 All Pics Below Click to Enlarge; Results Pictures Are Not. |
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Sunday Finals!Back to Top |
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Ryan Maifield Wins Truck and 2wd! Ryan Cavalieri Wins 4wd! |
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| 4wd A3: | In a near-repeat of A2, Ryan Cavalieri took the lead from Jared Tebo about half-way through the race and didn't look back. Winning A2 and A3 gives Cavalieri the overall, with Tebo in second. A3 races sheet, including the points scores, is here. |
| 2wd A3: | Ryan Cavilieri takes A3 with Maifield in 2nd and Tebo in 3rd, each about a second back from the other. That gives the overall win to Maifield, who with a first and 2 second place finishes emerges with the better tie-breaker than Tebo. A3 races sheet, including the points scores, is here. |
| Truck A3: | TQ Maifield shows his form by leading the race from start to finish and taking the overall win - no last-lap wrecks this time! A3 sheet including the points scores is here. |
| 4wd A2: | Ryan Cavalieri squeaks by for the 12th vicotry lap as Jared Tebo gets caught on the line. The 4wd A2 results sheet is here. |
| 2wd A2: | Jared Tebo capitalized on an early Maifield mistake to take over the lead, which he kept from lap two to the end. Maifield dropped back to battle the rest of the race with Truhe and Cavalieri; he showed his TQ form by pulling out second place. The A2 race sheet is here. |
| Truck A2: | TQ Maifield led the race until the last lap, when a costly mistake allowed the ice-for-nerves Cavalieri to steal the win. The race sheet is here. |
Current Standings after A-2: |
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| Truck: | |
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| 4wd A1: | Jared Tebo takes the win 4-tenths in front of a hard-charging Cavalieri. See the race sheet here. |
| 2wd A1: | TQ Ryan Maifield falls to 6th place early but quickly retakes the lead and wins with a comfortable 3 second lead over Tebo. Race sheet is here. |
| Truck A1: | Ryan and Ryan are the only ones to go 11 laps; Maifield leads from the pole to take a solid win. The race sheet is here. |
| Some of the drivers at the race commented to me way back on Wednesday that with such a challenging layout, they weren't sure how much racing there would be as drivers would focus solely on not making mistakes. I think this comment is supported to some extent by the fact that all three TQ's won their races: Tebo and Maifield were able to focus in and put in solid drives, for the most part. However, the comment underestimates just the staggering amount of talent all these drivers at the top have. Just look at the 4wd A1 - Tebo and Cavalieri finishing within .4 seconds without either making a mistake in the last few laps - that had to be exciting to watch. | |
Saturday QualifyingBack to Top |
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| Podcasts! Have a listen: | Jeremy Felles with Hot Bodies just after The Storm |
| (Each file is about 1.5 Mb) | More Storm: In the pits with Ronnie Gardner |
| Schumacher/Speed Passion's Adam Bailey | |
| Alex Alvarez and Team Spider Monkey | |
Pictures from Saturday! |
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| We have the Qual Point Print-Outs for the top of each mod class: | |
| 4wd: TQ is Jared Tebo. Top 15 here. | |
| 2wd: TQ is Ryan Maifield. Top 14 here. | |
| Truck: TQ is Ryan Maifield. Top 9 here. | |
| I'm hoping to get pictures of the whole qualifying boards sometime tomorrow morning. | |
Round 4: 4wd Mod - Jared Tebo Goes 12 Laps!! |
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 The A Qualifier heat sheet and lap times is here. |
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Round 4: 2wd Mod |
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 A qualifier lap times here. |
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Round 4: Truck Mod |
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 See the A qualifier results here. |
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Round 3: 4wd Mod |
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 Again, I didn't receive any heat sheets from Round 3. | |
Round 3: 2wd Mod |
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 No heat sheet, unfortunately. The team has been pretty busy today! |
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Round 3: Truck Mod.Unfortunately, Chazz didn't get any results pics for these races :( |
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The Tire War! |
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| As I mentioned before, there's a bit of a tire war heating up here at the Cactus. For the past many years this race (along with most other big races here in the
US) has been dominated by a Team Losi tire called the BK Bar. It has larger tread lugs than you might expect on a groove-track tire, but the side angles and plethora of center lugs gives
it outstanding handling characteristics on these hard-packed tracks. The tread can dig in through pits and holes, and the Red compound sticks to the hot track surface like glue. Even with all that praise, the BK Bar was still a one-run tire for the best drivers. The fresh edge on a new tire was worth a few tenths per lap out on the track, and if you've looked at the qualifying results at all, you'll recognize how important that is. Needless to say, there's a pretty big market each year for these Losi tires, and the other tire manufacturers are now looking to jump in. This year we're seeing the first results of their efforts; particularly there are are new tires here from JConcepts and Proline angling at changing the scene. From JConcepts we have the Barcode: a tire of similar porportions to the BK Bar, but with more rounded side-grooves and a slightly denser arrangement of center lugs. The Barcode has been out for a little while in JConcepts normal compounds; in fact I ran some blue Barcodes at the JConcepts Clash race this past December and thought they felt really good. What's really new from JConcepts is the "Orange" compound, which is apparently what most of the team guys are running here. Without being there to really get a good feel of the tire I can't really describe it, but running it here signifies they think its going to be an awesome hard-packed groove compound: plenty of stick even when its hot without too fast of wear. Brand new here at the Cactus is a new tire from Proline, called (at the moment) the Suburb. X Facotry driver Brian Kinwald, who designed the original BK Bar for Losi many years ago (BK, get it?), has been working closely with Proline for the last year or so to develop a better version. This tire appears to have slightly smaller lugs than the Losi or JC versions, with a little wider spacing. There's also a new compound in the works, but again, without being there I can't really say what it feels like. So, without further ado, here's some pics of the new treads. The original Losi BK Bar is on the left; the JConcepts Barcode in the center, and the Proline Suburb on the right. Some of these are buggy tires, some are trucks; its what camera-guy-Chazz gave me to work with. |
