With the first of two rounds of practice that make up the opening day of the action at the 15th running of The Dirt Nitro Challenge completed, Joey Christensen’s 9-pack element of the track seems to the biggest focus of attention for the top drivers as they try to find their rhythm through the challenging section. With no official timing being issued for the round which took 7-hours to complete, leaving drivers uncertain of where they are in relation to their rivals, most declared the first round of practice a track cleaning exercise and opportunity to shakedown their equipment.
Ty Tessmann, the defending Truggy Champion who is chasing a third consecutive title, said his new name sake edition truggy was good but added in buggy he struggled a little. The HB driver plans to use his E-Buggy, the electric buggy class running in between Truggy and nitro buggy, to test a set-up for his D8 as he expects the track to have grooved up a lot for P2 which will also run in much cooler conditions. Commenting on the 9-pack the Canadian said the section was the key to the track but he said all his cars were ‘going through there pretty well’.
Pro-Line’s European World Championship Top Qualifier Elliott Boots make the trip over from Europe.
Arriving in yesterday, Boots said his buggies needed some tweaking. Not running Truggy, the British driver described the middle section as pretty though adding it was ‘no walk in the park’ and ‘you got to get it so perfect every lap’.
Top Qualifier of Truggy last year, Adam Drake said all his cars were ‘overall very good’. Planning to leave his truggy as is for P2 the US National Buggy Champion will make a caster and tyre change to his buggies to learn how the change effects the cars on a track he described as ‘really fun’. Describing the 9-pack as ‘good’ he said it is the track’s separating factor between drivers and he likes it. Having had some issues with it in E-Buggy due to the power delivery, he said while he didn’t get it perfect every lap he was comfortable with it. Young team-mate Dakotah Phend said while the first run ‘just checked everything was ok’ his cars felt ‘really good’. With ‘so many more lanes’ this year he said ‘there is a lot going on every lap and really fun to drive’. He said the Supercross style track is good for spectating too adding that he would like to see more tracks with this type of layout. Like Drake, he felt ‘pretty comfortable’ through the 9-pack adding that while its definitely not easy he believes he is doing a good job of it mainly by not trying to over jump through it.
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