Red RC: The design of 1/8th on-road cars – often seen as the “pinnacle of RC car racing” – hasn't changed that much over the last decade or two. This has lead to very subtle evolutions rather than revolutions in the construction. Why?
Martin Hudy: As a designer and as a company, you always have a limited amount of resources, time and money, which sets the boundaries of where you can and cannot go because you do not have the necessary time and are limited by budget. So while some engineers make some leaps every now and then, nobody pretends that can reinvent the wheel; instead of draining resources, everyone works on fine tuning the things that work well to make them work even better.
The strong, fast, and robust cars that end up in the Winners Circle and tops of podiums are those that have had their smallest details worked out. This class, like few others, has developed and evolved for many decades, with many different brands and their designs being continuously improved year-by-year. To come up with something unique and have it work well right away is highly impossible. These cars are so finely responsive to tuning that even changing small shims here or there makes the car handle completely differently. I expect that this class, like many others, will continue to evolve in step-by-step increments.