Bay of Plenty Outdoor Radio Control Car Club is ready to find its next victors.

And club president Mikki Strong says the club's next round of champion drivers might not even know they're it yet.

This Sunday mark club's monthly race meet at their track located at TECT All Terrain Park.

'We are an outdoor radio control car club,” says Mikki.

'We've been in existence for up to ten years with different scale sized cars and ages.

'I took interest last year when the club was almost going under but I could see the potential it had in comparison to other clubs in Auckland and the likes.

'I spent a decent amount of my own time chopping everything down, getting the track useable again, travelling to other clubs to compete and get the word around that our track was reopen.”

Mikki says he revamped the track in March 2017. And the benefits are finally paying off, with the club seeing a surge in members as recently as six weeks ago.

'We've gone from between eight and 12 members a month to more than 60.

'We've just had a new driver's stand put up which was restricting a lot of people, a lot of the top drivers were quite reluctant to come for various reasons but now we have it, it's created almost a domino-response.”

He says the club is family-orientated and open to all ages and stages. Its youngest driver is seven-years-old ranging up to another driver who is nearly 80 years old.

'The club is open to everyone we have anyone from beginners to semi-professional drivers who travel overseas to compete, they're what we call the ‘big-guns'.”

Mikki says in line with many other clubs BOPRCC run a monthly event which as either a summer series or a winter series. The best points at the end of the series wins overall.

'We have what we call a competition day once a month and also a fun day once a month, so every fortnight we have something on.”

The event on Sunday is a competition day, however new drivers are welcome to come along, says Mikki.

'On a fun day we encourage first timers or the newbies to come along. They can either bring their own cars that they race around the back yard or use our club cars to slowly race around the track just to get them used to things.

'But newbies can also come along to our competition days, we have an open division that starts the day where new drivers can race and then after that they also have the opportunity to watch serious races there on after.”

Mikki says the motorsport is good fun.

'It's not just the driving but the maintenance,” he says. But he insists: 'although they are toy cars, a lot of the top guys get quite insulted when you call them toys.

'We are actually apart of the Te Matai Motorsports Association, it is classed as a motorsport but all ages can get into it.”

He says his interest in the motorsport was born during a particularly rough patch in his life.

'I was a top-level golfer until late in 2016 when I had a very serious operation on one of my legs that stopped me doing all of the things I used to do. I had a bit of a rough time until I got involved with this.

'A friend-of a-friend had a car and I decided to build it and put it together. I did that and then decided to put my all into this, to get my mind off everything I used to do and it's changed everything for me.

'From just going along and taking part, to seeing something that needed restoring and focusing my time on it, and then meeting people from all these other clubs; it's really lead from me asking if I could take an old car around to being the president of the club.”

And now he's encouraging others to follow in his tracks.

'You get some guys that have just been racing their cars around on their back yard, who don't expect much out of it, right up to the guys who have been doing it for 10-20 years.

'You often find ex-or-existing motorsport guys like Go-kart drivers, rally-drivers or motorcross drivers will be natural at it. For example Shane Van Gisbergen even won the North Island championships last year.”

The race day is from 8am-3pm at TECT All Terrain Park. Race fees cost $15 for members, $20 for visitors and entry is free for those interested in coming along to learn more.

For more information visit the event page on Facebook.