Talk-It-Up Tuesday with Paul Sinclair

  

Welcome to LiveRC's weekly column, "Talk-It-Up Tuesday!" Here we spend a little time talking with industry icons including racers, manufacturers, team managers, developers, promoters, and everyone in between! Sit back, relax, and go behind the scenes as we interview them all!
 

For the first time here in the United States we saw almost all of the factory drivers (who were able) at this year's Pro-Line Cactus Classic running a mid-motor setup on the dirt. In the past, it has been controversial as to whether mid or rear motor setups work better, however, almost everyone agreed that with the high amount of traction the SRS dirt provided, mid-motor was the answer.

 

Since that time, we have seen a craze of mid-motor setups on local, regional, and national levels. When we think mid-motor, we think of one man. We decided to sit down with Mr. Mid-motor himself, X Factory's Paul Sinclair, for this edition of "Talk-It-Up Tuesday!"
 
 
LiveRC: First of all, welcome to the LiveRC "Talk-It-Up Tuesday", Paul! First and foremost, what was your first reaction when almost every major driver that was able to set their car up mid-motor at the Cactus Classic?

Paul: Finally!

LiveRC: On a local level more racers since that time have converted to mid-motor. Have you seen an increase in mid-motor sales and popularity since the Cactus?

Paul: I’ve seen an increase in interest and discussion around the race track and on various message boards/social media outlets. It’s harder to track sales, as we’ve recently announced our new buggy, the X – 6 Cubed, but haven’t released it yet. Interest in the new car is very high, and testing so far suggests we’ve definitely got a great new car on our hands.
 

  

LiveRC: The X Factory cars are always mid-motor. What are the major advantages to mid-motor over rear-motor?

Paul: Basic physics principles tell us that mid-motor provides significant advantage: for any given tire, a smaller moment of inertia (physics-speak for the mass of the car being more centralized front-to-rear) allows you to carry more velocity around the corner. We've also found our cars are more stable when the going gets rough and generally easier to drive - as Chazz likes to say, you’re not dancing on the edge of the cliff each corner waiting for that pendulum to swing around and spin the car.
 
LiveRC: Why, in your opinion, has mid-motor taken as long as it has to catch on here in the United States?

Paul: It’s hard to break the design inertia of the big manufacturers, especially when two of them are based in Los Angles. The big teams have 20+ years of testing and developing the same basic car, and they’ve enjoyed a lot of success with it. So even if a radical layout might eventually be faster, they continue to tweak and tune their existing designs because there’s a major race to win next month and time for testing and especially re-learning is short.

Beginning with the original X – 5, our cars have appealed to the “engineering” market – the typical X Factory customer lives to build and experiment, to tweak and tinker. He constantly thinks up new ideas to make his car faster and better – wherever the engineering principles take him – rather than blindly follow what has been done for 20 years. He knows it’s hard to beat the fastest pros driving a clone of their car but that he can win with a superior vehicle.

We do that at X Factory. We apply well-known principles of physics to the art of race car design and follow where those principles lead. You’ll have better luck robbing a bank then breaking the laws of physics. As I said earlier, the laws of physics dictate mid-motor: Get the weight in the center and reduce the moment of inertia.
 

LiveRC: What is the advantage, in your opinion, to having a car that is built for mid-motor (like the X Factory) over a car that features rear and mid-motor configurations?

Paul: A car’s total design – not just chassis layout but suspension pivots, roll centers, shock mounting and angles, etc – should all work together as a cohesive package. Settings that work well for a mid-motor car I don’t think are ideal for a rear motor car, and vice versa. In my mind that makes it very hard to design a car that works well in both configurations – you either sacrifice a little in both configurations or design wholly for one arrangement and the other may as well be a gimmick. At X Factory we don’t believe in sitting on the fence – mid-motor is the fastest way around the track, so that’s what we do.
 
LiveRC: Is there any advancements or new products in the X Factory mid-motor lineup we can expect to see soon?

Paul: We’re very excited to be testing and developing our new X – 6 Cubed 2wd buggy. It’s a major overhaul and update to the X – 6 Squared, and as I mentioned earlier early testing is going very well. The new car is lighter, more nimble, and even easier and more forgiving to drive. Look for a release coming in early May!

LiveRC: More manufacturer's are offering mid-motor option kits now, what are your plans to compete in sales with the larger companies? Do you feel threatened by them stepping into the mid-motor territory?
 
Paul: If anything I would say I feel a bit flattered and somewhat validated – if I were scared of competition, I certainly wouldn’t be designing race cars! There’s no change in our sales plan for the future – we believe in making high quality cars with innovative designs that push the envelope further.
  
LiveRC: What brought X Factory into the mid-motor scene in the first place? Some might say you guys are ahead of your time.
 
Paul: Greg Hodapp was still with us when the original X – 6 was designed. Greg said, “I’ve never seen a Ferrari with the motor hanging out the back.” This was just after Greg had won the National Championship with our 4WD X – 5, and we were beginning work on our next car. I knew the physics involved, so we knew we couldn’t hang that lead weight off the back, that’s we’d never beat them with a clone of their car. Three years later we made significant design changes and released the X – 6 Squared; now there are more changes so it’s the Cubed.
 
We work hard to stay ahead of our time. While the others are just starting to recognize the benefits of mid-motor, X Factory is about to release the third generation of the X - 6. There are a number of exciting new design concepts on the new car; my Cubed is running about 0.4s per lap quicker than my Squared in back-to-back testing.

LiveRC: This IS "Talk-It-Up Tuesday", so is there anything else you would like to "Talk-It-Up" about?

Paul: First I want to thank our X Factory Family for their continuing passionate loyalty. We think our company is much different from the big guys. You can still E-mail Chazz or me directly. We respond on forums and FaceBook. Heck, we give out the company phone number. This interview is a bit late because I just spent 40 minutes talking with a Family member who had some questions. Where else can you talk directly with the engineer?
 

And we love doing that. Chazz says talking with The Family is much more fun than work, and it’s true for both of us. When we changed the X -5 to the X – 5 Squared, we made 19 changes to the chassis mold for all sorts of improvements. Improvements to quality, performance, ease of working on the car. A dozen of those changes came from The Family.

Finally, you should know that work is ongoing on the X – 7 4WD car. We are testing the Gen 7.0 prototype now, one in U.K. and two here. One of those is out west and I’ve got the other one. We are about to make several more for different Team drivers, and that should tell you we think the X – 7 is ready to go. Right after we launch the X – 6 Cubed and things settle down a bit it will be full speed ahead on the X – 7.

Thanks to Mike and LiveRC for the chance to answer your questions. It’s been fun! 

 

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