Competitors from all over California as well as Nevada and Washington came to Chico to compete at the Horizon Hobby North Vs. South Showdown with 60 total entries ready to do battle. This year’s event had a team format where captains for the North and South selected matchups for the main field of 32 trucks with the final spot being open for the winner of the 12 truck Shootout. Competitors from the North listed primary and secondary trucks upon registration where the primary trucks would be in the main field while the secondary trucks would have to battle for the final spot in the Shootout. There would also be a Losi LMT class as a special bonus as part of the Losi Motorsports Tour. The competitors would have a daunting scale version of the Charlotte Back To School Bash over/under track made entirely out of dirt at AMain Silver Dollar RC Raceway in Chico, CA.
With the brackets set, it was apparent early on the track would be a challenge as it required both trucks to make a lap in each lane with lots of technical obstacles. In the Shootout bracket, penalties and mishaps led to some surprise upsets and favorites being taken out with Jacob Smallwood taking the win with his “Dragon Slayer” over Zac Soares and his “Prospector” to earn the final spot in the main field.
With 15 entries from the South, all of the competitors who made the trip up were able to have all of their entries in the main field while drivers from the North had only one except for Smallwood after winning his way into the final spot. The first round of racing matched a racer from Team Nor Cal with Team So Cal which was led off by the captains racing with Michael Letcher getting the win after Jeremy Bunting got tangled up with a freestyle obstacle. The rest of the first round was much of the same as the Team So Cal racers would advance in the first 13 matchups with Smallwood being the only Nor Cal racer to advance both trucks into the second round of racing.
The second round saw an early matchup of two heavy hitters with Trever Adamo and Michael Iacono meeting with Adamo advancing his “Hang Time”. Jessica Dahl and Letcher both advanced to meet in the semi finals. On the other side of the bracket, Smallwood’s run would come to an end with his entries being eliminated in the second round setting up an all So Cal bracket for the rest of the way with the final four featuring “Bounty Hunter”, “Hang Time”, Iacono’s “Falken Tire Express”, and Kris Ribali’s “Hot Wheels”.
Despite the expanded field, it still would come down to Adamo and Iacono, however this time around, it would be Iacono taking the win sending his “Falken Tire Express” to the winner circle in an exciting final round battle.
After a solid showing in the main field, Alan Manriquez carried the momentum into a first round bye and marched through the Losi LMT class bracket to the finals knocking out “RC Propaganda” and Chris Olson and “PNW RC Madness”.
On the other side of the bracket, Haidyen Steinert and his new “Game Over” LMT took advantage of some rollovers and penalties to make it to the final round after eliminating Kirk Noakes and “Rebel Racer”. In the race for third place, Olson would prevail over Noakes to take a souvenir back to Washington. In the LMT class finals, Manriquez proved his truck was dialed in and took home the class trophy and tacked on an additional 5 points to the overall team score that all but sealed the overall win for Team So Cal.
Once racing was completed, a special “Wall of Lexan” stunt was performed by Connor Anapol who did not compete but came to judge the freestyle competition and kicked things off blasting through a stack of cars and doing a mini-freestyle on the track. After the first few trucks suffered early rolls and breakage, Travis Letcher came out 6th with his “Maniac” and set the bar for the remaining 39 competitors filling the clock without rolling over and getting a 23.
Many valiant efforts were made with “Turd Wrassler” scoring 17, “Game Over” scoring 18, and 19’s for “Old Skool” and “Fat Cat Customz”, however the treacherous track continued to eat up trucks and Letcher remained in the lead.
After watching most of the field fail to top Letcher’s run and wanting to prevent a clean sweep, Bunting went out with a vengeance with “Sinistar” putting down arguably the best run of his career hitting everything on the track, getting big air and a wild corkscrew backflip made possible by broken spider gears all while filling the clock without a rollover. The judges rewarded the run a 25 with 13 heavy hitters still to go.
After early ends to Iacono and David Heimbigner’s first runs, Adamo attacked the track with “Titan” with a high flying run that would have matched Bunting’s high mark, however a rollover deduction dropped the score to 22. Wes Harriger would follow the run with the move of the night halfway through the run with the truck almost going over and bouncing back and for across the track for 7 full seconds and an incredible save that you’ll definitely want to see the video of. Unfortunately, the run ended early but did receive the only 9 of the night from the tricks/air judge and overall score of 20.
Last year’s freestyle champion Zach Mackenzie had another barn burner run going early before breakage would limit his run, however he was still able to fill the clock and get a respectable score of 20. Breakage would continue as Michael Letcher’s “Bounty Hunter” would break a rear axle on a reverse backflip attempt and Zac Soares would fill barely 20 seconds with just 3 trucks remaining. Bunting started sweating bullets as Iacono’s “Falken Tire Express” filled the clock with a high flying run scoring a 23 and Heimbigner was on a roll early in his run with saves and huge air before it ended with 18 seconds remaining on the clock scoring a 22.
Adamo would give “Hang Time” all it could handle but once again a rollover deduction would be the difference as he filled the clock and lived up to the name, but would fall short with a 21 giving Bunting the freestyle win.
The freestyle competition may have been full of carnage, but nothing would compare to the chaos of the special encore planned featuring the Losi LMT class, or at least, the ones that were still running. Every 15 seconds, or until the previous truck rolled, another truck would be sent onto the track until there were a dozen trucks attacking the track from all angles. In a testament to the build quality of the trucks, many were able to stay on 4 wheels (or in some cases 3) and keep going until the encore was finally called off after over 4 minutes of madness.
The night was capped off with the raffle where we gave away JConcepts bodies and other swag, Treal RC LMT parts and a ramp courtesy of Chris Olson at PNW RC Madness, and the grand prize: a brand new Losi LMT Roller.
Thanks goes out to everyone who made it out to this great event and those who helped make it our biggest one yet. Special thanks to Kevin Jelich for letting us use the track and assisting in the build during the RC Gold Cup at AMain Silver Dollar RC Raceway, Zac Soares, Zack Mackenzie, Michael Iacono, David Heimbigner, Taylor Underhill (Wrench Head RC), Wes Harriger, and Trever Adamo for assisting in the track construction, Jacob Smallwood and Insano Industries for helping with the video coverage and creating the bracket banner, Jaime Cabrera for capturing event photos (full photo gallery here) and our great event sponsors: Horizon Hobby, JConcepts, Black Market RC, AMain Hobbies, Blu Chrush Mega Truck, and to MX Trophies for the amazing job on the awards this year.
The focus now shifts to the final event of the 2021 Points Series at the Rescue Community Center RC Track for the Championship on October 16th! Stay tuned for a contenders preview and other event information in the coming weeks. Make sure to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @norcalrcmt and subscribe on YouTube for event coverage!
