and right before the A-main. The race directing crew had a PA system failure which caused a slight delay to the start of the final, also. Luckily, we both got our issues straightened out and carried on with the A-main, which was quite the show.  

Despite our issues, we only had about 30 minutes of down-time and we were able to replay the truggy B-main after the conclusion of the A-main. But, it was a VERY stressful day. Thank you all for being patient and understanding while we worked to get things back up and running. As I type this, Brandon is hard a work trying to repair the issue so we aren't bitten by the same gremlins come tomorrow.

 

One more day left of the Nitro Challenge: buggy main day! We will start things off tomorrow morning at 8 am local time. See you then! 

 

 

 

 

OK, back to business here.

 

Truggy Results 

 

 

 





 Open Truggy A-Main Results






 Pro Truggy A-Main Results







"He hates these cans!" 

 

 

 

 

Sunday -- Wow, what an insanely long week filled with ups and downs, highs and lows; hot weather, cold weather...but no rain! 

 

Indeed, it stayed dry here at the Nitro Challenge for the first time in recent years- a good thing, because we may have had to stay until Monday had there been any delays. Over 700 entries combined with a shiny new host facility made this year's NC one of the best nitro races we've ever been to. The bar has definitely been raised!

 

Speaking of raising the bar, Ty Tessmann has recently done the same thing for everyone's expectations of him. After thoroughly dominating the pro truggy class last night, the young Canadian led every single lap of the pro buggy A-Main tonight to cap one of the best weekends of nitro racing we've seen anyone have. From here forward, Ty can be considered a favorite to win any nitro off-road race he enters. That is a claim that maybe two or three other people on Earth can make.

 

 

 

 

 




 Pro Electric Buggy A-Main Results







 Over 40 Buggy A-Main Results







 Open Buggy A-Main Results

 

 

 

 

 

 

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