Some of my buddies and I used to race road courses Saturdays in a big parking lot on base, using garden hose, rain gutters, and plow discs to lay out the track. I had the only nitro car [at the time] and Lewis wanted to have a race where we'd have to pit to refuel/change batteries. OK - I'm in. 75 laps was the race, and our cars were all good for about 45-50 laps (before their batteries dropped off, and I started getting close to 'E'. We took off, the other guys with their Yokomo YR4, Traxxas 4-TEC, HPI RS4, RC-10 pan car, etc., and me with my Kyosho SuperTen GP. 40 laps into it, Lewis brought his Yokomo in for a battery change, pulled the body clips and removed the body, pulled the battery compartment clips, disco'd the battery, slipped the old one out and slid the new one in, connected it, re-clipped the battery box, replaced the body and dropped a clip, which took a few seconds to find, and then he was back on the course - 50 seconds later and almost 3 laps down. He thought he had the race won by short-pitting and putting his best battery pack in for the second leg... then the others came in, and I came in last at 49 laps, stopped the car right in front of me, and with it still running reached through the cooling intake hole in my windshield to flip open the tank, put the stinger on my fuel bottle in and filled the tank, removed the stinger and let the tank lid spring flop it back closed, and took off - 9 second pit. I won the race being 2 laps ahead. Man, did he whine! The next time, new pit rules came into play (of course... we all had to take the body off, I had to shut down my car, blah-blah-blah... anything to level the playing field). I still won by over a lap because of the Kyosho's spring-loaded pivot head body retainers and the pull start, but THAT is one of the biggest reasons I love Nitro. That car still runs like a champ, never overheated (even on Blue Thunder 20% or Tower Hobbies 15%) and always fired up with one tug (and a freshly-charged ignitor).
Crawlers are totally different animals, and battery technology has come a LONG way in 25 years, so yeah - I'm interested.
