Now that's what I call no compromise racing car design; Xray introduces three different chassis for their 2008 models! Two chassis for Europe for rubber tire carpet racing, and a foam tire carpet chassis for the US. Each chassis is developed to excel in its specific use and be able to use the traction of the specific tires to the max. The european versions have been modified to take full advantage of the new 5-cell battery rule the EFRA introduced recently. You have the choice of either a 5-cell or 6-cell battery lay-out depending under which rules you are racing. The US version has a ‘normal’ 6-cell configuration.

XRAY T2 008 EU Rubber-Spec 5-Cell Edition

I first thought the new 5-cell battery rule was going to be introduced by the IFMAR as well, but this doesn’t seem to be the case in the near future. This really poses a design problem for many high performance touring cars I can imagine. I wouldn’t be surprised to see more cars coming to your local hobby shop in several different versions.

Since I'm in Europe and mainly do rubber tire carpet racing, I will opt for a 5-cell lay-out optimized for rubber tire carpet racing for the touring car development project, because this will probably be the norm in the future.

By the way, if you have some time, check out the XRay website . First of all it’s probably one of the nicest looking and most informative sites of all rc car manufacturers. Secondly it’s got a great explanation of just about every aspect of the car. Each feature is explained with graphs and pictures to show why they made it that way. It gives you some nice insights!