In this edition of the JConcepts Friday5 we talk to Texas team driver, Mike Stoll!
1. We have to ask everyone this in our interviews, how did you get your start in RC racing?
I started racing about 1987 or 1988, too long ago to remember exactly, but Mimi had a club race in a park on a baseball diamond. I ran a Tamiya Grasshopper with a stick radio around the cone markers in a oval format LOL. I was hooked. About 1990 I was wanting to really get into it so my dad and I went to a place in Beltsville, MD called Off-Road Headquarters. This place was huge at the time. They had both a carpet on-road track in one room and an off-road track combined in an oval in the other. The car I raced was a JRX-Pro with X pattern tires. Such great memories!
Another fun side note is that from mid 90’s to the early 2000s every single manufacturer’s lexan body that needed ROAR approval went through my house. My dad, Steve Stoll, was on the ROAR approvals committee at the time. We gave away thousands of them to locals over the years and had the garage full of them at the time.
2. If you had to guess where the 1/10 off-road electric scene is ten years from now, would you expect to see more dirt, carpet, or turf tracks and why?
Battery technology will advance even further to where I believe it will rival hour long mains possibly like nitro cars. The tracks will be more artificial carpet and turf simply because the cost and maintenance is far more simple to change layouts, clean up if need to move, etc. than dirt is as far as indoor tracks go.
3. As an experienced racer you have probably glued up hundreds of tires for your race program. What tips can you give to make this process easier for a new racer?
My tip would be a towel or something in front of you to catch extra glue. Most of my older t-shirts have a glue blob on them where I hold the tire in my left hand against my mid torso. I think the next thing JConcepts needs to release is a factory tire bib LOL!
4. To date what is your favorite JConcepts product of all time and why?
My favorite JConcepts product currently has to be the rear Fuzz Bite tire. Simply put they are dialed!
5. You are obviously highly skilled when it comes to RC cars, but what is one skill or hidden talent that folks might be surprised to find out about you?
Other than RC I do like to grill out and cook up some BBQ when I can.
