Starting to get electronics together for the MTC3 and now I need to get 2 lipo packs.
I am racing TC stock, 21.5t indoors and 17.5t outdoors.
I was set on getting 6300mah Cayote sticks, but was told that they don’t get good IR per cell, and for stock that would be needed.

Other options I see are:

Team EAM
LRP (low c level)

The rest seems kinda meh.

As I’m in a blinky class, everyone at my club charges and discharges at 30A/40A. Terrible for the batteries I know but it seems that’s the blinky class all over.

Curious what you’re using in 1/10 touring cars?

There's plenty of decent brands out there: EAM, GensAce, Sunpadow, Cayote, EZPower, Exalt, DXF, Intellect, etc

I think that the best approach is honestly just to look at what the fast guys at your club are running and what your local hobby shops can reliably stock. Batteries are a pain to source (depending on which part of the world you're in), and having something you can easily replace or match is usually worth more than chasing the perfect spec on paper.

I personally run Mach-1 batteries because it's local to me here in Australia and I prefer to support a local company. They run great and I've never felt that my batteries were a limiting factor in my racing.

SMC

Best batteries i had in the past were sunpadow 6500 and now i have the brandnew eam 7000.
IR is the lowest i've ever seen, but didn't race it until now, as i'm waiting for outdoor season opening.
Racing 17,5t stock

I use the Cayote 6300 for indoor on a small to medium sized track. tbh i wouldn't worry about the IR unless I'm in the top 10; and for outdoors i use the Gensace 6600 and i do charge/discharge these at 40amps in race events only. on my usual practice runs i charge at 20amps.

I have run/owned or used basically every major brand except Cayote since they're newish but I have Reedy packs from 2020 I can still run.

I had 2 gens ace 5500's break cell tabs in 3 months, that left a bad taste in my mouth. It seemed to be common for that generation and the one before but no idea now. Proteks I've tried a few times and been disappointed. Solid punch, but others had more for the same or similar price. Though every Protek product I've tried has been very middle of the road and kinda high price wise.

It seems like everyone has just released a new "stock spec" battery thats 150/160/165c. I'd guess they're all pretty similar as theres only a few makers of RC cells, but there are still differences brand to brand. I have the new SG6 reedys and they have been SOLID. Very consistent and very powerful. I let my friend running stock run one and he said it was great. He ended up with the 5000mah stock star Reedy and its good. He has cayote packs and proteks and some others and the new Reedys have been about the best punch wise. I've let him use both my Reedy Stock Stars the 5000 and 5800mah and both were great power wise. I mostly run mod so my 3 year old Fantom batteries have been fine.

Of all the stuff I've run Reedy and Fantom have been the best. Maybe not the absolute top in punch, but the most durable and longest lasting. I usually charge at 15-20a, and when I run stock at points series or big trophy races I charge at 40a, usually with a 20 or 40a discharge cycle. And they've lasted for 2-3 years with that "abuse". Cheaper Zee packs need 40a/40a cylcing to get decent performance and then they only last a few months doing that. The CNHL packs I've tried were just awful, cheap to buy and lacking punch.

Buy once cry once. Don't over charge or over discharge packs voltage wise, and dont fully charge them and then wait 6/8/12+ hours to run them. Dont let them sit in hot or freezing cars and then try and run them. Follow that and most modern packs will last a while.

2 words, SMC

2 words No Way
I have seen more SMC packs ignite than any other brand combined

I Would suggest misuse/abuse.

Not at all, they use the cheapest oem packs in the industry

From my experience, SMC has better IR than packs costing $30-$40 more. I've had fantom, trinity, mcclan, protek, intellect, sunpadow, LRP and R1.

For batteries it is easy to get good IR and voltage drop from non-ulcg batteries. You see the quality of the brand when they can get good IR and voltage drop from ulcg batteries (packs that weigh 255g or less). The SMC 6400 ulcg packs I recently bought both have 1.4 IR on a 20 charge / 20 discharge cycle. Other brands that have decent ulcg perfornace were LRP and Sunpadow. The worst packs I've had were R1, fantom and intellect (2.4 ir - 3ir new after 3 cycles).

IR only tells us a small portion of battery performance however. What happens to the Voltage Drop under a load tells much more of a reality on a packs performance. I have a couple of packs here that have wonderful IR numbers, but when I put a real life simulation (current draw) the voltage drop is higher than some other packs that have better IR numbers.
The difference is noted on the track as well ripping on our high bite straight

I'm am absolutely sure you're incorrect regarding IR and cell size. A 20k pack will always have lower IR and than a 2k pack. All of my ULCG batteries average upper 1 to mid 2ir, the better ones are mid to low 1. My non-ulcg batteries averaged below 1 to 1.5ir.

I agree about voltage drop, that's why I mentioned voltage drop. During my battery cycles I record how long it stays above 4v during a 20 amp discharge on an icharger. The better packs stay above 4v around 1.5+ min.

Yes my apologies I typed that first sentence backwards. The bigger the battery the less the resistance
I am going to delete that part now to avoid confusion to anyone else who reads the thread

I have tested many current batteries. SMC is about the best there is in both IR and voltage under load. The fact they are less expensive than most other options is just icing on the cake. I'll admit some of the older SMC lines were great performers, but notorious for puffing - never saw one ignite however. This current product is solid.