Off-road Racing

[Batfish]

Originally posted by C.H.U.D.
Here's a follow up question.

If mains for MT's, 1/8 buggies, 1/8 trucks (aka truggies), and 1/10 trucks were 10 minutes would there be more electric people showing up to race in mixed classes of electric and nitro in the aforementioned categories? Or would the nitro folk completely reject balls to the wall racing preferring 30/45/60 minute mains?


thx

Probably the biggest reason you don't see electric races over 5 minutes is that brushed racing motors are typically designed and geared to run for 5-6 minutes and come out darn hot. Pushing those motors to 10 minutes would definitely mean more burned out motors and lots more motor maintenance.
Considering probably 99% of all racers still use brushed motors, I believe this is the biggest hang-up for moving to longer electric mains.
If we could just get brushless into ROAR with less restrictions we'd easily make 10 minute mains with an appropriately geared brushless system on 3300 cells.
The day that Lipo and brushless come together and join the ROAR rules will be the beginning of merging electrics and nitros in all races. I'm hoping that happens in the next couple years, and it's the next racing milestone I look forward to.
:)