2014 Vintage Offroad Nationals – Wolcott Hobby, Waterbury, CT

by Erich Reichert · September 20, 2014

For its seventh running, the Vintage Offroad Nationals headed back indoors to one of the best indoor offroad tracks New England has to offer, Wolcott Hobby and Raceway in Waterbury, CT. This years race held onto the spirit of its predecessors featuring the same great classes as before along with a bit of a switch up to raise some money for a great cause. Racers took to the track with their early 90s and 80s cars and trucks for a weekend packed full of competition in 2WD, 4WD, Stadium Truck, Classic and Heavy Metal and saw Team Associated/JConcepts driver and two-time IFMAR World Champion Brian Kinwald come out to race and support the release of the Team Associated RC10 Worlds Car reissue.

Racing follows a your standard IFMAR qualifying format with four rounds (three on Saturday and one on Sunday for late signups) and a single main. Cars are limited to any car made from 1994 back with a few exceptions that stay within the spirit of “vintage RC”. 2WD features cars like the RC10, JRX2 and Kyosho Ultima racing head to head as they did through the late 80s and early 90s. Yokomo YZ10, and Kyosho Lazers and cars from Schumacher’s early days took on the Losi XX4 (a new addition to the format this year) in some heated battles in 4wd. In Stadium Truck, competition was fierce among the many RC10T, JRX2 and various other vintage home grown project trucks that racers entered while Classic featured all of the entry level Tamiya plastic tub cars that many of us started with. Finally Heavy Metal crushed the track with two sub-classes; HM1 which is reserved for the oversized tire trucks like the Tamiya Clod Buster and Kyosho USA-1 and HM2 which is for the smaller “racing” monsters like the Tamiya King Cab, Blackfoot and others. This year the race also featured a charity class to raise money for a fellow racer that passed away from diabetes. The Steve Semararo Memorial Class uses a single Team Associated RC10 fitted with a Fat Shark FPV camera system which racers used to navigate the track using only the FPV goggles to see for three laps. At the end of the weekend Brandon Giles of Tennessee was crowned the Memorial Class Champion for 2014 and took home and awesome Pro-2 SC Truck Kit courtesy of Pro-line Racing.

The Vonats (as its referred to) is more than just another race. Racers bring their cars for competition but also load up with gear to sell and trade. There’s lots of talk about “The old days” and with Brian Kinwald on hand this year there were plenty of autographs and stories flying. This year also marked the debut of Jake Emperly’s NIX91 production car, a full working replica of the legendary Team Associated “Stealth Car”. The NIX91 is a perfect replica of this iconic car for both collectors and racers that want to run and can be ordered online at Nix Concepts Shapeways page.

With another year’s Vonats in the books, a special thanks goes out to all of the races sponsors: Tekin, Team Associated, Tamiya, Pro-line Racing, Hitec, Kyosho, RC Driver Magazine, LiveRC, RC10Talk.com, RCSoup, Radio Impound Podcast, Futaba, JConcepts and Reedy. Those that could make the race took home a truck load of prizes from these great sponsors and those that couldn’t were able to watch all of the racing action on LiveRC.com. Whether you were there or not, the Vintage Nats is, without a doubt, one of the most killer races of the entire year. See you all in 2015!