Dakotah Phend sweeps Buggy and Truggy at the Michigan State Championship Opener

After a long wait over the winter, the Michigan State Championship Series finally kicked off the 2013 season on April 27th at Dirt Burner’s Raceway & Hobby in Livonia, MI. The Dirt Burner’s crew provided a very fast layout within the tight indoor confines with average lap times under 16 seconds. A total of 145 entries showed up very excited to get the season started and everybody was eager to see if all the preparations done over the winter would pan out.

1/8th Scale Nitro Buggy
The premier class was, just like at all rounds last year, the biggest class again with 44 entries. Throughout qualifying it became obvious that it would take a perfect run to make the A main. One single mistake could mean the difference between A main and C main, the field was that tight! TLR/Orion/Pro-Line sponsored Dakotah Phend showed early on how to go fast beyond believe to claim the TQ spot and he was the only person able to pull off a 21 lap run in the 5 minute qualifier. Dakotah was able to get a clean start in the 30 minute main and started to pull away, followed by TLR sponsored Bill Bridges and Team Associated sponsored Brian Borle and the rest of the field. Due to the very high pace, it seemed like a freight train coming through every lap! After a few laps, Brian Borle managed to get past Bill Bridges while Scott Rapoport was climbing up through the field from 8th on the grid to 4th place, slowly sneaking up to the battle for 2nd. Unfortunately for Bill Bridges, something went wrong on lap 36, causing him to retire from the race, which helped Scott Rapoport move up to 3rd place. Dakotah Phend had a comfortable lead throughout the race, but on lap 93 he had an unexpected flame out, giving the rest of the field hope to take over the lead. However, Doug Phend quickly re-fired the engine and Dakotah was able to resume without losing the lead. With only a few minutes left on the clock, the battle for second was heating up between Brian Borle and Scott Rapoport and Scott managed to squeeze by Brian on lap 109. Brian tried to make a pass back, but ran out of time. When the 30 minutes were over, it was TLR/Orion/Pro-Line sponsored Dakotah Phend in first, Scott Rapoport in second and Team Associated sponsored Brian Borle in third.

1/8th Scale Nitro Buggy Podium:
1. Dakotah Phend
2. Scott Rapoport
3. Brian Borle

1/8th Scale Nitro Truggy
TLR/Orion/Pro-Line sponsored Dakotah Phend was hauling the mail with his TLR truggy during qualifying to take the TQ honors and start at the front of the grid in the main.

After the start of the main, Dakotah Phend took the lead, followed by Mo Denton and Chad Shorkey. Dakotah set an extremely fast past up front and Mo tried to keep up, but slowly saw the gab between him and Dakotah grow. On lap 75, disaster struck for Mo Denton and he was forced to retire from the race and hand second place over to Shane Snyder, followed by TLR sponsored Mike Marshall. This all changed a few laps later when both Shane and Mike ran into technical issues. At the end of the race, it was TLR/Orion/Pro-Line sponsored Dakotah Phend, followed by Tony Oh Boy and Chad Shorkey.