The so called straight line speed events run in Germany have proven that the models do slow down significantly during the pull out to the beginning of the speed trap. They continue to slow through the trap. A large part of the slow down during the pull out is due to induced drag because of their short spans used in their present designs.

If you compare the performance of the F3D designs with 40 sized engines to their .91 powered designs, you can see that the pylon designs go faster through the traps than the other designs when you use normalized power. In other words, even though the large engines have twice the HP, their speed is not 26% faster, but barely 10% faster.