been racing club level for about 8 months and placing mid pack consistently. im not the worst but theres a handful of guys who just pull away from me on any straight and i cant figure out if its their setup or if my tune is holding me back. my quad is a 5inch on 6s, running xing2 2306 motors, zmx frame which is pretty chunky honestly, f7 stack, and probably sitting around 700g with battery. the guys beating me on straights are running similar motors from what i can tell but their rigs look way lighter.

ive been working on my tune and i feel like throttle response is decent but i wonder if i just need to drop 80-100g somewhere. frame? smaller battery? i dont want to sacrifice durability because i crash enough that my frame takes hits regularly. also my rates might be the issue idk, i tend to run pretty high rates which some people say hurts you in races vs having super snappy low rate setups. anyone been down this rabbit hole

the zmx frame is definitely not helping you weight wise, those are tanks. good tanks but tanks. i switched from something similar to a floss style frame and dropped almost 30g just there. but honestly 700g is pretty heavy for a race build, a lot of the faster guys at my local scene are 550-600g range on 6s. smaller battery is probably your easiest win without rebuilding everything - are you flying the full pack anyway or landing with 30% left? because if youre not using the capacity youre just carrying dead weight around the track.

on rates - i actually found i went faster when i lowered mine a bit and focused on cleaner lines rather than snapping around. high rates let you correct faster but they also let you over-correct, and in a race context smooth is almost always faster than twitchy through the technical stuff

could be tune, could be weight, could also just be flying experience tbh. 8 months is still pretty early and those guys have probably mapped every corner of that track a hundred more times than you. not saying dont chase the setup stuff because weight absolutely matters but ive seen people obsess over 50g while their lines through the chicane are losing them way more time than that. id maybe get some video from a chase drone or someone filming and actually look at where youre losing ground on track before spending money on parts