Back to Back to Back 4wd Modified Carpet National Champion🏆

Headed back west after a successful week at the 1:10th ROAR Carpet Offroad Nationals. The event was hosted by Maximus RC Raceway in Seabrook, New Hampshire.

It was certainly the toughest carpet racing weekend for me in quite some time. Lots of wrenching, lots of big steps back and baby steps forward, but by the end, things were coming back around. I feel like I sort of found my footing in 2wd but lost out on the podium in the last main to a tie breaker. I made a setup tweak to attempt for an even higher finishing position but it just didn’t work out well. It was a good learning experience. Congrats to Chase on his first title.

As for the 4wd division, I’d go on to win what’s now my 6th national title. All week long I was trying stuff with the car and not running what was comfortable for me but come main time, I had the car back how I liked it and that showed. I lined up 3rd for the mains on Sunday. A1, the leader gapped out while I was trying to get into 2nd, I got there and just ran out of time. A2, the battle between the front runners heated up, I made a good pass and then got into the lead after a mistake from the leader. A3, I got to 2nd quite quickly but wasn’t driving my best, made a mistake and then everything came together. I was shredding and came from a ways back, stuck a pass, and won.

I can’t thank my sponsors enough for their continuous support and ongoing passion for not just my program but the industry as a whole. I truly have the best sponsors giving me the best equipment for each and every event.

I always hold the losses greater than the wins so I’m still a bit bummed out. The cool thing is, I race again this week at the April Fools Classic @ Rocky Mountain RC Raceway and then I’m back on carpet the following week @ RC ONE for the INS. Im really looking forward to these races. Back to work.

Schumacher R/C Racing
Whitz Racing Products
Hobbywing
JConcepts Inc
Gens ace RC
Savox USA
Flysky RC
#CoreRC 
#Trishbits
EZ Customs-Airbrush Graffix
#Nine2ZeroDesigns
Rocky Mountain Rc Raceway

EFRA 1/12 EC title #9 feels special for so many reasons! 🏆🥇 Today was a rollercoaster of emotions! But this is why we love RC racing so much! After a dominant performance in qualifying, and a ”steady” run in A1 and A2 until two laps remaining, an unfortunate racing incident brought the title fight into A3. I managed to keep a hard charging Marc Rheinard at bay for the first 4 minutes, until my car came alive, and I was able to pull away to secure yet another title. Words can’t describe what I’m feeling! 🏁🥳🍀

Special thanks to:

Nicola Marrone for the years of support of my 1/12 program!

Alessio Mazzeo for the nice talks & team dinners with sangria & insalata di carne 🥩🍷

And a big thanks to my family, friends and supporters for your trust in my work! 🥰

XRAY
HUDY
Hobbywing Technology
Team EAM, Inc
Pro-Spec
Hotrace Tyres Factory
三和電子機器株式会社 SANWA Electronic Instrument
Avid Racing Concepts LLC
TQRacing
HIRO SEIKO
Apaint
P stickers

@teamsavox GP 2026 done and dusted!🏆🏆 what an amazing experience, I have no words to describe how grateful I am for Savox making this trip possible for me!🤞

Savox are truly honest, and amazing! This GP kept me and @andrewselvaggi on our toes, as Kato San where here also. We had to work had, with late night wrenching being part of this as well!🔥

My experience was great here in Asia, the whole Taiwanese setup were amazing to experience. I also got to meet some big people from TT or better known as Thunder tiger! Eddie, Hal and Ken, where all so nice to me, and they were great people as well!💛

Very happy to be part of this team!

Andy Chen who took care of me and Andrew, where truly amazing, he showed me the great culture and the Asia experience! It’s different, but I like it!

Last but not least, thanks to Andrew for coming here and spending his time with me. Can’t describe how grateful I am for his hard work, this man sweated like a pig for 4 days straight, stayed up to 2 am in the morning and woke up at 6 am to go with me to the track. This truly special to me, and I’ve never been happier that I chose him as my mechanic and mentor for this race❤️

As of the race i TQ’ed and won both classes, my package where awesome nothing to put a finger on. My #osspeed engine, did not skip a beat in the 50 minute main. My @teamassociatedrc cars, ran spot on and did not catch a break in any way, they worked hard, and earned two solid wins!

Thanks to everyone who has been part of this event, and thanks to everyone I met here, for being really nice!

Thanks to my dad from home, for your ever lasting support ❤️

Also thanks to my girlfriend for being patient with all this traveling❤️

Now it’s time to go home, and prepare for the next one!🏆

Thanks to all my sponsors, making this possible!
#TeamAssociated #WeAreAE #hobbywingEAM hotrace Ruddog Rckongen sanwa TKRGraphicsTworks RDRP EZcustoms
Nettorc Savöx OSengines
energyfuel

It was a bit of a rocky start to the 2026 PNB. We worked together extremely well in the pits and on the track to get quicker all weekend. Each of us in the Tekno pits seemed to have moments of greatness and then an inconsistent run either placing us back on the grid or with a bad start in the A-Main. My Tekno truggy felt great in the main and I battled for the win and ended up 3rd on the podium. Our main issue was not going to bar tires sooner because the track was in amazing condition and we learned that quickly in the Truggy main. In the end, Dakotah got us with a couple of laps to go, but for the most part I was happy with run.

