I know what you mean. Try tuning with some Differential Fluid. That seemed to help that situation quite a bit for me. I've seen more folks mention to stay in the 1000-10,000 wt range. I may have gone overboard with my first attempt at 30,000 wt but even that was an improvement over the small amount of grease that's in the differential when you buy the truck.

For the jumps, I think it may be worth a try swapping the softer front springs to the rear. I assume that will make the rear end less bouncy, perhaps make jumping more predictable. I don't know how well it will work out for you but it is something simply you can try. With the stock motor, cheap 6 cell batteries and stock connectors I know I never really had enough power to pitch the nose up with throttle...best I could do in a lot of cases was maintain pitch or slow downward progress.

Of course doing both of the above will kill your steering off-road. No big deal for bashing but it could give you trouble on a track with tight hairpin turns.

Anyway I still think the truck setup out of the box makes it dog-meat on the track. I don't fault HPI, it does make sense to me that it is setup to favor bashing and reduced maintenance. It's a fine truck for racing but I believe you just need to tune it with softer springs, lighter shock fluid, softer tires, and diff fluid to prep it for track use.