It's unfortunate to hear you say something like that. Kortz has been running for us continually since roughly 2005. He may have the repuation of being the "bad boy of RC" but one thing that he has certainly shown more than any other driver out there is loyalty! Look at any other Pro out there and you are going to be hard pressed to find any single one that has stuck with a sponsor for more than a few years, let alone over a decade! The reason, because most are motivated predominately by income potential, not actually building something. Kortz has been commited to this program from the start and I'm happy to say that over the years our working relationship has grown from just a traditional sponsorship type thing to a true friendship. Over those years we have worked hand in hand together to develop each and every one of our engines, we have been the underdogs at numerous races and have managed to make 3 out of the last 5 Worlds finals something that at best maybe 4 or 5 others can claim. And against all odd's we have managed to carve out a market presence globally fighting agains all of the major engine manufacturers out there.
Things are different now but when this company was started back in 2004 you only had OS, Nova, Picco, Rossi and OPS as the mayor players in making racing engines. In addition you had 2 European companies (JP and RB) that these guys made engines for. That was it, there was not a single US company that these engine guys in Italy were willing to work with because they all thought that we Americans were unreliable, did not know the market and basically could not be trusted (those on the inside know specifically who we can thank for that lol). It took a lot of work and effort but we were the first US company that any of them ended up actually taking seriously and were willing to work with to make private lable product for. A lot of that had to do with the results that we were able to achieve in engine sales when we were just importing other companies products but a realy big part of that also had to do with the presence that we were able to have from a racing standpoint. At one point in the we arguably had the best US off-road team of drivers out of any engine company and a lot of that had to do with the help and contributions that Kortz made.
So while it's easy to make a comment like you just did, if you actually understood what has been involved in this whole endeavour you would not saying something like that. Together we've made a mark in the industry and he's imho more than earned the right or I guess you could say "honor" of having his name put on a product like this. Plus I think that you will be hard pressed to find a guy that has influenced RC racing globaly more than Kortz has.
If you want proof next time you go to a race just look around on the drivers stand and pits. Each and every person that you see running aroung with a T-shirt with their name printed on the back and their sponsors listed on it world wide like most of the top drivers now do i.e. Drake, Pavidas, Lutz, Mafield etc. etc. can trace that back directly to Kortz. He was the first person to start making custom shirts like that to represent his sponsors and to this day still is the one that makes them for most of the top US drives out there. So while you may not like him for some reason there is probaly a very, very good chance that you and a lot of others reading this have been influenced by him and did not even know it!