In the E-Buggy class, the Tekno buggy felt solid and the JConcepts tires were gripping the dirt well. I was comfortable but not perfect and climbed out a bit of a hole and grabbed the last spot on the 5 driver podium. It wasn’t a perfect run, but coming from 7th wasn’t ideal in a single A-Main and Joker laps to monitor. Overall, the control felt good courtesy of the Cayote electronics and FlySky radio and I’ll be ready for the next event. Congrats to Spencer Rivkin on taking that victory.

Paul Wynn got us all hooked up with JConcepts Overdose tires for the Nitro Buggy final and Tanner Denney helped prep to get main event ready. This is the one I let go with a mistake in the sweeper that resulted in a 55 second lap. After some frustrating laps getting back going, I settled in and felt out the car, engine, and tire package and was pleased with the feeling. It’s not easy battling for 10th when the equipment was podium ready. But, that’s racing! Congrats to Dakotah on taking that one at the end and to Brandon Rose on damn near pulling off the win. Also, shout out to teammate Seth VanDalen getting his Tekno into 3rd.

I can’t really complain about the event, we had a good weekend. A few things I would do differently and we will take that into the next event and see if we can get back on the top step. Thanks to Tanner Denney in the pits, Paul Wynn and Hannah Hardison for the JConcepts support, and Troy Hanson from A-A-Main and Cayote along with the great Tekno team and pit area. As always, thanks to Dave Leikam for events like this and Elite RC Productions for the great direction and live coverage.

Next race, North Georgia Shootout. 
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Tekno RC
JConcepts
Cayote 
FlySky
ProTek RC
VP Fuels
Flash Point
RM2
Hobby Action
A-Main Hobbies
Drakein
Factory Tracks
Stick-It One

Neoland 2026 done 🫶🏻

P1 nitro buggy
P7 eco buggy

First of all congratulate Miguelo, Laura and the whole Neoland team for again doing one of the best races of the calendar! Thank you!

Regarding the race a complicated weekend in which we tried many things for the final mind give the key to the nitro final 🔥

In echo we had some problems on our sleeves and came out P5 in a difficult track to advance we did not manage to improve the result and finished P7

In nitro after starting the final and finding myself very comfortable, we squeezed and managed to make P1 and a very good final.

My HIGHESTRC with the new SWORKz RC 321 extreme motor, REDS RACING wheels overdose in silver composite, JConcepts Inc B251 servos and Flysky RC Model transmitter ran perfectly for the 45 min run.

Congratulations to ronnefalk for his win in echo, my team mate Elliot boots for P3 in nitro and to Davide Ongaro for P2 in nitro.

Thanks to the whole sworkz team for the help this weekend, to my dad for working hard all weekend and to micha for the help in the pits 🫶🏻

See you this weekend in San Roque for the second test of the Andalusia championship!

#sworkz
#jconcepts
#reds
#highest
#nitrolux
#kanarc
#rcproject
#tworks
#flysky
#maugrafix
#kustomgraphics
#smartworkshop

📝LESSONS FOR THE WORLDS?
Six months from now, we’ll have crowned the 2026 IFMAR 1/8 Nitro Buggy World Championships, at Thornhill USA. Six months seems like a long time, but it really isn’t. And with the Worlds the nearest thing that R/C has to an Olympics, it stands far above any other race.

All of that made this weekend’s two big international races super important as we pass that six-month mark. Most of Europe’s best gathered in England for Neoland 26, the reboot of the famed Neo Buggy race, once universally lauded as the unofficial indoor worlds.

Meanwhile over in the US, most elite US racers were at the Psycho Nitro Blast, the next major race after last month’s Dirt Nitro Challenge.

Both races took place indoor, both featured high quality fields. What, we wonder, can we learn from these two events as the countdown to the Worlds goes inside the six-month mark? Here’s a few things we’ve noticed.

THE BIG FIVE
It seems obvious to say, but there are “the big five” in play this year – the five drivers most likely to influence the ultimate outcome at Thornhill. Defending World Champ Davide Ongaro, 2016 WC David Ronnefalk, the man twice on the podium Juan Carlos Canas, and the two US giants of 1/8 offroad – double 1/10 World Champ Ryan Maifield, and perhaps the best driver of all time yet to win a Worlds, Dakotah Phend.

Between them, those five have dominated major 1/8 races for well over a decade, and anybody with designs on a win later this year will have to deal with those five.
Of those five, Phend and Canas came away with the nitro buggy wins this week, Canas overcoming a relatively anonymous run through qualifying, while Phend dealt with a strong-starting Brandon Rose via consistency, pure pace, and a better fuel strategy.

