We had an interesting Sunday of racing yesterday. At our club racing there's about a dozen of us running TA. It's been pretty much the same racers for a while now so we know each other pretty well. Yesterday we did some experimenting for the fun of it. I bring this up because someone here was asking about using LiPo for TA but not the USVTA rules of only a Novak 21.5.
Two things we did different yesterday:
1. We tried using Tamiya silver can motor and a Lipo and gearing for the straightaway ( about 100feet) it so it wasn't any faster than a brushed 27T with 4 cells. It was an interesting experiment. What I saw was it was a little faster in the infield but not a huge difference. Overall the racer running it wasn't really any faster or slower than when he runs a well tuned stock motor.
2. Just to see what would happen, our regular top racers who win place and show ran their normal power plants but we let the other 8 or 9 guys who usually are behind those three in races put any motor they wanted into their TA cars but still use 4 cells for the day's main race ( 11 cars on the track at once for an 8 minute race). Actually a few guys even put in a 7.4 Lipo. There were 13.5's, 19turns, and even one 12 turn on the track at the same time as other USVTA power plants. Interesting outcome was that none of normal intermediate drivers, like myself, ended up winning because they had appreciably more RPM and torque in their cars. What I saw happening was a car with a 13.5 or a 12 turn would murder a normal TA car on the sweeper and straights but would fall to pieces in the infield and end up being marshalled and/or stuck on a barrier for a while as the slower better driven vehicles would pass them up.
I (an intermediate driver) personally left my car with the 4 cells and stock motor in it just to see if the guys I usually compete with would do much better than me. Turns out I beat them all by about a lap.
So...I'm not sure that this "proves" anything but it sure was fun and interesting to try something different on a club racing Sunday.
Next week we won't have any shenanigans and just run normal regular USTVA rules.