The neon yellow race car whipped around the corner, gunning it in a bid to lose the dragster on its tail.
Mistiming a turn, it ricocheted off a dirt mound and landed on its back, swaying side to side, like an overturned beetle.
Just then, a marshal scrambled onto the track, flipped the car over and relaunched it through his legs. But such are the benefits of servicing cars the size of toasters.
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Morning heats were underway at the 26th annual Dirt Nitro Challenge in Perris, where more than 200 hobbyists gathered to race their remote-controlled vehicles in friendly competition.
For a couple dozen elite RC racers, the stakes were higher. These drivers are professionals who, like NASCAR drivers, travel the country from race to race, pit crews in tow and sponsors footing the bill.
But there the echoes of NASCAR end. While the amateurs pushed 40 mph on the 1/8 scale model racetrack, that Sunday morning in March, the pros waited in the pits, supergluing new treads on their tires.
A pro racer at 13
Ryan Cavalieri, a top-25 globally ranked RC driver, is a 38-year-old Huntington Beach native who grew up going to the since-shuttered SoCal RC Raceway with his father, now his pit crew chief. By 13, he was sponsored by a major racing company, and by 18, he nabbed his first national title.
Since then, he’s supported himself, his wife and two daughters through RC racing. Granted, it’s not Dale Earnhardt Jr.’s salary — the top 1% of RC racers typically max out around $150K a year — but it’s enough that he doesn’t have to work another job.
“I didn’t ever think of it as something I would still do now,” Cavalieri said.
An aerial view of the race track during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge. Surrounding the track are tents and trailers housing the different RC racing teams.
Drivers stand on a platform overlooking the race track as they pilot their gas-powered and electric cars, using devices mounted with a wheel for steering and a trigger for speed. On straightaways, the pros can hit 60-plus miles per hour.
Races run from a few minutes for lower heats to nearly an hour at the highest competitive tier. Whoever completes the most laps in a given period of time wins.
The dirt track is flat in parts but also has motocross-style whoops (a series of short hills) and rhythm sections (jumps of varying sizes and spacing) designed to shake up the race. Where more conservative racers opt for single or double jumps over the mounds, the most seasoned go for triples.
Cavalieri had qualified the day before for what’s called the B-Main final — a class below where he usually competes. To bump up, he said, he had to finish second or higher in the afternoon race.
“Podium would be nice,” Cavalieri said as he scrubbed dirt off his tires. On the fold-up table before him, his nitrogen gas-powered buggy was suspended in auto-shop fashion. Next to it, a paper coffee cup held scrap parts.
To Cavalieri’s right, Joseph Quagraine, a Finnish racer and designer for Mayako, a maker of RC vehicles, crafted a snarky post for Instagram. He was ragging on a former teammate who blamed a morning pileup on a Mayako racer.
The Finn also was offering Cavalieri moral support. He bet $100 on Cavalieri getting bumped to the Nitro Buggy A-Main, plus $500 on him beating the favorite, Ryan Maifield. A nearby driver chuckled at the parlay.
“What?” Cavalieri teased, “You don’t believe in me?” He then readjusted his Prada sunglasses.
A husband-and-wife team
Adam Drake was 12 years old when he picked up an RC magazine in a middle school aide’s office. After that, he began regularly commuting from his family’s home in South Carolina to the nearest RC track in Savannah, Ga.
At 21, he moved to California, widely known at the time as “the Mecca of RC,” Drake said.
Adam Drake cleans the body of his RC car during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
In the late 1990s, a number of RC manufacturers — Traxxas, Team Losi, Team Associated — expanded their operations in Southern California to address growing demand for “ready-to-run” RC cars, said Theo Captanis, owner of Pacific Coast Hobbies in Lomita. These preassembled vehicles were the easiest way for the general public to get involved in the RC hobby.
At the same time, the number of sponsored racers surged, and Drake competed in a pool of pros who went on to become legends in the sport.
