The RC Car Racing Nationals Is Where Racing Gets Small

This piece was originally published in The Autopian, a member-supported blog for car enthusiasts formed by ex-Jalopnik writers/editors. If you think starting a website in the middle of the pandemic was a terrible idea, you should see the cars we buy.

NEW ROCHELLE, N.Y. — I have seen the sun split the morning fog over Laguna’s Andretti Hairpin, heard the crack of an impact wrench bang against the garage walls at the Nürburgring, and munched on a sweet Grand Marnier crepe at 3:00 a.m. while watching the cars bend around tetre rouge during the 24 Hours of Le Mans. I have been blessed enough to enjoy some of the best the world of motorsports has to offer. None of this quite prepared me for the sight of 135 dudes crammed into a nondescript small warehouse feverishly gluing, soldering, and calibrating 1/10 and 1/12 scale race cars.

Other than a crowded parking lot, there was no sign that there was even a race track in the squat beige building, which looks more like a space used to package and ship dental supplies. But here champions will be crowned, hopes will be dashed, and a few thousand gallons of energy drinks will be consumed.

This is the 2025 ROAR On-Road Electric Carpet Nationals, the premier “on-road” event for electric radio-controlled race cars in the United States.

As I walk into the double doors of New Rochelle’s “360v2 Raceway at Foredom Hobbbies” a few miles north of The Bronx, I see a guy truing tiny tires in a sewing machine-sized box. This room is quite small, right at the entrance, and I make the incorrect assumption that this is where people share the one tire lathe provided for the competitors.

Walking through the next sort of doors, my eyes are opened to how extreme this event really is. Workstations are crammed together, each one crowded with soldering irons, battery chargers, small hand tools, brake cleaners, tire lathes, tupperware containers full of parts, industrial tape, copious salty snacks, and small vials of liquid whose contents I can only guess at.

I’m legit shocked to see so many people doing this, and my surprise is only compounded by the fact that every room I walk into is like this. There are more than a hundred of these mini garages stacked on the same Lifetime folding tables used for everything from voter registration drives to church coffee hours.

There are guys everywhere. Some have humidifiers running, although whether that’s for the car or the builder I’m not sure. The energy in the room isn’t frenetic, exactly, but no hands are still. It’s like Santa’s Workshop if all of the elves were dudes in their 40s or 50s wearing baseball caps and building RC Cars.

Sticking out in this crowd is the guy in the red shirt. Donny Lia. He’s the one I’m supposed to talk to. He owns the track.

He doesn’t want to talk to me, though. At least he doesn’t want to talk to me yet. He has to finish his car and get it ready to race.

I’ve been around long enough to know the look of a driver focused intently on a task, so I leave him alone. The difference between most drivers I’ve met fighting for a championship, though, is that they usually don’t also have to build the car, set it up, and tech it before they race.

No worries. I wander over to see the carpet that defines this kind of racing. Seriously, companies sell the carpet rolls in 100 ft. by 12 ft. size, so most of these tracks are approximately that size. It also helps that you can lay out 4 ft. by 8 ft. sheets of plywood and create a base that naturally fits underneath. The carpet is designed to allow the cars to dart around the track with maximum traction and minimum fuzz, which can kill tiny parts and motors.

It’s Saturday, and most of the day will be devoted to qualifying to determine who will race in the different “Mains” that night and the next day. This setup works much like short-track racing, where drivers compete in a certain number of heats to see if they’ll end up in the top-level “A-Main” or a lower-level “B-” or “C-Main.”

Unlike Sebring or Daytona, no one is getting on my case for walking right up to the track. ROAR, the sanctioning body, requires racers to marshal the heats they’re not in on a rolling basis. No one seems bothered that I’m so close, although I make sure not to block the elevated stand where the drivers are lined up.

As I wait for Lia’s race to start, I watch a batch of 1/12 scale modified cars make turns that would be impossible in anything other than an F1 car. Maybe. The electric motors let out a high-pitched squeal that competes with the sound of the sleek plastic bodies cutting through the air.

I’m watching one car in particular because every time it comes around the last turn before the straight, the driver tries to cut the curb, causing the car to bounce up and down. I keep waiting for a crash and inevitably it comes. One of the marshals inside the turn attempts to turn the car around, but the driver first tries to correct course by gunning it, which causes it to fly off the curb and hit the marshal.

My eyes widen. Hitting a marshal in most racing would result in a black flag for the driver and a red flag for the course. Everyone here, including the marshal, just laughs.

“I stuck the landing!” screams the driver, to more chuckles.

The next race features Lia and his bright yellow modified 1/12 car. There are numerous classes, but the most important characteristics are size, body type, and power type. The “touring cars” are larger and, generally, slower, with bodies that look something like a McLaren 765 LT and an Audi R18 had a baby. There are also LMH cars that look Le Mans Prototypes, and even a class for 1/10 scale F1 cars. The fastest cars, though, are Can-Am-style modifieds.

