No replacement for displacement

That's a well known phrase in motorsports, which basically means horsepower is going to help you more than anything else you can do to your racecar.

Even in the RC world, I find that to be true.  I spend a lot of time tuning the handling, traction, and responsiveness of my cars, which definitely improves the consistency of my lap times.  But honestly, every single time I stick in a faster motor, or use a fresher battery, or drop some weight off the drivetrain, it drops more tenths off my lap times than any sort of new shock package or roll center change.

The last time I went out with my 17.5t B6D, I was doing lap times consistently in the 16.3/16.4 second range with some old, worn out Lipos.  I removed the car, put in one of my newer batteries, and the first lap out I did 16.0 seconds.  Literally no other changes, just put in a better battery with more punch and dropped 0.3 seconds.

So to that end, I finally decided to get some MIP pucks and a lightened/cut topshaft, along with the Exotek battery strap for more rear traction and some bling.  I was already running MIP bi-metal outdrives, but the Pucks have dropped another 9 grams of rotating mass on the driveshafts and aluminum outdrives, so the buggy should be faster.

The current layout at my local track has a tight right-hander directly into a monstrous jump.  With a slow 17.5 buggy, you need to take a wide entry line and a long run-up to make the jump  With a fast 17.5, you can apex the corner and immediately go up the jump, so horsepower definitely helps a ton in your lap times.