The weekend was July 26-27th, 2014. The venue, CRC Raceway in Rome, NY. Team RCSoup was in (mostly) full attendance (even Matt came up from FLORIDA!). This was the 3rd annual Intergalactic Electric Championships, an event CRC came up with to feature only electric rides (no nitro). They’ve had a steady increase in car count every year. This time I think they drew a very respectable 161 entries with folks coming from all over for the festivities.

Below is the flyer for the event. As you will notice, all major classes of off-road racing were offered.

If you’ve followed any of our racing coverage over the years, this track will probably look familiar. CRC is what we consider our home track. It’s the closest to our core members in the NY region and one of the best establishments in the Northeast. If you ever have the chance to make it to a CRC outdoor event, by all means come check it out.

Upon arrival Saturday morning, the track was in great shape. The weather was pretty clear and racing was on!

The drivers stand.

The Soup crew setup camp on the exit side of the stand, where we normally have been for bigger events. This is where we handed out our special Intergalactic awards we’ve done since this race’s inception.

Banners were out in full force. We had some pit mats printed this year to go with our special racing awards. Last year we did shirts but we figured this way we wouldn’t have to manage multiple sizes and I think everyone loved them.

Someone caught me wrenching on camera! A rare shot indeed haha!

RCSoup co-founders Matt & myself waiting for the racing to start.

The Brothers Decker are also a big part of RCSoup, and some of our influential members.

Let’s not forget the “Geonator” George Silliman. He opted to pit near the outhouse for some reason, rather than join our merry crew for the weekend. Perhaps it had to do with him taking advantage of the the free camping offered at CRC.

Below are some early shots as folks were still rolling in, but it gives you a general idea of the facility.

During the opening notes of the drivers meeting, Frank Calandra announced the Grand Marshall for the event was in attendance. Taking a break from the set of the newest Star Wars installment, R2-D2 came to represent the forces of a galaxy far far away at the Intergalactic Electric Championships (not really, this wasn’t really a movie prop, but a full working and moving bot none-the-less… Super Dialed).

Then there was the rest of the drivers meeting.. which was less exciting.. talking about rules and such. I guess that’s important. A welcome addition to this event was the use of safety vests for marshalls. This was the first I’d seen them used here, and I believe they are a smart idea with how dangerous a class like E-Buggy can potentially be for mashalls.

We caught the Pettinelli crew hanging out in our booth.

Frank Calandra is sniping a shot of our cameraman, Kris Button.

Onto our special RC Soup awards that we do every year for this event. Basically this started with the first IGEC race, and we’re still doing it. We independently run and judge our own competition (the track has nothing to do with it). Below are some of the winners from this year. Each received a super awesome plaque and a Limited Edition RCSoup pit mat.

Dave Ellen took the LOL award for making us Soup guys laugh all weekend. Everything from entering our “Guess the Soup” contest with a entry of “Whoopass” to trying to dry out the track with a fan after a torrential downpour (read more about that later).

Adrian Waasdorp took home the Luck of the Draw award. This is simple as that.. he got lucky. We used Random.org and input the total # of race entries, walked over to the heat sheet, and found the corresponding name. Luck of the draw.

A new award for this year, “Pig Style” was thought up for awarding the person with the messiest pit area. Often times this is a sign of someone struggling. When we walked through the pits, Joe Pettinelli was the clear winner. He had everything tore apart all over his bench. He had a motor with a stripped endbell screw, a car with the whole front end tore apart, and he even had a radio split in half trying to fix something internally! Sorry Joe, but hopefully the pit mat will help you keep a neater area next time.

Don Jones is a local soup savant. He guessed our Mystery Soup for the weekend (which was Bean and Bacon soup). We had a ton of guesses, but he was the first to nail the correct answer.

Now, this one we had a hard time with.. It’s been tradition to not give awards to Soup Insiders or Team members. However, nobody came even close to the aerial show that Jim Decker put on to win the Space Man award. This is given to the biggest air caught by a car. Over the big triple Jim was battling with Matt through the air. Jim’s car caught Matt’s in a manner where the tires touched and shot Jim’s E-Buggy into lunar orbit. We awarded it to Jim as there was no way anyone else would top that over the weekend. Frank Sr. who was announcing the race even called it out, saying that the car probably appeared on the local radar. Jim graciously gave away his pit mat, since he knew it wasn’t quite fair to win and didn’t want to take a prize from someone else.

Side-Tracked was an award we came up with for someone who was particularly distracted on the track. Be it a cell phone ringing or maybe just left the racing surface in a spectacular fashion. Chris Bush took the title when we caught sight of his truck flying off into the ding weeds. We’ve all done it… It happens to the best of us. Most don’t get an award for it though.

We forgot to get this young man’s name in the chaos of the rain storm, but he took home the Young Gun award for being the youngest racer participating in the event. He’s only 8 years old. New blood is what we need in this hobby, so we love giving out awards like these.

Local hotshoe Nate Reyes grabbed the Soup Lover award. Over the years we’ve given away and sold a number of shirts, and we always see them out at the track now and again. This award was given at random to someone we saw wearing one of our shirts with pride. Thanks for representing Nate!

Mr. Scott Brooks won the Run Forrest Run award, for busting ass while marshalling. Brooks is always one of the first responders on the scene when you flip your car. He risks life and limb trying to be the absolute fastest marshall out there. Sometimes being so fast, you fall on your ass… but such is the risk of being a car-flipping-kamikaze. Good lookin’ out bro!

We hate to see someone down on their luck, which is why we developed the Hard Luck award. Mr. Anthony Ferrari unfortunately for his racing career has a horrible weekend. He didn’t finish a single qualifier.

Lastly we have the I Got Probed award. This was given to someone who had some rough luck on the track, and perhaps took a big hit in the rear from a fellow racer. We tried to keep an eye out for this type of racing thru the weekend, but only really caught it in one of the final races. John “The Whopper” Firsching took a good hit that blasted him off his race line during the main according to a couple witnesses.

We had a pit mat left over, and we graciously gave it to CRC founder and race host Frank Calandra for always showing us a good time at the track. He busted ass all weekend making sure the race went on, even thru the rain delay and had to make a tough call on cancelling the 4th qualifier so we could get the mains in.

The race coverage continues! Click through the page numbers to read more!