Originally Posted by AdrianM
Thats not entirely true anymore. If you are willing to pay ~$90 per pack and you look for the right numbers you can get cells as good or better than what factory team driver have.
At the Snowbirds the EA packs in the hobby shop were better than the best cells Ralph burch had for the race. It was timing of batches that caused that as EA's packs were matched by SMC.
The Fusion batteries in the shop were also better than the packs Paul Wynn had.
The main advantage team drivers have is cell freshness. A 450sec, 1.195v,2.3IR pack of GP3700's you bought and put on a shelf 3 months ago is no where near as good as a pack with the same numbers matched a week a go. Cells degrade just sitting on a shelf.
We sell zapped cases to EA and he does his own matching. I'm pretty sure that Ralphs packs were every bit as good if not better numbers wise than EAs pack in the counter. We do a higher volume of cells than other matchers and we would have access to batches as fast as anyone else as were the importer for IB.