HPI Racing - Cool Stuff from the HPI Page

Cool Stuff about HPI!

Check out more celebrities who run HPI cars!

2001

Touring Cars, Australian-style!

"V8 Supercar" is the premeire touring car racing category across the continent of Australia, and HPI is proud to be one of the sponsors for one of the top teams in the Shell Championship! Our Australian distributor Bolt-On Hobbies organized a sponsorship deal with one of the premiere V8 Supercar teams in Australia. Brad Jones is the director and driver of the OzEmail Racing Team Ford Falcon, and during a recent 6-hour endurance race finished 2nd, just 2.3 seconds behind first place!

For the full details on the team, see the OzEmail Racing Team official website and for information on the V8 Supercar racing series, see V8Supercar.com.au.

Note: The use of the above pictures on the HPI Racing website has been expressly approved by the OzEmail Racing Team and the photographer who took these pictures. Please respect their copyrights if you intend to use these pictures.

See our coverage of the 2001 National Model and Hobby Show! Our award-winning booth and staff was on hand to answer questions from customers, see what was new and hang out with industry professionals!

HPI Team Van!

HPI recently finished work on the HPI Team Van, a slick Honda Odyssey van! The first thing we did was lower it with Eibach springs and a 19" wheel and tire set courtesy of Axis and Yokohama Tire. Next, the folks at Wings West fitted their brand new Odyssey body kit to the van, then vinyl graphics from Modern Image were applied in a subdued yet striking design. The next thing to add is a set of PIAA driving lights. Check out these hot views of the HPI Team Van!

We would like to thank the following companies for helping us drive in style:

Axis Wheels
Axis Se7en 19 x 8 size, +45 offset with 5 x 114.3 bolt pattern

Eibach Springs
Custom springs, call to let them know you want springs for your Odyssey!

Modern Image
Custom vinyl cutting and application, located in Orange County, CA

PIAA lights
1900X Platinum Series driving lights with H4 Super White Platinum Series headlight bulbs

Wings West
#890499 Odyssey 4 pc kit, W Type polyurethane with #591498-L Commando wing

Yokohama Tire
255/40ZR19 AVS Sport tires

2001 Shizuoka Hobby Show!

The 2001 Shizuoka Hobby Show is the biggest hobby show in Asia, and as usual HPI Racing was there! Check out the latest preproduction pictures of the Micro RS4, pictures of upcoming bodies and of course see the huge HPI booth and demonstration area! See it all here!

NHRA Winston Drag Racer Dean Skuza!

Dean Skuza talking with ESPN reporters

We recently found out that NHRA Winston Drag Racing driver Dean Skuza and his dad (and crew chief) Don Skuza are big fans of HPI cars and trucks. They got hooked on our cars a while back, and got the chance to visit HPI for a factory tour when they were in California for the NHRA Winternationals event.

HPI decals on rear quarter panel of Dean's funny car

Dean has been doing well so far this year with his MOPAR sponsored funny car, he's due to break through for a win soon, he recently made the finals so he's in the hunt. Some of you may have seen Dean's car with HPI stickers on the rear fender on TV. We gave him some stickers while he was here, and to our surprise they were on his funny car the next day!

His MOPAR pit crew is also into R/C, they travel around the country and find the local hobby shops to support their R/C cars. On their trip to California they visited Pegasus Hobbies to stock up on parts. These guys can dial in a funny car to do 300+ mph in 4 seconds, so extremely modified R/C cars with high power engines, tuned pipes and headers are right up their alley.

Cameron Evans and Dean's father, his crew chief

Plus, Dean is co-host of the TNN TV show "Popular Hot Rodding TV" with Cameron Evans. Both of those guys are nuts about R/C and have already snuck HPI cars into one of the episodes. Look for another appearance in the near future, and maybe a feature segment on R/C if they can fit it into the schedule.

Thanks for visiting HPI Dean and Don! Good luck on your racing season, we're pulling for you to come through with some victories.

Dean Skuza's Website
Mopar Parts
Popular Hot Rodding Television
NHRA Championship Drag Racing

Dale Earnhardt Jr!
In Southern California for the NAPA Auto Parts 500 race at California Motor Speedway, NASCAR Winston Cup Series race car driver Dale Earnhardt Jr took time from his busy schedule to stop by the HPI USA headquarters for a tour of our facility.

