For those of us who might not know, StudioVRM.Racing made the decision to step away from the US Touring Car Championship at the end of the 2025 season.

The reason was simple. Like many of the volunteers and participants, we felt that the series organizers were asking too much of the teams and participants while failing to do the basics to run a professional racing series.

The final straw came when the series produced this AI-Generated slop trophy at the last race of the 2025 season:

On its own, this was bad enough. The racing community had just borne witness to Pittsburgh International Race Complex, a beloved American racetrack being erased to make room for an AI data center.

But what made this unforgivable was what this represented - a slap in the face to Sam Draiss, the tremendously talented up-and-coming photographer who had poured countless hours into telling the series' story through his art. His work elevated the championship, supported the teams, and brought life to the track and paddock.

This trophy was proof of how little the series valued the people who made the series what it was. And it was an insult to us as well - as we at StudioVRM had been covering 100% of his photography fees and web development costs for the series nationwide. Seeing all that work dismissed so casually through the half-hearted responses from the Series Directors of both coasts was painful, to say the least. So we declared our intentions and left the series.

When the wife of the East Coast series director sent us a nasty message criticizing our message, we knew we made the right choice.

Thankfully, our sponsors and fans have been very supportive of our position and have happily followed us out the door.

So that leaves us with one question - What's next for StudioVRM.Racing?

The reality is, we have enough invitations that we could have spent the year being a hired gun for other teams. But none of us would have been happy with that. And neither would the thousands of you who have supported us over the years.

So for the 2026 season, we are doubling down on what we believe. We are going to continue developing the StudioVRM Honda Prelude TC in the same direction that we have in the USTCC. Becuase the USTCC rulebook is so different from other SCCA classes, our plan is to enter it in the SCCA Improved Touring E class - A catch-all class for closed roof cars that meet the safety requirements for SCCA Improved Touring.

Our competition? Everything. Muscle cars, Big-Bore bruisers, Ethanol-sipping featherweight cruisers, and firebreathing GT1 monsters.

In essence, it's going to be Honda Prelude vs the World.

Let's be clear - This is going to be an uphill battle.

Even with the expertise of our powertrain partner Bad Guys Worldwide and the technical brilliance of our friends at Blue Leaf Technologies, we will not be out-muscling the frontrunners in the Big Bore pack.

But in the tight, twisty confines of the more technical tracks in this region, we are ready to fight. What we lack in raw horsepower, we have in handling, setup, and creative freedom. We will give it everything we have, race like there is no tomorrow, and keep bringing you the race reports, tests, and articles that we always have.

See you at the track. Very soon.

~R