RC Excitement to close carpet on-road track, transform it into turf off-road

0 Nov. 22, 2016, 3:01 p.m.

By Aaron Waldron
LiveRC.com

Shortly after Noon CT yesterday, RC Excitement in Fitchburg, MA announced on Facebook its plans to transform a more-than-decade-old indoor carpet track into an astroturf off-road course. CLICK HERE to view the announcement on the company's Facebook page.

With the change, RCE joins a handful of tracks across New England and the Northeast that have adopted the trend. It will also remove on-road racing entirely from the RC Excitement complex, which also features indoor and outdoor dirt off-road tracks, as well as an outdoor rock racing track and indoor and outdoor scale crawler courses.

Here's what RC Excitement had to say:

"After 11 years we're closing our carpet track.

This Tuesday will mark the last race day for RC Excitement's Carpet On Road Racing Track. Unfortunately we just haven't seen the turnouts to warrant keeping such a large area as a on road only venue, so we will be changing the surface over to Turf in the next couple of weeks. Thank you to all of you who have frequented our carpet track in the past. I'm very excited for what's possible with this change.

If you'd like to join us for one last go on the carpet, racing will start at 7pm."

Feedback on the post has been generally favorable, with many off-road racers excited for the opportunity to race on astroturf, though a handful of carpet racers - including a few that had recently purchased on-road cars - expressed their frustration with the short notice.

RC Excitement has to do what they feel is best for their business, of course, and the change certainly falls in line with what the industry has experienced across the country over the last few years - an uptick in interest for off-road racing on artificial surfaces, and the continuing decline of on-road racing.