I’ve been looking at the hobbywing 1900kv with one of the variants of their XR8 ESC, seems a popular choice in the 1/8th buggies.
The G2 pro seems to be the latest one with some tweeks over the earlier version.
I think a mixture is surfaces would be good.
The track in this video look, has pretty much every component mentioned above plus different surfaces.
https://youtu.be/VXc-ToRNoMg
Apologies, I’m not sure how to embed the video.
Never used gens myself but they do seem to have a fairly good rep as i recall, all comes down to price I guess I imagine the Opti is more expensive due to the extra mah. Also remember that increasing the capacity doesn’t necessarily equate to the same increase in run time as the pack will be heavier.
I’ve used optipower in helis, always been good packs, cells are obviously manufactured elsewhere but the packs are put together in the uk, uk based support as well.
Yes they have tended to thin out over time, certainly as the Internet gets to review things first. By the time publications come out, products have already been on the market at least several months and many online user reviews already in existence.