Maifield wins exciting DNC Buggy final

Ryan Maifield has won the big one at this year’s 16th running of the Dirt Nitro Challenge.  The TLR driver would claim his 2nd buggy title at the Fear Farm but more significantly his first big nitro win for his new manufacturer when on the penultimate lap of the exciting 45-minute A-Main he got ahead of former team-mate Ryan Cavalieri.  A race that saw four different leaders, Maifield went to the front ahead of defending champion Ty Tessmann 4-minutes in until a mistake at the 10-minute mark would drop him to third.  His challenge then looked to be over as he fell further down the order to sixth.  A driver famed for his late charges, the Arizona ace never gave up and as a gusting wind added to the challenges of the tough track conditions in the closing stages, Maifield was there to capitalise to take his second major title of the new season having last month claimed his first ever Reedy Race of Champions win.  Unfortunately for the stars of last night’s epic Truggy final Tessmann and new champion David Ronnefalk their races would hit trouble.  Holding a comfortable lead with just 8-minutes to go Tessmann would suffer a problem with his battery connector and losing over a minute in the pits fixing it the World Champion would be leaving with no titles this year finishing up 7th overall.  Trying to recover from a frantic start, Ronnefalk would twice run out of fuel after communication issues with his pit crew.  With Maifield and Cavalieri  separated by just 0.684, joining them on the podium would be the other of America’s offroad establishment trio Jared Tebo.  Leading a total of close on 1/3 of the race, Dakotah Phend would just miss out the podium by half a second, the wind being the downfall to the 18-year-old’s quest for a first DNC title.

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