Off-road Racing

Originally posted by Batfish
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.
:)

Good points, Batty.

What are your thoughts on a new and less restrictive organization (a full featured system beyond just racing, btw) geared toward being more inclusive to racers w/ 10 minute mains (all out racing, no marathons) running mixed gas/electric? There would be little to no restrictions on motor used (gas or electric) and power source (there would of course be some safety regulations).

There are naturally many other variables I've considered but are beyond the scope of this discussion.

I'm also sellin' my elctric and going gas to get a better feel for nitro racing. I've read about some of these 1/8 buggy "endurance" events and want to understand the appeal of driving for 30/45/60 minute (sometimes multiple hour) races. Ok...and I also wanna build a kick a$$ 1/8 truck (aka truggy) to compete w/ the local pro's, for now. ;-)

I'm cookin' up a national system I think would rock, but I need to perform an informal market survey on various aspects of racing and see what people enjoy and things they would like to see in the future. :-D

Thanks for all the responses.