So many people to thank...  

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The first group of people that HPI has to thank is the huge number of racers who came out to race with us! We not only had local racers that the HPI crew see at the area race tracks, but drivers came from Nevada, Maryland and even as far away as New Hampshire to participate in our race! Of course, we invited our HPI Challenge winners of our European Finals to the event as well, and racers Marc Pfenninger, Alex Fernihough and Peter Seargant came out with their parents to race. All of them did very well, with two taking home wins in their classes!

We also have to give a huge thanks to American Honda, who let us use their facility and worked with us to make sure everything was okay. They supplied all the AC power for the racers, arranged for entrance onto their facilities, parking for the racers, security and so much more! Bruce Garfield and Shawn Ireland worked closely to make this event happen, and Geoffrey Lockwood of American Honda also helped out quite a bit organizing things with Shawn and Frank! American Honda also provided several catalogs with $30 gift certificates for our raffle drawing, and those went pretty quick!

Shawn Ireland trying a Honda S2000 on for size

Hobby Shack provided us with their personnel, portable track pieces, organizational knowledge and experienced race directors to make sure everything ran smoothly and with almost no hitches! If you've never been a race director before, you can't understand how hard it is to make sure everything runs the way it's supposed to! Mike Greenshields of Hobby Shack was a huge help to the entire operation, and deserves much of the credit for making sure the "Blue Crew" ran the races well. He even arranged for food for the HPI racers, and that is enough right there to gain our everlasting respect! :)

Mark Richter of Yokohama Tire again provided two Yokohama pit jackets and a free set of Yokohama Performance tires for lucky racers! Luckily, the racer who won the tires has a couple of sports cars, and will probably be rolling on new Yokohama treads with his Mustang in the very near future! Mark also provided many Yokohama polo shirts and caps for the raffle giveaway!

Photographers and writers from all three American R/C magazines showed up, including (in alphabetical order): George Gonzales from R/C Car Action, John "Doog" Howell from R/C Car, and Gino You from Xtreme R/C. Lito Reyes, contributing editor for R/C Car, and George both raced in at least one class each, so between getting details of their fellow racers they had to work on their cars as well! Also present was Toshio Noguchi of RC World magazine, one of the two Japanese R/C magazines that puts out huge issues each month. He took tons of pictures and even interviewed several racers to put their pictures and cars in an upcoming issue! If you were at this race, you will be in all three American R/C magazines, and even be seen across the world in Japan! We would like to thank George from R/C Car Action and Doog from R/C Car for their excellent pictures that supplement the page!

Shawn Ireland, Kent Clausen, and especially Tatsuro Watanabe, HPI's owner, should get a big pat on the back for providing a great weekend and great prizes for the racers. Even though the three biggest classes got big HPI Challenge Trophy Cups, Tatsuro insisted on getting the other classes that had smaller turnouts (even Nitro RS4 Mini, which had only one main event) their own Trophy Cups for the A Main winners!

The HPI, Yokohama Tire and Hobby Shack Crew!
Mark Richter of Yokohama Tire, Troy Lyman, Mitsuhiro Ohe, Akira Kogawa, Jason Dearden, Thad Garner, Bill Martinez, Frank McKinney, Shawn Ireland, David Kouche, Mike Greenshields and Tatsuro Watanabe

Dan Moynahan arranged for Pepsi representative Chris Young to show up and hand out free Pepsi products next to the HPI Factory Team's tent, and brought out the Nitro Blast guys to race with us! Thanks to Jim Bonnardel and his crew, they were able to let racers know about their great Nitro fuel additive.

The Pepsi Crew!  

Finally, we again have to thank the nearly 250 racers and Hobby Shack employees who showed up to have a great time and put on a wonderful weekend of racing! Hobby Shack stayed late to pick up trash and put their track away, and this helps us make sure that we can do this again next year!

We can't forget the various R/C teams of racers that showed up. Making another appearance was TPR, or Team Pinoy Racing, as well as the Golden State Tire Shredders, a club out of Encino, CA, run by Rafael Thompson, "The hardest working R/Cer in the business!" Thanks for coming out to our race, guys!

The Golden State Tire Shredders group! 

We know we'll get tons of requests for HPI Challenge races to be held in other parts of the country, especially after the astounding success of this past weekend! All we can say for now is that by the end of the year we'll have firmer rules laid out for racers to go over for next year, and we'll hopefully have a schedule of races that will allow us to let more racers experience the fun of racing in a one-make series, sponsored by HPI Racing!