But even at his peak, the Midwesterner knew he needed to be more valuable to RC companies than as a driver. So he delved into the engineering side of the industry, and he’s worked double-duty ever since — going on to co-found The Drake Racing engine service with his wife and fellow racer Ronda Drake in 2018.
Though Adam would race that afternoon, Ronda skipped competing in the Dirt Nitro Challenge this year because the course leaned a bit beginner-friendly for her taste. She’s been racing since she was 10 years old, competing against grown men who complained about a girl always getting in their way.
“I even had one guy tell me I should be at home washing dishes,” Ronda said.
Over the years, she learned to service her own cars and spent every minute she could on the racetrack. In high school, she switched to homeschooling to free up more time to practice.
Ronda wanted to be excellent, not to make a statement or become a feminist icon, she said, but because she loved to race. And she liked to win.
Adam Drake, left, and his wife, Ronda, pose for a portrait during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
Back in the pit room, Ronda was reminiscing about the time she bumped her way up five classes to an A-Main when a father-son duo came in for car repair. Ronda sprang up from her seat to help, Adam following closely behind.
The couple planned to reopen a long-dormant RC raceway near their home in Beaumont in Riverside County. There, they would host affordable races aimed at getting new people in the door, and helping amateurs to elevate their skills.
“Right now, there’s so many big races,” Adam said. “So many of the tracks and organizers, they just want to have these huge events, because that’s where the money is. For us, we want to have fun, enjoyable events, where it’s more than just a race.”
Not ‘just a toy car’
In the dirt lot behind the pit rooms, Ryan Maifield was stationed at the company tent for Tekno, an RC manufacturer, his shaggy beard and worn-in sneakers belying his global RC stardom.
Coming into the Dirt Nitro Challenge, the Arizona-born Maifield was neck-and-neck with frequent competitor Dakota Phend for the top U.S. driver slot. At 38, Maifield has raced for longer than Phend, 28, has been alive.
While racers and their crews flitted about the Tekno tent, Maifield worked quietly from a half-obscured corner, tweaking his car after a trial run. His tools sprawled across the table and onto the floor, as though rummaged through by a band of wood rats.
To the untrained eye, Maifield’s candy cane-colored buggy is “just a toy car,” he said, but to a pro racer it’s a way to make a living, pieced together from race winnings and sponsorships.
Sponsors want their racers at their best, he added, “so you don’t have time to work another job.”
Squealing engines
Back at the track, a line of spectators hollered, “Cavy!” as Cavalieri took the lead in his afternoon race.
Their gruff cheers mismatched the high-pitched hum of the buggies. If Indy cars could suck helium from a balloon, this is what they’d sound like.
In the first half of the race, Cavalieri battled to stay ahead of Walker Spinrad, a recent Tekno signee whose driving grew wilder as his veteran competitor hit his stride. Behind the leaders, cars collided in pileups that would have made headlines at Daytona.
1. Joseph Quagraine waits for a signal from his driver, Ryan Cavalieri to put their RC car down during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge. 2. Drivers look on as they race their RC cars during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge. Ryan Cavalieri, fourth from the right, is second in the race.
Twice, Cavalieri pitted to refuel, his father rapidly squeezing gas from a fuel bottle that just as easily could have held drinking water. Each stop lasted mere seconds, then the racer was off again.
In the end, he took second place.
Although the runner-up finish was all Cavalieri needed to advance, he hadn’t even reached the pits by the time he started recounting his mistakes.
In the pits, Quagraine approached Cavalieri. “Should I advise on certain lines?” Quagraine ventured, his voice uncharacteristically even.
Cavalieri snipped rubber from a fresh set of tires, the RC-equivalent of adjusting tire pressure on a race car.
1. The cover of Adam Drake’s RC car during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge. 2. Ryan Maifield puts super glue on tires while making adjustments to his RC car between races during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
After running through his problem areas with Quagraine, the duo wordlessly passed parts back and forth, as though programmed in sync. A little after 5 p.m., Cavalieri popped open the Panda Express container that had sat untouched since lunch.
