Tessmann’s Historic ROAR Double
Our friends at Neo Buggy reports - "Ty Tessmann secured a historic double Championship win at the 2012 ROAR Nats, taking first the truck title and then the buggy title in style.
The buggy side of the ROAR Nats took centre stage as the truck side concluded with a superb victory for Tessmann, the semis saw a fair few high profiles miss out - Mike Truhe one of them, driving much of the race with engine/gearing issues, Jesse Robbers ran out of fuel & Billy Easton flaming out a couple of times. In the other semi which happened to be peppered with heavyweights, we lost Ryan Lutz after he looked mighty, his car the only one that looked like it could handle the challenges of the tricky LCRC track. However a pitlane incident which saw him hit the rear of Maifield's buggy as it was released damaged his receiver and he was forced to retire.
The final may have looked different with Lutz in it. Dustin Evans failed to make the grade after showing promise in qualifying and Mark Pavidis having bumped from the quarters retired on the first lap after a bad hit from another car. The bitter pill however went to Tyler Vik, a pit crew mishap which saw him brought in very late for a splash & dash stop only for him to miss out on the bump due to crossing the lines 8/10ths after the 30 min mark - the final determined by top 5 from both semis and the next two quickest drivers from either semi, in this case Matt Castellano, he had 41 laps but failed to finish his 42nd. 8/10ths of a second - the margin for making a ROAR Nats final.
The Grand final - defending Champion Ryan Cavalieri would start on his preferred position, P1 of course! he led away with Tessmann not far behind only for a series of mistakes and tangles that saw him drop way down, this promoted the confident Ty Tessmann into the lead with Maifield chasing hard followed by Phend. Tessmann, although with a slightly weaker fuel strategy than many others made it work, and diced for the first half of the final until Maifield reired with a broken rear shock holder. Cavalieri ran into a few issues as well, a sour end to what had been a dominating performance from the AE boys in blue during qualifying. Upfront Phend was reeling in Tessmann, albeit slowly it was only towards the end of the final that Phend's stronger fuel mileage really came into play, he was quicker over a lap but appeared to be taking more risks, that and coping with the rutted track.
After almost an hour's worth of racing it boiled down to Phend & Tessmann, Phend had a superior fuel strategy but an expensive mistake late on saw the pair exit the pits together, initially Tessmann had the lead but Phend blasted past and opened up a big gap, with only a minute to go and with the combination of pressure, hugely difficult track conditions he made a couple of mistakes. The pair duked it out on the last lap, swapping positions over the woops and the double double, Tessmann nailing it across the line and taking home the double by three tenths of a second!"
