I fully understand why the folks at USVTA made the decision to change tire manufacturers and fully support the reasoning. I also understand that switching back to HPI (IF, in fact, they are supplying tires again) would be the wrong move entirely (and I have a few sets of HPI tires in-hand that I'd like to use). It would not be an exaggeration in any way to say that VTA survived for YEARS with an unacceptably spotty tire availability while HPI swirled (and swirled and swirled and swirled) down the drain. We survived in SPITE of HPI, not thanks to them.
If the tires are different, I get that. Different tires on REAL cars require a setup change. I'll adapt.
If the tires are changing size, etc., with normal practices (using commercially available compounds a la SXT, etc as intended, not soaking things in volatile chemicals) then that's a problem. If you're soaking your tires in diesel/belt dressing/liquid wrench/fill-in-the-blank you are taking your chances...man up and live with the consequences.
To allow HPI back in would be a mistake. They were AWESOME in their support of the concept (before there was actually a class even, much less a USVTA) when we were trying to get things going, but ultimately we kinda got screwed by them. Here I sit on a couple new sets of HPI tires that I bought up during what much have been the last of their periodic availability spurts before they finally augered in. I knew it was a couple year supply, but I was tired of dealing with "will I find tires in time" if I waited until I NEEDED tires.
There are also profound consequences (to anyone who already has tires) to making any sort of significant change to the PF tires. That said...I'm guessing the feedback has been passed along by the USVTA "powers". The hard thing would be deciding when to implement the change.
We've, as a class, weathered storms before, this too shall pass.