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The Resort |
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| With two rounds of qualifying down, and two more to go on Saturday, the Cactus (as usual) resorted the qualifying heats according to Friday's runs. We here at X Factory thought this would be a good opportunity to show you about how everyone at the race is doing, so we snapped some pictures of the boards for Round 3 of qualifying. The following images are kind of large (1000px by 5000 px or so, around half a Mb) so they might take a second to load up for you, but here's how nearly everyone at the Cactus Classic did yesterday: | |
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Friday QualifyingBack to Top |
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Pictures from Friday! |
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Round 2: 4wd Mod |
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 See Ryan Cavalieri's heat sheet here. Every lap for Cav is within about .65 seconds, the man is a machine. Congrats to Ty Tessmann for an awesome run too; except for an early mistake he was right on Cav's pace. Sorry for the blur; it got pretty dark out by the end of the day! At least the flash makes the pages white instead of blue. |
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Round 2: 2wd Mod |
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 See Ryan Maifield's heat sheet here. Jared Tebo was obviously turning fast laps again, but two early 30's kept him from TQ. |
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Round 2: Truck Mod |
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 See Maifield's heat sheet here. |
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Round 1: 4wd Mod |
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 See Jared Tebo's heat sheet here. |
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Round 1: 2wd Mod |
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 See Jared Tebo's heat sheet here. |
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Round 1: Truck Mod |
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 See Maifield's heat sheet here. |
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Thursday PracticeBack to Top |
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Wind Storm Tears Through Cactus Pics! |
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During the afternoon of Thursday's practice session, a wind storm has picked up and done some serious damage to the Cactus pit area. Chris Krieg sent the picture on the left and reports: "Yes, that's the Hot Bodies' Ez-Up half-hanging from the power wires here at the Cactus. A mini-dust storm hit the pits hard and caused some havoc. The Kyosho pit area also took some damage... there are several easy-ups that look like neglected Erector sets spread around the area. One pit itself was damaged - a truck flew about 15 feet from the table, with tools going everywhere. Travis Amezcua was lifted in the air trying to save the Hot Bodies tent that you see on the power line. Most of the pits are now without power. Thankfully, no one was hurt, and they now have the scoring equipment back running." |
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Who's Quick? |
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| During the middle of the last day of practice, the SRS crew ran a mock-qualifying round to sort out any possible problems, get everybody
some quality practice on the track, and generally get people in the mood for qualifying, which starts tomorrow. The advantage for us? They timed it! So
while obviously this can't predict tomorrow, some quick results do show us who's going fast at the moment! Here's the top ten 2wd mod drivers from the practice round: |
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 Also looking quick was Frank Root (28.35 fast lap but only 5 laps), Lee Martin (28.44), Billy Fischer (28.42), and Ryan Maifield (28.38). |
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| For Truck Modified (sorry for the lack of lap times, blame the camera guy!): | |
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| And finally 4wd: | |
 Its amazing how much quicker the 4wd's are going than the 2wd cars: normally there's about a second difference between the classes, and here we're seeing 1.6 to 2 seconds difference. This I think confirms what I've heard from a few drivers out there, which is that the surface is slightly dusty this year, giving the 4wd's an advantage. Also, the timing for some of the jump sections isn't as good as it could be, and 4wd's are certainly a little easier to "punch-it and hold on!" when the car's a little out of shape, which is going to help overall race times. In the "also-quick" category we have a number of drivers: Frank Root and Mike Truhe both had 27.2 fast laps, Paul Bradby had a 27.18 but dropped out early, Scott Brown had a 25.7 which probably isn't a real lap, but still pretty awesome. Finally Jesse Robbers had a 27.1 lap, but also a 61 second lap so I'm guessing there was a tire change in there. Maybe he was looking for his Ez-Up though. You can check out Ryan Cavileri's "Practice TQ" run here. One of the interesting things about this Cactus Classic is that the tire wars are back: whereas for quite some time nearly everyone has been on Losi Red BK Bars, this year the JConcepts Barcode (in blue and orange(?)), and a new Proline BK Bar-like tire are making appearances, trying to upseat the Losi status quo. |
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More Pics! |
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 The Yokomo Pits |
 Brian's X - 6 Squared |
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 Traction Action! |
 Let's count... 16 Dubb-C's, and how many various National titles?? I think 80+. Not even kidding. |
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 Jesse Robbers running an RB-5(!) |
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 Ryan Cavalieri |
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 An X - 6 down the hill |
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 Jesse Robbers and Jason Engle representing the Midwest! |
 Jeremy Felles in the Pits |
 Time to Rebuild! |
Wednesday Practice Back to Top |
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Pictures: Practice Action and Pits |
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 The Dirt |
 Landing the... Bridge-jump-thing. |
 Jeremy Felles wheels his X - 6 Squared. |
 The Drivers' Stand |
 Ultimate Ranch Holder |
 X Factory welcomes team driver Chris Bennett |
 SRS Owner Keoni on the left; Tech Guy Larry Tom on the right. |
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 Jeremy Flies, Brian Drives |
 Some fast folks watching. |
 X Factory driver Alex Krieg |
 End of the Straight |
 JConcepts Rulux wheels going around |
 Is that... Chazz? Wow! |
 Losi truck off the table top. |
 Kinwald through the sweeper. |
