Everyone’s got a hobby. Truth be told, if we didn’t have them, we probably wouldn’t need jobs. Even Volkswagen Andretti Rallycross driver needs some time away from his Beetle GRC office, and for him, RC cars are the escape. In the past few months, Speed and friend TJ Bell have established Speed RC, Scott’s very own hobby shop and RC track in Mooresville, North Carolina.
Surprisingly enough, theres a lot more to running the track than you’d think, as Scott describes the clay surface as a “moving target” when it comes to prep work and coordinating races with the busy world of professional motorsport- both of which seem like great problems to have.
Read the full story in his own words below.
I’ve had my hands pretty full away from the track this year in establishing Speed RC, my own radio-controlled car track and hobby shop in Mooresville, NC. My buddy TJ Bell and I had this idea for probably the last eight months, and I probably started working on it and putting the numbers in around Christmastime. We were ready to go around January, but the problem became finding a building that would work. We decided on a place where we would be able to build what we want, but at the very last minute we found a building we could lease for a few years, where we could see what size track I wanted, what size hobby shop I wanted.
We just moved into there two months ago, and since then we’ve spent every single day building pit tables, building the track, and building the hobby shop out. And we’ve just been up and running now for a month. It’s been a relatively quick process, but certainly a lot of long hours!
The track is 80 feet long by 50 feet wide and the hobby shop is 900 square feet. The building is 12,000 square feet. For the pit tables, I have 84 four-foot by two-foot stalls for everybody that have electrical outlets (because obviously charging is relatively important!). Our timing and scoring system is state-of-the-art. So it’s nice—we did it right. I think we easily have the best indoor RC track on the east coast, and it’s just getting better every week.
We had a soft opening that we didn’t really announce, just to see what kind of bugs we would have. But we ended up having 107 people show up, which wasn’t such a soft opening! Since then, we’ve raced three nights a week: Wednesday nights, Friday nights, and Sundays. Wednesday night is for the NASCAR crowd—Mooresville being the center of all things NASCAR, everyone is off on Thursday for travel, so Wednesday night works really well for those guys. Friday night works well for everyone else, but Sunday is our bigger day, probably.
Our first real race will be July 19— we’ll have a purse of $1000 up for grabs, which I’m super excited about. Doing the media for it, making banners, and just being involved in it from that side has given me a much better perspective on not only life, but motor racing from this side. I know what it takes to put on an event. And I know a lot more about dirt, I promise you that! I feel like I’m a bit of an expert on clay now.
What I’ve learned is that we have to specifically water it to get it perfect for an RC car. I understand a bit more of the troubles that the guys have in putting on a GRC race to get the dirt right for our cars. They’re covering so much more space, and it’s very difficult! Moisture is a very big part of clay, and we finally after a few weeks found a good rhythm of what the track wants. It’s a living and breathing organism—depending upon how much humidity I have in the building, how hot it is, the watering schedule is a constantly moving target. It’s a ton of work and there’s a ton of feel involved.
We’ve had a couple of my buddies show up—Trevor Bayne, Justin Allgaier, Josh Wise. The Busch brothers haven’t shown up yet, but I used to race RC cars with Kurt four or five years ago and I know he’ll show up when he has time. It’s a pretty big crowd, all the guys who work on the teams come over at lunch practice for an hour. So it’s a really good vibe with lots of racers there.
We run everything in off-road RC racing, which is globally the biggest form of RC racing. There are all sorts of niches, but dirt off-road is far and away the biggest. It’s very rallycross-like. There are six or seven classes, and the biggest class is two-wheel mod buggy. That’s where we have at least one guy that’s a paid, professional RC racer who comes out and races at our place. It’s cool to see that guy out there running because the skill level is so high and it’s so fun to watch.
Hopefully it’s a successful business long-term. We’ve been very lucky already, because RC racing is a very niche sport. With my connections in motor racing, it’s been really good so far and we’re off to a good start. What will kind of determine how successful we are is the website and the internet sales wing of the business. The track is what it is, and the goal there is just to be able to cover our overhead. If it turns out to make us some money, sweet, but the first and foremost goal is to have a good place to run RC cars and have something to spend my time on.
And yes, we’re currently talking with some folks about doing a GRC Beetle. It’s not an impossible dream, but a really cool goal would be to have my car out there! I know Ken’s already got one, and if we were able to get some of our Beetle, that would be perfect…
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