Elec Monster/Truggy Class - Fighting a loosing battle

Hello,

I guess I should start by saying that for years I've been a die-hard Electric Monster Truck racer. I started 4 years ago at my local track where for the first two years, I raced an E-Maxx. At my track we ran the E's and T's together so it was all just great. Over time I modified my E to the point that it wasn't an really an E anymore. It was a brushless beast which was nearly unstoppable against the Nitro T-Maxxes.

About two years ago my track broke the classes up. Us Electric guys had to race against ourselves. For the most part this was OK. At this track we had a good core of 5 or 6 big time Electric guys with full on SuperMaxx trucks, most of which were brushless. This past year things changed again. Several of us (myself included) left the E-Maxx platform and switched to Electric Truggy custom conversions.

This coming race year things look a bit different. I realize it's Feb and months away from opening day but our track is under new ownership. The old owner was sympathetic to our small class, often if just 3 of us showed, he would let us run. Now, that doesn't look possible. Honestly I do have a Nitro Truggy as well (both Jammin CRTs) and while I'm not crazy about Nitro, I do like running two classes. I'd prefer not to run my Electric with the Nitro Truggies because if I do that, I can't run my Nitro truggy. Plus, I've never run my Truggy for more than the 5-6 minutes our races last. I've been using 3200 LiPo packs, they are light and last the race and that's all I really cared about.

I guess I'm wanting to talk with you guys about the state of racing these Electric Monsters or Truggies. WHY is this class on death's door? What will it take to revive it into a thriving hotbed of diversity and creativity. It seems that we have two kinds of racers, the novice racers who buy an E-Maxx and run it bone stock and the psycho nuts (which I'm one of) who dump large sums of money into these high voltage brushless animals. I've tried for years to recruit new blood into this class and for the most part I've failed. People often watch the races we have with awe, I think in just about all the races last year, our lap times were better than the "Revo" class and in most cases we even had better times than the Nitro Truggy class. So people watch, they comment, they come look at it but they just don't buy them.

About the only thing I can say is that despite the great press coverage RC Monster and a hand full of other innovative RC companies have rec'd from Driver, RCCA and other magazines - it seems that until Traxxas updates the E-Maxx the electric monster class will be doomed to low single digit race entries and basically be a side-show act at big races - if they even let us run. I'd like to change that but after 4 years of fighting this loosing battle I'm afraid it's just lost.

What do you guys think?

David Maffucci