Well, we've never actually been there but we do have citizenship :P

12t sound just about right, assuming you're not building this to be "competitive", just fun.

is the chassis the belt driven one or the shaft driven one? Here's the gears I was talking about:
http://driftmission.com/guides/yokomo-cs-gears-guide/
I was looking at the Yokomo gears there. I'm not sure if it's set up 50/50 front/rear on the power distribution, but those will overdrive the rear wheels and make it so you can actually counter-steer like a full-scale car, full left while moving right and such.

I think you might already be running a front one-way:
I don't use lipo myself (Although I've got one in the mail) however I believe you need to check if the ESC has a voltage cutoff/LiPo compatibility listed. You can attach an external voltage cutoff if it doesn't.