I just fail to see how this "directness" (be it measured by play in the drivetrain or flexing/stretching of the materials, or adding both) is supposed to translate into faster acceleration. I have a super beat-up RDX on my desk right now and if I rock a front wheel back and forth with the spur blocked I get a rotation of +/-5degrees at the wheel, tops. Now at what minimum speed are your slowest wheels spinning in the slowest corner of a tiny track? I'd guess several dozen of RPM. So... compare that to the 5degrees... you see why I am really skeptical. In terms of traveled distance, the caricature of slop/flex I just took as an example would translate as approx.... 2,6 millimeters of car travel during your transition from braking to accelerating. (By the way, have you (general you :-) seen a super slow-mo of a TC on carpet ? One T. Bergfeldt posted one years ago, maybe it is still on youtube. The car is just floating and sliding and drifting on the carpet. Quite unbelievable). Bottom line: I just feel the shaft drivetrain of the AX is just not at all a satisfying explanation for the Ax "edge" that has been reported in specific conditions. (I am also under the impression that "Directness" and "forward traction", are in fact very loosely related things anyway. Directness or not, what matters is to have your tire lay it down on the floor with as little spin as possible, isn't it ?)
Now if I get this right, plenty of respectable, credible drivers say the car really has an undeniable leg-up in some situations ? I'd guess high-grip carpet, stock motors? -Correct me if needed. I am really going out on a limb for the sake of the discussion here, so don't be mean if I say something false or plain silly... It seems to me that this "edge" could be explained much better, by some peculiarity or another in the suspension of the Ax. Say, (just as an example!) the car has one feature in its rear geometry that is unique to the Ax and this peculiarity, say, tends to favor corner speed at the expense of forward traction. In that case, with the rather slow motor on high grip, maybe, just maybe, this could be a good trade-off, because what you lose in forward traction is more than compensated in corner speed, and the low CG helps even further. I also find it very plausible that a gain in corner speed in the hairpin before the straight translates into a 2 or 3 car lengths by the end of the straight, no mystery here. Now on low-grip asphalt with a mod motor, maybe this same (hypothetical) rear-end peculiarity is actually a disadvantage because you would want all the forward traction you could get and you don't care as much about corner speed, you drive a bit "point-and-shoot".
This pretty simple (and I think not too unrealistic) "suspension" theory, or another like that, manages to make sense of quite a few facts, with more success than any "directness of the drivetrain" theory, or "free-spinning of the wheels" theory, as far as I can see. Aaaanyway. Thanks for humoring me a little. I was just trying to say this: I really love the Awesomatix car for its suspension, and it seems to me the shaft drive brings no extra performance VS belts, but can bring a lot more headache.