Maifield on pole in Australia
Ryan Maifield will line-up on pole position for the 1-hour final that will decide who leaves Australia as the 1:8 Offroad World Champion. The Mugen driver secured the No.1 starting position of the 13 car grid with victory in the second & faster of the two half hour Semi Finals. In the first of the encounters, it was Top Qualifier Ty Tessmann who took the win but only after two late errors by Davide Ongaro. Ongaro’s Team Associated went to the front after two and half minutes as Tessmann made a mistake. The Xray driver briefly went to the front 3-minutes later when Ongaro had a mistake but another mistake from Tessmann handed it right back. Tessmann then started to come under attack from team-mate Bruno Coelho putting up little fight as the Portuguese driver went through to second. Unfortunately it was short lived as the race hit half way Coelho ran out of fuel just as he was coming around to pit. Ongaro’s advantage was now 2.3-seconds over Tessmann but with 4-minute left on the clock the Italian made a mistake that let his rival through. A racy Ongaro tried to take back the lead but a mistake inside the final 3-minutes put an end to that. With the Top 5 directly bumping up, there was a good battle for 3rd. Spencer Rivkin led that until a mistake at 7-minutes dropped him 4 places with the American never recovering. In the end it was Batlle that came out on top ahead of American duo Ryan Cavalieri and Jared Tebo. In the second of the Semi, reigning champion David Ronnefalk would have to settle for second behind Ryan Maifield. The Electric Offroad World Champion got the jump on the pole sitter off the start and lead early on before Ronnefalk took a lengthy turn out front until a number of mistakes dropped him back to second. Behind, having bumped up from the 1/4 Finals, Kyle McBride pleased the local crowd with 3rd place ahead of Naoto Matsukura and Riccardo Berton who had also come from the 1/4 Finals.
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