I've seen videos of the 9T and it looks plenty fast enough.
I was driving my madrat for the first time yesterday and it handled pretty good for a first drive. I need to tighten the diff a bit and adjust the front end I think since I found it whipped around a a little TOO sharp on my bumpy track. I was driving it with the stock motor it comes with and a 1991 Novak speed controller and a 2 cell Lipo and even like that the performance is good. I'll be using a 13T brushless motor next week which should be fast enough for me. I'm using cheap 3 racing shocks which with the plastic shock internals and shafts with some travel limiters on the bottom of the shaft. I didn't think they were going to be any good, but it's actually pretty good.
Now I need to work on the track, smooth it all out, get rid of the grass and add some technical sections so it's fun. I'm racing against a Tamiya Dark Impact 4wd in the backyard championship and so far the Madrat is a lot faster and much much more nimble, but lets see what happens in a couple weeks when they are both brushless
, the Dark Impact will actually have the 9T EZrun.
Edit: Got that 9T EZrun and it goes fast
I Still have the Team C stadium truck I haven't used yet, the shocks on that are awesome so it should be even better again.
Next time I build one of these I'll defiantly use a 3mm tap or use one of the long ball cups in every hole first, I've worn off the ends on a lot of 2 mm allen keys and stuffed up a few of the hex screws during the building