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AH, THE READERS’ CHOICE AWARDS. Our annual tradition is still going strong after 22 years, but things sure have changed a lot since 1996. Back then, we had just six categories: Buggy, Truck, Radio, Motor, Battery, and Speed Control (and in case you were wondering, the Team Associated RC1B2 and Losi Double-xt were the big vehicle winners). The categories soon expanded to include Engine, Tire, Body, and more, all the way to 18 in all in 2007. And so it was...until now.

If you’re a longtime reader and Readers’ Choice Awards voter, you’ll note that we’ve streamlined the vehicle categories. Instead of separate “Electric” and “Nitro” categories for Buggy, Truck, and On-road Car, we have condensed nitro (and gas) power into one category as “Nitro/gas Vehicle.” While the “Nitro/ Gas Vehicle” category is the only category exclusively for engine power, that doesn’t mean the rest of the categories are “electric only.” All the other vehicle categories (Buggy, Truck, On-road Car) were and will be open to nitro-model votes.

Why the change? We wanted to liven things up and raise the stakes so that a Readers’ Choice win is more meaningful. For example, every year since it debuted, the Traxxas Revo has won the Nitro Truck category. A win in the Nitro/gas Vehicle category this year would mean that it beat out every nitro vehicle, not just other nitro trucks (spoiler alert: that’s exactly what happened). And if a nitro model wins one of the “open” vehicle categories, where one expects electric models to take all the awards, that would be a major upset (spoiler alert, part 2: that didn’t happen—but it could). And as always, we just count the votes—the winners are determined solely by YOU.