Revelation Raceway
Ontario, Ca.
September, 2007

Hot Bodies Arrive and Drive – Round #4 of the Jimmy Babcock JBRL Nitro Series

Photos/text: rodney wills

Stop #6 on the eight event JBRL Nitro Series brought a sigh of relief as the weather turned out perfect and was more centrally located in the heartland of off-road racing. AND this event was right in our backyard! Revelation Raceway located in Ontario, California has undergone a major makeover with the addition of a water sprinkler system that aided in reduction of downtime. Much needed as 240 competitors had signed up making this the largest competitor attendance of the JBRL Series!

While this is round four for the Hot Bodies Arrive and Drive Series with only two more stops for the season, a funny thing was noticed over the weekend. It all started at the first of the season when we asked Hot Bodies graphic designer, Thunder Wessels to paint us some bodies for the event. We made a special request for a pink color themed to be included in the ten bodies he would paint. Those original bodies ran for two rounds and then Thunder painted us another ten bodies for two more rounds, again requesting another pink color theme to be included.

Three of the four rounds have been won by the pink colored body. When you think about how the switching system works, one wonders just how that pink body has gone through three drivers and nine different cars to achieve such a feat. What is with this pink? What makes it the wining body? Is it the calming effect of pink needed to drive the Hot Bodies Lightning Sports 2’s? We will look into this matter further as we will ask Thunder for yet another set of bodies and YES, including the pink color theme. With that, I think we will have to have a lottery drawing at the finals to see which of the ten drivers will draw the lucky color!

Round #4 Hot Bodies Arrive and Drive WINNERS:
1st PLACE[center]: Brian Sullivan, 2nd PLACE[left]: Anthony Howarth, 3rd PLACE[right]: Kyle Johnson.

Round #5 October 21st Hemet Race Park

146 S. Santa Fe Ave.
Hemet, CA 92544
(951) 491-1479

Round #6 – November 18th Hot Rod Hobbies

25845 San Fernando Rd. #21
Saugus, CA 91350
(661) 255-2404

www.hotrodhobbies.com

The Hot Bodies / HPI Racing team has basically made racing dreams come true for ten lucky and willing drivers that are participating in the JBRL Nitro Championship Series. It’s a real simple system as you register with JBRL Nitro Series director, Jimmy Babcock and show up. Sign in, and the Hot Bodies / HPI Racing crew hand out the radio’s before each of the heats, and they take care of the rest! Drivers do the driving and that is it! As the drivers make way up the drivers stand, the support staff do the rest as they take the cars to the pit wall, start them and make sure the drivers are ready and release them. The driver has the time and luxury to simply concentrate on driving. All with good reason too as two of these drivers will gain the chance at a one year sponsorship with Hot Bodies! But the final winner is not decided by chance, as they will compete in the final round of the JBRL Nitro Championship Series to decide the overall winner and position on the team.

Why all this effort? It’s real simple. This is how you find driving talent! Plain and simple, good driver can drive anything fast and not simply camouflaged their skills with gobs of horsepower. And while horsepower can get you out of trouble, it’s also part of the trouble in going fast as most are only recovering from full throttle punches commonly called “point and shoot.” These driving tactics are always overshadowed by the top level drivers that have figured out how to be smooth while being aggressive and or knowing when to be either based on track conditions.

While spec classes of the past have failed, we have already seen the success in this Hot Bodies Arrive and Drive Series when all the variable of performance are controlled. The drivers can only show off and showcase one aspect… DRIVING TALENT!