Ronnefalk was an unexpected arrival at Neoland, making the start after the ISTC Worlds postponement, but the result was perhaps his best 1/8th race in quite some time – winning eBuggy, top-qualifying Nitro, and well in the mix until mid-race when a wrong tyre choice left him struggling. On the flip-side, Ongaro had been thereabouts all week, but looked stronger and stronger as the 45-minute main ran down, fastest of all over the last few minutes.

Maifield was the one member of the big five who had something of an off week by his usual (phenomenal) standards.

THE INTERVIEWS
It’s always interesting to pay attention to what is said (and unsaid) in driver interviews at races like these. Two interviews caught my attention.

First, I heard Spencer Rivkin talk early on at PNB about “having a few new parts of the car”. He wasn’t specific, but went on to put together a pretty strong 1/8 weekend, winning eBuggy over team-mate Rose, and finishing top 5 in nitro. Put Rivkin’s comments and results together with Rose’s pair of second places, Ongaro and Kaerup’s speed, and persistent rumours about a big update from AE – and there’s something to be excited about for AE fans over the next six months.

The second interview I found particularly interesting was Davide Ongaro after finishing second in the Nitro Buggy final at Neoland. Asked about his late pace, Ongaro matter-of-factly commented that he was set up for a 60-minute final, and practicing for the World Championships (which of course has that hour-long main). Ongaro, perhaps more than any other driver, seems to build his whole racing calendar and schedule around the World Championship. It’s no accident that he’s won three in a row (and finishing 6th as a 14-year-old in 2016). That kind of mindset, using a major international race to “practice” for the Worlds format, shows a rare dedication and commitment.

THE NEW CROP IS COMING
While the big five might garner the headlines and attention, there’s been a lot to like about the next crop that’s coming this week, as well. Camden Lime (eBuggy) and Seth Vandalen (Nitro) had taken wins at DNC just a few weeks back and finished top five at PNB, for example. They, along with Brandon Rose, Mason Fuller, and the likes of Burak Kilic (absent from Neoland) and Marcus Kaerup will not be prepared to wait their turn behind the five we mentioned above.

SCHUMACHER TO 1/8?
The third interview that we listened to very closely this week came from Schumacher’s off-road engineer Tris Neale, during RC Racing TV's Neoland coverage. It’s well known that the British manufacturer has been dabbling in 1/8 over the past few years, but Tris’ interview outlined their plans quite clearly. They ran their own prototype platform at Neoland – one of the young engineers Daniel Robins behind the wheel – as a data gathering exercise.

The plan, outlined by Tris, is for an eBuggy version of the car to be available first. Neale named a 2026 release date as the plan, and a tilt at the EFRA eBuggy Euros as part of the schedule, with a Nitro platform to follow, potentially early in 2027. Is the Worlds on the schedule? Time will tell, with Tris suggesting they’d like to be at Thornhill (with drivers like Orlowski and Kobbevik keen), but it will be very much budget dependent after an expensive 2025 1/10th offroad season, and the cost of the now-postponed ISTC Worlds to be factored in.  Personally, I’ll be surprised if we don’t see at least a small presence at Thornhill.

WHAT ELSE?
There’s a bunch else we could talk about: which chassis manufacturers would be happiest (XRAY, SWorkz, AE?), the tyre game that continues to hot up in the only open-tyre category left in the mainstream RC classes, whether Neoland’s track layout and surface is more representative of Thornhill than PNB, about other upcoming races (attention turning to Asia over the next couple of weeks, for example) and more.

But 6 months is both a very short time, and a very long run-up to the Worlds, and we’ll save some of those topics for later. The 2026 IFMAR 1/8 Offroad Worlds definitely has our attention, so we’ll be watching every major 1/8 race through that lens, and will be back regularly with more reflections on the run-up to Thornhill.

📸Photo by JConcepts Inc

NeoLand 2026 🇬🇧

Really happy to make both Pro A-mains with my Team Associated rides this week 🙌
E-buggy mains were mostly watching from the side since had 2 unfortunate equipment failures in A1&2 – For sure had more to give since had good starts and climbing close to top5 everytime before needed to retire

Nitro main was something I was really looking forward to – first proper long main running with the big dogs. Unfortunately, it never really took off since maybe made the wrong tire call, so it turned into surviving from lap 1 and staying out of the way of the faster guys until the last time crossing the line.

On the positive side, the cars were working awesome all week and the engine felt really good. Still learning with Matrix tires as this was my first race with them, but definitely a lot to take away and improve for next time.
Overall, a great event and a lot learned 💪

Huge thank you to Craig for the help in the pits and on the gun with Max! And all of the team for continuing to push forward.

Already rebuilding and leaving for EBM race in LA Speedway Racing Club e.V. this weekend!

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Team Associated
Ruddog Racing
Matrix Racing Tires
Xtreme Aerodynamics
REVOLUTION DESIGN RACING PRODUCTS
#FactoryTeam
#NEOLAND