“Nothing to lose,” the racer thought out loud as the evening final neared. And punctuating his comment with an F-bomb, he noted he was “right — last.”
A self-proclaimed RC ‘nerd’
From the outside, the Team Associated trailer looked like a glorified tin can, but inside it was furnished with crisp white shelving and a treasure trove of motor parts.
Spencer Rivkin ducked his head as he stepped inside and pulled a chassis off a rack. An hour or so ago, he finished last in the Electric Truck A-Main race, but he wore no dejection on his face.
Spencer Rivkin poses for a portrait with his RC car during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
Rivkin, a self-proclaimed RC “nerd,” received his first RC car on his 9th birthday. His parents split up around that time, he said, and racing kept him out of trouble.
By age 13, he was racing competitively, and by 15, he had a slew of sponsors including industry big names like Team Associated and JConcepts. Two years ago, at age 24, he bought his first home in Arizona.
“Doing this saved my life,” he said. “I just wish more people knew about it.”
An RC car completes a jump on the track during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
While a warm pink still lingered above the horizon, the floodlights switched on, illuminating patches of freshly watered dirt. (Tracks are watered intermittently to provide RC cars more grip, and to improve visibility for racers and spectators.)
Around the track, cigarette smoke mingled with the tang of burnt rubber so that it was hard to distinguish the two.
By the time the sun fully set, more than 12 hours after the first race, the day’s dry heat was replaced by desert chill. Frogs croaked from nearby waterholes, joining the chorus of spectators who hollered as the announcer introduced their favorite racers — along with their laundry lists of sponsors.
As their names were called, some racers gave a polite wave to the crowd, while others muttered into the headsets they use to talk to their pit crews.
Meanwhile, the crowd sent the wave four times around the track. Amid all the fanfare, it was easy to forget these were toy cars.
The final race
The championship race finally arrived and the drivers’ pit crew chiefs lined up, buggies in hand, by qualifying position, with Phend leading the pack and Cavalieri bringing up the rear.
Pit crew members launch their team’s RC cars at the start of a race during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
“Those are our gladiators who are going to do battle here,” announcer Scotty Ernst bellowed into the microphone.
Then they were off. As the cars zoomed around the track, spectators squinted to decipher whose ride was whose. Some pulled up the live stream of the race on their phones to double-check.
Early into the 45-minute event, most drivers maintained their qualifying positions, with Phend and Maifield shuffling between the first and second slots. Rivkin kept close behind, and on one turn bumped a competing buggy back into an upright position after a clash.
“Very good sportsmanship there for Rivkin,” Ernst said.
Rivkin later said he didn’t remember the run-in.
Fans react as they watch RC cars race down the track during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
More buggies ended up on their sides or backs, the result of collisions or bad landings in the whoops section. Marshals dashed on the track to the rescue. One had to perform a double leap and pirouette to avoid the leaders.
At one point, Phend’s buggy did a front-flip over a pipe serving as a racetrack barrier. Across the track, another car landed atop a rock, igniting a barely visible spark.
It was still anyone’s game. That is, until race leader Mason Fuller pitted at the last minute, giving Maifield several seconds over the pack. Quagraine was glad to have backed out of his earlier bet on Cavalieri, who finished well in back.
An RC car flips over after failing a turn on the track during the annual Dirt Nitro Challenge.
As Maifield flew through the finish line, the cheers were surprisingly tame, so it wasn’t clear the race had ended at all. The 45-minute affair and night’s easy atmosphere seemed to have lulled a handful to sleep.
But when the rest of the lot rolled in, and a trio of podium girls in snug red dresses and four-inch heels arrived for the awards ceremony, the buzz was back.
As race host Joey Christensen read off the names of the top three finishers — Maifield, Fuller and Phend — the crowd members craned their necks, knowing what was coming. On cue, the three racers lunged for their congratulatory champagne, shook the bottles and doused each other in bubbly.