I first got started in this hobby in 1983 with an Associated RC 500, them moved to a Serpent Excell in 1988. It was a 1/8 scale on road gas car. (we called it gas back then, not nitro). Electrics back then didn't seem too far off from being toy like. I started out racing too. So the new club I belonged to also did winter racing indoors on carpet. They were 1/12 scale, 4 cell cars. We ran 8 min. races. We used 1200 mah NiCads. We just barely milked out 8 min. too. You usually could run one extra lap. But I found electrics to be a pain in the butt to keep running well. That was even before ESC's. I did get one of the first ESC's too when it was new technology.

Funny though, from what I said in my initial post about running my Losi nitro truck against the electrics is this. You see, when we were all running nitro trucks I usually waited to be one of the last guys to start up because there was always somebody having trouble getting started or some other problem that made him late to the line. So we would have to take more warm up laps and even have to top off the fuel tank when the late comer finally made it to the line. Now that I've been running against the electrics all they have to do is switch on and place them at the line. Then I start and do my warm up lap. When I get closer to the line I just tell the "starter" to start the count down and then I don't have to sit for too long bripping my throttle for the start of the race.