[hashiriya]

I don't think success ballast is practical. It makes the scrutineers job way too hard to be worth it for a friendly club night. Reverse grid is not as bad an idea as long as you can score some point from qualifying too (maybe not as many as the final but something that makes it worth going for a higher position)

Having said all that, I don’t think it’s such a big problem. Are people not getting good enough racing that you feel that such things are necessary in order to keep the racing close and/or interesting? In competition there will naturally be those who excel more than others and that’s something we have to accept.

Back to the Mardave thing, I think 4 cell Ni-mh or 1S Lipo should be the way to go as it’s the standard across the rest of the country and it works well for them. The whole point of what we started discussing is that it’s cheap, fun and close racing, lets keep it basic and simple and you can’t fail. The Micro lipo deliver high voltage but have small capacity. That makes it more likely that you could run them to a lower voltage and damage them with an ESC that doesn’t have a cut out. Life cells were mentioned and it may well become the future but it isn’t yet I don’t think and won’t be for a few years yet.

Will 1S lipo be too slow with only 3.7V nominal and 4.2 when charged? Maybe... But isn’t that somewhat the point of this class? Even the 4 Cell cars go at a good speed and so for a small track like Bromham, you may find that 1S Lipo works really well. It can stay consistent for everyone (we all know little tricks which can boost the voltage of Ni-mh packs to gain more punch at the beginning of a race) and should be easy to maintain as most are now comfortable with Lipo use. As Russ says, a 4cell Ni-Mh packs can be had for about £15 each with 1S Lipo packs not costing a lot more (unless you are trying to buy crazy powerful ones) and so it won’t be a big issue for cost.

For those who go down the Mardave route and have a 1S Lipo setup, you could always look to introduce 12th scale racing for the future as it would be similar in concept and layout whilst still using 1S Lipo/4 Cell Ni-Mh.