Click here to check out his visit, and see where HPI personnel got to demonstrate our stock cars!

HPI racers take part in stock racing fun!
Slixx decals helped us make authentic stock car racing paint jobs with their excellent decals, then we have fun scraping them off of each other's bodies in our first-ever "home-grown" stock car oval series! What do you get when you get similar RTR Nitro RS4 cars with stock car bodies? Read all about it here!

HPI Nitro Racer 2 in Road & Track magazine!
See the Nitro Racer 2 in Road & Track magazine's April 2001 issue! Every year, Road & Track chooses a unique automobile to profile in a test drive article. In the past, you may have seen fire engines and the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, but this year it was the HPI Nitro RS4 Racer 2!

The article starts with a description of the car in full-size car terms, such as horsepower per liter, top speed, acceleration, braking power, engine RPM and more. After surprising the full-size car enthusiast with numbers like 476 hp/liter (even the most powerful street cars in the world do "just" 104 hp/liter) and 37,000 RPM (street cars can do 8,000 RPM at most), the article goes into the details of the actual R/C car and explains how the different systems of the car work together to make the Nitro Racer 2 a 1/10 scale racing machine.

Find the April 2001 issue of Road & Track magazine at newsstands and bookstores, you won't be disappointed!

HPI Nitro cars on US TV!
For all of you that want to see R/C cars featured on television, check this out!

HPI RTR Nitro RS4 cars were shown in an episode of Popular Hot Rodding Television the weekend of January 13-14, 2001 on the TNN network! Popular Hot Rodding Television is a new half-hour show about hot rods and the performance car lifestyle that uses a new format of 3-D animations combined with features on location and a set to explain the way things like engines, transmissions, hop-ups and more work.

The premiere episode of the show's first regular season, Episode 219801 (there's a link on the front page of the site) will showed hosts Cameron Evans and Dean Skuza driving and talking about the RTR Nitro RS4 cars in the garage bay of the set. The cars were also shown in the background in several shots during the filming of the show.

Be sure to check the Popular Hot Rodding Television site for airtimes!

HPI Racing and the kits used are also referenced on the Products Seen on the Set section of the Popular Hot Rodding Television site!

Juan Pablo Montoya takes a spin with his Nitro Racer 2!

We're proud to count CART Champion and current Compaq BMW/Williams Formula One race car driver Juam Pablo Montoya as a customer! A-Main Raceway in Oregon was the site of his first drive of an HPI car. See all the pictures and read the details here! (Courtesy of NitroRC.com)

2000

HPI Racing at the 2000 Chicago Hobby Show

The Chicago Hobby Show

See what HPI Racing debuted at the 1999 RCHTA National Model and Hobby Show! Plus, you can visit the booth and read about all the HPI personnel that were on hand to help out customers, dealers and distributors.

HPI Challenge 1999

HPI Challenge UK

HPI Challenge at the Dodge presents Motor Trend Thunder Historic Road Races

HPI Challenge at Hobby Center Raceway in Houston, Texas

HPI Challenge World Finals at Honda North America HQ
(as seen in R/C Car Action and R/C Car!)

Do you want to see R/C TV?

Recently, word has spread around the R/C internet community that a new show dedicated to the radio control hobby is on its way. This coming August, Ambassador productions is scheduled to have the first broadcasting of its' "R/C TV" show on Public Broadcasting Stations around the country. This is an excellent way to get people interested in R/C, especially if they've dropped by a parking lot race and wondered, "Hey, how do I get involved with this?!"

Scheduled topics include an introduction to R/C, famous racer interviews, racing tips, how-to's, and product reviews. This is sure to get the attention of people who are interested in the R/C hobby, but have never checked it out further.

Your local PBS station will have the rights to show "R/C TV" whenever they like, but racers and hobbyists like yourself have to get involved and call, write or email your local PBS station to show it. PBS stations keep track of the input they receive on a given program, so it's worth it to spend a few minutes composing an email or making a call to get "R/C TV" on the air, right?

Visit http://www.pbs.org/stations to get contact information for your local PBS station, and go to http://www.rctv1.com to check out the web site of the people making the show!

Available for your viewing pleasure is our own tour of the 1998 National Model and Hobby Show. We took our camera to many of the booths around the show, both R/C and non-R/C, and we're now able to show you most of the interesting things from the show. Check it out!

Check out more celebrities who run HPI cars!