Having been around the sport of drag racing for most of my life, I’ve seen quite a few trends spring up, with some becoming mainstays of the sport, while others burned brightly (and briefly) before burning out completely. I haven’t been thoroughly shocked in a number of years, but it did happen a couple months ago in the middle of Georgia when I was introduced to the reality of a highly-competitive, sanctioned touring series for remote control drag cars!
[Editor’s Note: This story originally appeared in DI #188, the World Series of Pro Mod Issue, in May/June of 2024.]
As a Gen-Xer who grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, I had my fair share of toy RC cars, and that’s kinda how I remember them from my youth, so when Gary Rowe invited me to travel to Georgia and check out the season opener of his newly-launched Remote Control Hot Rod Association (RCHRA), I was honestly having trouble wrapping my mind around the whole thing!
I was curious enough to make the trip, and upon arrival, it didn’t take me long to realize that these vehicles are not the ones I grew up with! I was pretty surprised to realize that the fastest cars in the series – a class Gary calls Big Dawg – can accelerate to speeds approaching 100 mph in just 1.5 seconds!
Gary explained that RC drag racing has actually been around for longer than most people realize, but two things came along in recent years that caused interest to explode. For starters, a company known as Traxxas led the way in producing RC cars and trucks that had a Street Outlaws resemblance, and soon the term “Street Eliminator” was coined. That caused a flood of orders for these great looking, factory-fast toys that bore a striking resemblance to popular, mass-produced automobiles.
It didn’t take long before a number of companies were offering officially licensed bodies of modern muscle cars, as well as retro machines such as 1955-1957 Chevys, Fox-body Mustangs and Falcons, along with vintage and modern Mopars. Some in the RC racing world have selected bodies that exactly match their full-size race cars, or perhaps the same vehicle they drove to high school, etc.
Thanks to Traxxas and other manufacturers, there’s now a litany of choices when it comes to RC vehicle designs that may be purchased off the shelf or ordered online. “Right out of the box, these things will do 40 mph in your driveway,” says Rowe.
Soon, friends began gathering in parking lots to race these cars, and it didn’t take long before people were trying to figure out how to make them faster…and figure it out they most certainly did. Amazingly, what really catapulted RC racing into a more organized racing program was the COVID pandemic. “It can be traced back to around May 2020, right around the COVID lockdowns that organized RC drag racing began to happen,” says Rowe. RC racers started gathering weekly or bi-weekly and racing locally, with the goal of attending something of a Super Bowl-type event known as “The Clash” which happens yearly in Florida.
While interest in RC drag racing is indeed catching on across the country, Gary says his RCHRA circuit offers a different angle since it’s the first sanctioned RC touring series ever launched. “RCHRA is also the first organization of its kind to offer nine classes during an event,” says Rowe. Gary launched his series in March 2024 with an 11-race roster of events held in various locales across the country, with six of those events being held at national event dragstrips!
The aforementioned Big Dawg class is not only the fastest in the series, but also the only class in RCHRA that allows tire prep, while the other classes race on a no-prep surface. There’s a variety of heads-up classes as well as bracket dial-in categories in Rowe’s series, along with a very broad mixture of RC competitors, whose ages span from 4 years old all the way up to several racers who are well into their Golden Years and approaching 80.
While in Georgia, I even saw a serious competitor who would roll to the starting line in his wheelchair and carefully place his RC car into the staging beams. Incidentally, that same competitor also holds the MPH record in his class!
There are many reasons why this form of racing is catching on, not the least of which is overall cost, as well as travel convenience. “I usually just throw my RC car in the backseat of my car and head out to wherever we’re racing,” says one competitor I met. He also told me how he once traveled to a far-away meet and decided to fly, placing his RC car in a duffel bag and stowing it away in the overhead bin of the airplane.
Obviously, the cost of the whole operation is a fraction of what you’d spend on big cars, and the payout ratio in RC racing is quite appealing. Those headlining Big Dawg cars cost a modest $3,500 to $4K, and you can win twice that much or more at certain events, with some of the “big-money” meets paying $20K-plus to win! You can spend as little as $300 to buy yourself a race-ready RC car to compete in several of RCHRA’s Box Stock classes.
As the manufacturers continue to expand their product line into the world of RC racing, sponsorship is also pouring into this style of racing, along with fans across the country logging on to things like Webb RC Videos to watch this stuff live streamed!
After experiencing the whole deal firsthand, I’m getting a strong feeling that organized RC drag racing has a pretty long runway of growth ahead of it.
This story was originally published on July 26, 2024. 
