2026 Team Associated Vintage Off-Road Championships

Team Associated held their vintage off-road race meeting in Las Vegas from 2nd to 6th September 2026.

I decided to attend the event to celebrate the completion of the RMX-97 project with Ruben from Rubrix Racing Products, hand over the cars sold to our US customers, and also meet one of my childhood heroes, Masaaki Hirosaka, who inspired the RMX-97.

Unfortunately, the event did not go entirely smoothly for me, with jet lag, hacked social media accounts, lost luggage and an unfortunate family loss all happening around the same time.

Challenges aside, it was a great experience. The atmosphere was very American, and the event was run pretty smoothly by Team Associated given the large number of participants.

I had the opportunity to meet many fellow vintage enthusiasts and racers whom I had previously only interacted with through social media. The track was a little small, and with heats of up to 15 cars, racers were understandably complaining about traffic.

Ruben welcomed me with open arms to his very professional booth, where we delivered the first three RMX-97 customer cars.

On the final day, I had the pleasure of spending quite some time with the living legend, Masaaki Hirosaka. He remains full of life and energy and has so many really cool stories from his racing days with Masami. He had a good look over the RMX-97, which essentially combines two of his greatest cars into one platform.