funny that, I've seen this repeated elswhere but I haven't seen where the Hellfire was being marketed as solely a racer. They went to some lenght to call it a competition truck but we need to not fool ourselves, RTR's by their very nature are compromised, they are built to a price point. If you buy a RTR and complain about the radio gear for instance, you're living on another planet because no RTR except in recent times the LST and the Mayhem ST come with radio gear worthy of much, I may be forgetting one but it's always been the way, weak and so-so AM radios. A lot of people I know who blew their servos on the Hellfire blew them because of a setting on the radio and the fact that they didn't read the handbook. Most of them took it in their stride because they aimd to change the servo's anyway because quite frankly, if you aim to race, you needed something better anyway.

Playing Devils Advocate here, most guys did come from MT's, some from buggys, almost all instead of driving the stock truck went about swapping diff fluids and moving shocks around not understanding what it was they were doing.

To compare the Hellfire directly with the CRT and STR is missing something, these two are aimed at racers 1st then everyone else after where as the Hellfire is the other way around. IMO, if you've been around the MT nitro scene long enough you should understand what I'm talking about. Most of the loudest complaining over the months has come from newbies with unrealistic expectations and judging buy what I've read in the forums over the months, guys flexing their knowledge to an audience who don't wholely take on board the knowledge they're trying to empart. Witness the critisism of the body mounted wing. Quickly, which other truggies have this feature? Have you heard anyone critisize them. It started with the LSP for the real newbee amongst us.

Here's food for thought; Think of the thousands of Hellfires,CRT's,LSP's that have been sold, review the number of contributor on these and other forums, you'll see a pattern. A couple of guys have bad luck with their kit, some become deeply unhappy, firstly because its' their firt truggy and they don't know what they are doing, their first time trying to race a truck and don't understand the dynamics in trying to hustle the thing around a track at race pace. Their answer, it must be the engine, it must be the radio gear... the list goes on and instead of looking at themselves, they blame the truck. Think of the thousands of others that are having a whale of a time with their truck and besides the odd breakage that happens when you hurl a object around at 25+ MPH with abrupt stops, tumbles and the rest, have nothing bad to say about their kits.

What's that Fox News saying "Fair And Balanced". We'll I've rarely seen that displayed with many RTR trucks over the years.

I'm not defending the Hellfire, I don't own one. I drive a CRT but I knew that for racing purposes and after my experience racing the LSP last year, an RTR was not going to give me what I wanted as a package. Unless you are extremely gifted noone is going to pull a RTR out of a box, put fuel and bat's in a be competitive at a racetrack. If you don't understand what diffs do and what all those adjustments are about, you'll take a fairly neutral handling truck that doesn't do anything particularly bad and turn it into a mess. I've watched it all season.

As a RTR the Hellfire comes with features only seen on High End buggies like the XB8, with a little patience I submit that it could be made to compete head to head, on any given day with the CRT,STR an the rest.

There are a few Hellfires scoring well in some series if you keep an eye on race results from around the world, it's just the sea of CRT's that's keeping it from shining. It's the difference between a kit, made for the track and a RTR made for everyone, no compromise vs compromises, HPI should have made the SS first then followed with an RTR like Jammin did with the CRT. It might have been a different story had they did and so many wouldn't be disappointed.

Just my 2cents