BradR

You're absolutely right. The "A-team" drivers are there because they are the best. Most likely, they are going to win regardless of the rules or conditions. With that in mind, why do they need an even bigger advantage?

I just don't like the "if you're not a sponsored driver, you don't matter" mentality. Give everyone a fair chance, even if it's a slim chance.

Orange

Personally, I think that the "regular" guy has a better advantage without handout tires then with them. At least this guy will have the oppurtunity to be able to choose a tire that suits his driving style, setup, etc...

Like I said before, the chances of a "prototype" tire working at any specific track is only based on how much testing was done at the particular track with the tire. In which case, I give it a 50-50 chance.

Yatabe Arena was brought up earlier in this thread and that if you were not in the Yokomo inner circle, you might as well have stayed home. Well yeah, in that particular case, I'm pretty sure that Yokomo did huge testing at that track leading up to that race. Pretty obvious. But that happens to be a rare case IMO. Time to stop beating a dead horse there and give me another example and I will give you examples of races where teams had "special" tires that did not work.

Don't get me wrong I totally know where you are coming from about the b,c,f,g,z teamers. But like Aaron pointed out, you are alway's going to see the same names in the top 20 or so drivers at any race no matter what tire is used. It's just a fact of life.

Those guy's have resources that ALOT of us don't have and don't think for a second that it is all just fun and games to them either. For alot of them it is their job and with a job comes pressures for performing well just like us regular guy's face with our normal everyday jobs. To us it is more of a hobby. On top of all that, they live , drink, eat, sleep, fart, etc...toy cars. They get tons of practice where alot of us are limited to that for other obvious reasons, like making a living or going to school or family obligations, etc...

But you know what, those guy's all start their day just like everyone else, one pant leg at a time. They also started in R/C just like everyone else. You have the same oppurtunity to do or did what they did to get where they are. It wasn't spec tires that got them there. Or rules from organizations for that matter.

SS

BradR

I stopped traveling to races around '95, so all of my examples are old. But just off the top of my head:

'89 Worlds - Yokomo has minispikes on 2.2" wheels
'91 Winterchamps - Pro-Line has minipins
'92 Winterchamps - Pro-Line has narrow truck fronts
'92 Nationals - Pro-Line has XTR compound
'95 Worlds - Pro-Line has the Square Fuzzie

Most of my examples are from Pro-Line, because that's who I was sponsored by. I either had (or at least knew about) all of those tires. Losi had just as many new tires, but you don't know about the compounds unless you have them.

There are other examples of where unavailable tires won races, but weren't "if you don't have them, don't bother" tires. The '93 Worlds were won with Pro-Line Stubbies and 5-rib fronts (neither were available), but Losi actually TQ'ed the race.

I think the best solution would be to allow racers to choose from a short list of approved tires. That way you could tune the handling of your car, but everyone would have the same options. The tires would still need to be controlled by the race organizer to make sure there are no special compounds.

Aaron Waldron

My argument isn't to give the A-team guys a bigger advantage, but to go back to a system that encouraged new tires and compounds to be tested as tire manufacturers wanted to win the Nationals and Worlds.

It's not like NASCAR, where one tire company provides spec tires to the entire field; especially in 1/10th scale racing, the two major teams are very closely knitted with a tire manufacturer (or in one case, make their own tires! haha) and try to use their own tires whenever possible.

We're talking about the two most important races of the industry..these are a bigger deal for the manufacturers than anything else in racing. Let them have their races back, and let's start "cost controlling" and "protecting the locals" from the bottom up.