Brushless motor experts...

[Npdp72]

Hi,
I wonder if there's someone out there who really knows there stuff when it comes to how brushless motors and sensored ESCs work?

I had an issue racing last night where intermittently the car would lose top end speed on the straight, sometime it would really fly down the straight as it should but every few laps it would be really sluggish, it felt almost as if the ESC had gone into a safety mode and was only giving 50% throttle, but then it would come back to normal for a few laps. Throttle control though the infield still felt reasonably good.

I was running a new Hobbywing V3.1 ESC for the first time with my normal Speed Passion 6.5T motor.

At the end of the A final when I took off the shell I found the yellow B wire for the motor had popped off! I had finished the race in a fairly respectable 5th place, had not retired because of the wire coming off.

So, my question is would a loose connection on the B motor wire cause this kind of symptom?

I would have expected the motor to not run at all with just the A and C wires making contact. Is it possible for the motor to still run reasonably well with just the two wires?
If so, can anyone explain the theory to me?
If not, then I am still looking for the cause of the problem, any suggestions?

Finally is it likely that running on the two wires would have caused any permanent damage to ESC or motor?

Thanks,
Nigel