Originally Posted by
robk
I have been to plenty of races where this is not the case. Some guys are pinballs in stock.
I do get that it all could be sorted out at big races. It's definitely not workable at most club or local facilities. The thing is though, nobody is going to the big race to race open if they know they can't handle it and they will be in the U main. Everybody will jump on here and say "well at Cleveland in 1991 they went down to a double z main in mod". The cars were also, in today's terms, slow as hell. I found a car action with the 1992 Cleveland race, and if you average the laps, mod went 11.1 seconds a lap, and stock went 12.1. I found the 2008 results, mod was going 8.8, stock (17.5, without all the boost) 9.9. 2 seconds a lap is huge, not to mention the stock cars are over a second a lap faster than mod was.
There's a point at which normal humans can't handle any more. God bless you if you can, but it just narrows the number of people who will be racing.
Like McSmoothe said, and I think something you over looked. Back then you ran much lower capacity cells than what is available now, so, although the speed may show as slower the determining factor was that you still had to gear to make the full 8 minute run without dumping, which now, has been all but eliminated. Unfortunately even limiting the capacity of the 1s now to get the gearing game for run time back in the picture is not possible as dumping the Lipo pretty much wrecks the pack, where back then you could just recharge it and re-use it.