I can hear the announcer mention Lia’s name as he continues to rack up faster and faster laps. In these qualifying sessions, the drivers aren’t going for a specific lap time, but trying to finish under a certain time. I switch positions to get a better angle and something happens. Lia’s car breaks. His race is over.

“I broke a gear,” Lia explains to me when he’s done racing.

This isn’t a usual thing to go wrong, and now Lia, in addition to talking to me, is going to have to get his car set up again for another qualifying session so he can make it, hopefully, into the A-Main.

All of this in addition to hosting the event. I’m curious, are most of these people local or is this truly a national event?

“There are about 135 entrants, and about 80 percent are from other states. Name a state, they’re here,” he tells me.

Lia also races super stock, but he enjoys the modified 1/12 class because it’s “the fastest class in all of RC.” His setup is serious and, clearly, a lot of money has been invested.

“It’s like a hobby” he says to downplay it, though I point out it’s also his track. “Yeah, it’s a business, it’s not my full-time business.” That business would be selling cars. Lia has all the bearing of a professional race car driver, which makes sense as I later find out that not only did Lia race short track, he competed in NASCAR’s Truck Series and actually won a race.

Sensing that I want to get into details about the car, Lia walks me around the corner to one of his competitors. Drew Ellis, who also happens to be the manager for Team XRAY, a representative of the Slovakian RC company Hudy, its XRAY brand, and its American arm RCAmerica. He also owns a race track in Missouri.

“This whole side, this is Team XRAY,” he says, pointing out the many rows of desks and guys in matching shirts. One of them, a driver on the younger side, is his son. This kind of racing has become his life and he’s even competed, and won, as part of a team on the international stage.

“I was super competitive and I was into the racing side. I did BMX when I was younger,” he tells me. This kind of racing appeals to that side of him. “It’s a competitive thing, it’s a one-on-one sport. Obviously, there’s a team element of tuning and setup, but when you’re on the track it’s you versus the track or the other drivers on the track.”

The racing is competitive, though the risks are lower. In my own time racing I’ve seen an amateur rack up a $150,000 repair bill from Ferrari in an afternoon.

“Obviously, this is less expensive than real car racing,” says Ellis. “I can’t get hurt, obviously, I can trash my car and walk away.”

It’s less expensive than “real” (as in full-size) racing, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily cheap. Especially if you want to compete on a national level.

“To get into the hobby, if you don’t have all the equipment, if you’re going to buy everything brand new, you’re looking at $2,000, but you could easily get into it at $6,000,” says Ellis.

As he talks I can’t help but stare at his chassis, which is an experimental steel one he’s testing. The actual car itself consists of a servo to control steering, a brushless motor for power, and a motor controller unit. There’s a differential out back to control the amount of power being sent to the rear wheels, and a carefully calibrated suspension. He lets me spin the differential and shows me the Diff Check Plus he has, a small device that allows him to check and adjust the “hardness” of the diff—the differential’s amount of resistance to diff action, which is adjusted by changing the viscosity of thick silicone oil inside the diff.

“We can do all kinds of changes to the car, like a real race car,” Ellis explains. “Anything you want to adjust on this car, you can adjust.”

You’ll notice the suspension arms are actually a carbon fiber piece that’s surrounded by plastic, which gives the arm more ability to bend without snapping, which can happen with just plastic.

The amount of time and effort put into making small changes can have a big impact on the racing. In some of the modified classes the times around the track are in the low 8-second range, and a small difference can add up over 50-plus laps.

The setup of the different “mains” has the A-Main race repeated three times with each driver’s worst result thrown out, which means you can have a terrible race and still win overall. To some degree, this removes the luck factor that makes motorsports exciting, but it does help to make sure that the fastest driver usually wins.

On Saturday night, the first of the three A-Mains was held for the 1/12 scale Modified class, with top qualifier Samuel Isaacs edging out Kemp Anderson and Lia, who qualified third.

Unlike the qualifying races, everyone here is lined up in the order they qualified, although the grid is a little unusual compared to the tight grinding you see in other races. This helps avoid everyone crashing in the first turn. The race is only eight minutes, but that’s still long enough to do 50-plus laps.

Right away, the top three drivers distance themselves from the rest. It only takes a minute for all three drivers to catch up to lapped traffic and, remarkably, the lapped cars quickly duck out of the way. That’s something pro-level drivers can’t always do.

With five minutes to go, Lia is putting consistent pressure on Anderson, who goes wide around the “short chute” and gets passed. Lia then goes to work methodically following the leading Isaacs, hoping to force an error. The cars seem impossibly close. Lia, again, gets around, with just a couple of minutes to go.

Now the situation is reversed, with Isaacs charging at Lia. He gets a break when Lia gets caught up in traffic. With just 10 seconds to go, Isaacs and Lia collide. Isaacs is just far enough ahead after eight minutes to win, with Anderson sprinting far enough ahead to put himself in second.

That’s racing, even at 1/12 scale.