Vista Has Inside Track to Popular Hobby

Sean Maybell, 15, works feverishly to replace the motor on his battered little dune buggy, a nifty offering left beneath the Christmas tree.

“You do every little thing you can just to get an edge on your competition, even just to get an extra mile an hour,” Maybell explains as he doggedly tightens wires in the pit area, steeling himself for tomorrow’s race.

“This is like an addiction,” he confides, his eyes never straying from his partially disassembled motorized treasure, which represents many months’ worth of allowances, paper-route earnings and importuning sessions with his parents.

Adds his 13-year-old friend, “This is better than drugs.”

Unabashed Billing

The scene is a typical one Saturdays at William A. Steele’s Hot Trick RaceWay in Vista, billed unabashedly as “The Hottest Thing in Racing Under One Roof.”

The racing, however, is done by diminutive, radio-controlled vehicles--one-tenth and one-twelfth the size of the real things--that buzz around a carpet track that is 320 feet in circumference. The miniature vehicles, controlled by radio consoles held by the owners, run on batteries that power electric motors.

But diminutiveness does not discourage. The aficionados who have been frequenting the place since it opened seven weeks ago aren’t looking for Indianapolis or Le Mans. They like the cars, buggies and trucks, which have been gaining popularity quickly throughout the United States, particularly in Southern California. (Perhaps it comes as no surprise to learn that the sport is big in freeway country.) There are at least two outdoor tracks in San Diego--at the Del Mar fairgrounds and outside San Diego Jack Murphy Stadium.

Indoor tracks, however, are more common in colder climes. Steele, a 60-year-old retired engineer, former champion “racer” and walking encyclopedia of the hobby, says his track is the first indoor facility in San Diego County and one of the few throughout the region. Steele boasts a computerized racing course, state-of-the-art equipment and a full-stocked hobby shop, among other attractions for the little-car cognoscenti.

“It’s a good, clean, family sport,” says Jerry Disparti, 35, who adds that, yes, adults can and do enjoy the vehicles as much as youngsters. In fact, he says, some retirees, with lots of time and spare money to devote to their racers, are fanatics about the sport.

Long Way From Bottle Caps

A few words about costs. Big bucks are the order of the day. It is not a sport for poor children. This is a long way from playing hoops at the playground or shooting bottle caps on the blacktop.

A vehicle can run $200 or more--a lot more, especially with the various, souped-up accouterments that many fans want, from roll bars to wings to cooling fins. And the roadsters, like their larger progenitors, have a tendency to crack up, necessitating sometimes-costly repairs.

One bespectacled teen-ager here boasts that his folks have already poured $800 into his little super-racer. Parents have been known to groan.

“It’s expensive, yes, but it keeps them off the streets,” says Anita Spare of Vista, whose two boys are busily tinkering with their vehicles in the “pits,” as the work areas are known.

Says another parent: “The problem is the bucks. “

Predictably, money is a constant source of discussion--and a frequent sore point. “If he was working he could afford it,” complains the mother of a 13-year-old.

“My parents say I should put all this money in the bank and buy a real car,” says Sean Maybell, shaking his head to indicate what he thinks of that idea. “I say, ‘No way.’ ”

Reading for Pleasure

Still, parents say, there is a silver lining: The children are occupied, they are forced to read--remote-control car manuals, true, but at least it’s the written word--and they learn to compete honestly and care for the vehicles, which are usually manufactured from kits.

Indeed, the youngsters appear to revel in the high-tech pastime. Their patois is marked by the jargon of the trade; they speak of the JRX-2 and the RC12E, of high-powered pistons, gear boxes, differentials and electronics. “Modified” motors are in. (They go faster, it seems. Something about the lack of ball bearings and different kinds of brushes.) Specialized tools are a must, and can be seen scattered among the car parts, Coke cans and popcorn bags that lie atop the work benches.

“If you took one of these cars and made it 10 times bigger,” Maybell boasts of his vehicle, “it would rule everything. The technology’s way out front.”

“This model’s kind of weak in the front suspension,” explains Andrew Beny, 12. “I took out the plastic and put some metal parts in.”

Another boy confides that he also is worried about his front suspension. Dare he ask his parents for cash to finance more new parts?

To be sure, these racers hold technology in high regard. In his stock brochure, Steele stresses that “our consultants and engineers are Electronic and Mechanical Aerospace people who are really into hi-tech materials and processes.” The brochure cover announces, “WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF THE FUTURE.”

Up to 60 M.P.H.

Racing at Hot Trick takes place Wednesday, Friday and Saturday evenings and Sunday mornings. The rest of the time is set aside for practice. It costs $7.50 to race on the carpet track, which includes both standard courses and an “off-road,” Baja-type track complete with inclines and bumps. (Some of the cars can reach up to 60 m.p.h. in the right setting.) Winners get trophies or T-shirts. Members--the place is for members only, and their guests--pay a $25 annual fee that allows them to use the track and facilities and gives them a discount at the hobby shop.

“I like the off-road stuff,” says Rob Edwards, 16, of Vista. “The thrill for me is in the jumps. I like three-wheelers, dirt bikes, all that kind of stuff. I watch it on television.”

Presiding over it all is Steele, dressed in his red warm-up outfit and sneakers, who says he became interested in the sport more than two decades ago, when it was still embryonic in the United States. Remote-control racing was already the craze in Japan, where most of the vehicles are manufactured. He has traveled the world as a professional “driver,” and once owned a track in North Carolina.

Now Steele has parlayed his interest and mechanical abilities into what he characterizes as an almost-million-dollar sales empire of his own Hot Trick line of remote-control vehicle components. At the shop connected to his 11,000-square-foot, gymnasium-like facility, he sells everything from “red hot-shot side rail stiffeners” to “titanium wing” hardware to complete vehicles with gaudy names like the Red Fox, Optima Ram and Hot Trick Blackfoot. (The latter jacks up on big studded tires.) A far cry from Steele’s original intention upon retiring from his job at General Dynamics: to spend his time playing golf and fishing.

His wife, Bobbi, manages the place and makes sure the kids don’t get too rowdy. (No alcohol, profanity, betting or bad behavior is tolerated, Steele says.) His stepson Ben, 15, is frequently seen behind the counter.

At times, Steele manages to sound a little bit like the Knute Rockne of the midget-racing circuit. “The kids learn how to compete, how to be a winner,” he explains as he moseys around his racing kingdom, answering questions and offering advise, now and then tinkering with a motor or chassis. He has big plans. Maybe a national championship here someday?

“But this isn’t a cheap hobby,” he cautions.

Parents, start your checkbooks.