Ryan Maifield Wins Two Rounds at 4WD Worlds

After all the excitement of 2WD, day six of the Worlds saw 4WD kick off with practice. A new layout for the drivers was set and as expected, the lap times over the eight runs dropped with the quickest times coming in the final runs. Day seven (Saturday) was set aside for qualifying with four out of the five rounds set to take place. But the rain would have its say and midway through round three it arrived. After about 45 minutes, things started again thanks to the huge one-piece cover that stops the track getting wet. Rounds one and two went to the Associated/Reedy combo of Ryan Maifield, but Jörn Neumann stepped it up with the fastest time of the day in round three without any real errors on the very demanding track. There were lots and lots of crashes all day on both the table top and the quad jump. The quad is very, very hard to jump cleanly for five minutes and was the main issue.

After the rain delay in round three, the organisers were well aware that more was predicted so they stepped it up and got the heats going quicker to try and get round four complete. This didn't happen and very heavy rain came down making it impossible to carry on midway through. As the full round wasn't run, this got scrapped so now the rules will see the best two rounds from four count towards qualifying. With Ryan Maifield's two TQs, only Jörn Neumann can beat him to the pole. The final round and all finals take place tomorrow (Sunday).

Racer would like to thank Jimmy and Vicky Storey at oople for their help with our news and reports from Vaasa, Finland.