I'll have a go here at explaining the concepts. Turns out The New Math will probably be better on your side of the pond than ours.
Note that both major manufacturers of off-road buggies are from Southern California.
Back in the day we had what can only be called rock hard tires. There are two major tire manufacturers in the US, Losi and Pro-Line. Their silver and M-2 compounds, hard by today's standards, are far softer than anything from back then. Losi's red & pink, and the M-3, are far softer yet.
Couple the modern soft tire with the modern foams and you've got something that mirrors advancements in real race car tires over the last 20 years.
At the same time, US tracks have changed dramatically. Back in the day most off-road tracks were very soft loamy or sandy surfaces. Between the very soft tracks and very hard tires, forward traction was difficult to obtain, so the motor was moved to behind the rear sheels to act like a lever pushing the rear wheels down into the ground. And it worked -- the rear motor buggy has loads of forward bite.
The problem is that the rear motor, being heavy, likes to proceed the rest of the car through a corner. It tends to stay tucked in at low speed, but, as corner speed increases, it has a nasty habit of jumping around suddenly. Driving a rear-motor buggy is an exercise in balancing on the edge of a cliff.
U.S. tracks have changed greatly to the point that most of the major races (Cactus Classic, Losi race, Hot Rod Shoot-Out) are contested on blue groove tracks. These tracks are hard as rocks and have a layer of rubber on them that makes them even stickier. Many U.S. indoor tracks, made of topsoil, are also very high traction compared to the sandy tracks of old.
The blue groove tracks are all swept or blown with leaf blowers to make sure there's no dust at all. The indoor tracks are watered -- solid surface with no dust. Even a "loose" outdoor track, R/C Madness where the ROAR Mod Nats were held last summer was watered literally every 7 minutes to keep the dust down as much as possible.
We posited that the rear motor is no longer needed for forward bite -- the combination of new tires and modern tracks gives all the traction needed. In fact, in the U.S. you've sometimes got to baby the throttle on the straight or else, with a rear-motor car, you'll loose time doing wheelies. Indeed, the X - 6 accelerates just as well on our tracks as any other car, and no wheelies -- just punch it! Should do the same on your tracks...
Cornering, handling bumps, and flying jumps? That's where she shines. Far more predictable. Much easier to drive fast. No more unexpected spins because you've fallen off the cliff. It cruises through whoops and washboards instead of bucking like a bronco. And super stable in the air. It's all about weight distribution...
Unfortunately we lost the video from the X Factory Challenge buggy race. There, as Ryan Cavalieri worked his tail off trying to pass Greg, you'll just have to take my word for it that it was obvious the X - 6 was the fastest thing on the track. In qualifying on Saturday Greg turned the fastest laps we saw for the entire week, with a 38.4 & 38.7. We saw nothing faster than 38.8. And we're still working on set-up.
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