Off Road and "slicks"
 

Not sure if this is the trend where you live but near me all the indoor tracks seam to be of the clay "high bite" type. If you take a walk around the pits you see trucks and buggies with slick tires mounted and many people saucing their tires much like you would see at an on-road carpet or asphalt track.

Not staying this is a bad thing, but it just doesn't feel like off-road to me. The lack of tread on the tire just looks out of place.

What do you guys think of this movement/trend?

To me it feels like on-road with jumps.

It's not a trend it's whats fast on most high bite clay tracks, if treaded tires worked better everyone would be using them.

It's totally a trend. I used to run off road and switched. Now I see "off road" tracks that are carpeted with plywood jumps and foam tires. Technically it can be called off road, but it certainly AINT dirt. All the fast guys are complaining about too is a lack of grip. Lol, bet I can take a touring car and make it faster!

I run indoor carpet off road with a 4wd SCT but I do not run foams, slicks, of sauce. The 2 tracks I race allow pin style tires. There is a local indoor clay track that I saw the turn to slicks over tread. I plan on taking a day on the weekend soon to try the high grip clay with super soft tires and no sauce.

I am not saying this is a bad thing. I do think it makes car setup much more important vs a track with less traction. (might be more intimidating for the new guy?)

My point is we are grooming the "off-road" tracks so much that it is becoming a lot more like 'on-road' racing.

A dirt car/buggy/truck just doesn't look right with slicks.......maybe I am just too old.

I agree that dirt racers do look funny as hell with slick. Setup for a new guy regardless of traction conditions can be intimidating. I personally didnt do any setup to my SCT the first season I ever raced other than ride height. Now I am changing all kinda shit on my trucks. Haha

These high traction clay tracks should just be called onroad with jumps.

Not that there's anything wrong with this since during the winter we run a race series that's on carpet and many of us "offroad" guys are running foams on our buggies.

Offroad racing outside of RC is on dirt tracks with medium to low traction. And I do think some of the skill of driving is handling where traction is less than perfect.

I was just joking about this with a friend at the LHS, since I was debating buying the new RC10B6 to race at the local indoor clay track, versus going with a new TC7 for the paved outdoor track. With the low ride heights and near slick tires, the latest buggies are like touring cars with taller tires. I decided to run my old B4 and go with the new TC7.

This is what happens when on road guys are forced into off road because there are no more on road tracks. The whine and moan about the lack of traction, the regular off roaders love it when the traction comes up, and lo and behold we have high grip clay, astro turf, and even carpet tracks. Two seasons ago this was a big argument at my local off road track. The clay guys won, but a handful of purist off roaders have stopped racing there.

RC racing today is like the presidential election; either way we're screwed!

The Off Road guys laughed as the On road guys killed off their tracks and had no place to race....And now those same people are killing Off Road, watching their tracks turn into Astro, Carpet and slick tire Clay....WE had a good thing with MEDIUM grip indoor Off Road tracks, and WE will be the ones who kill them..:cry:

The problem with on road is the 17.5 motors. Nobody runs the open motor classes because it's too hard on equipment. I've seen national level A main drivers destroy their cars running open in what was little more than a board slap. And nobody wants to rebuild their car between rounds.

So everybody runs 17.5. But this slows the cars down to the point where you have to be dead on perfect every lap or you become a backmarker quickly. So guys spend hours on setup looking for every hundredth they can find. But then you figure out that some 17.5s are better than others, and charging your battery at 1.21 gigawatts gets you speed, and more power trumps setup every time.

And now I see the same thing happening in off road. And there's no way of fixing this.

this is the direction that offroad has been going for years

track consistency or equality is demanded these days, many drivers including pros have issues with watering schedules. track is watered, even lightly, you run and your tires still get larger and heavier, next heat has a perfect track, next heat the track starts good and areas dry out more than others. i attended big event races years ago, and in 4 quals never got the perfect track, not fun. also see race directors knowing that a pro set of drivers are in heat X, and the watering schedule is set so track gets watered prior to heat X. they announce track appears to drying to soon, they need to water...heat Y gets the hose.

i remember prior to the acceptance of carpet, 1/10 offroad racers running carpet with foam in the midwest during winter months. they ran on a road course with some wood jumps lust like you see now, other tracks allowed them to run on their carpet oval, but this was for something to do till better weather

IFMAR and events outside the US have been a myriad of surfaces called offroad
concrete/stucco and various carpets. it was hard for the US to cry foul when our tracks were virtual brown asphalt....yet we did. the comments like driver M would have won if the track was dirt, and driver C would have not

when the new released 10.5 was touted as a 19T super stock and and 13.5 was a replacement motor for 27T stock. it was the oval racers in the midwest who started asking for 17.5's. they were running 4 cells, and when lipos came in the same oval racers realized fast that 2S was too much so they went 1S. of course 1S would not cut it in a TC or buggy. ROAR seemed to step in at that point and made 17.5 stock and 13.5 superstock. you look at older youtube videos at ifmar and large races mod motor events, todays 17.5 is much faster.

17.5 is a run away freight train no one wants to deal with

You are going to see people saucing their tires I see it a lot in my area as well.
I don't do it because I feel it sucks the fun out of it.

Well, i will go with Giant655 and completely agreed with his point.

The tracks I race at, are clay but different types. One we run slicks and the other we run treaded clay tires. Completely different surfaces. I think the biggest thing is that with the increase of power, we needed the track to be able to hold this power with the right tires. So a higher grip clay with slicks became the answer. You still have to be able to drive the car and set it up. Most of us run Mod just because it prevents the motor and battery war. We turn them down to whatever works best for us. My 2wd I usually run at about 70% with a 7.5 and my 4wd I usually run at about 80% with a 6.5. Works for me. It also keeps the cars a whole lot cleaner and less maintenance required on bearings and such from the dust.