Right - time to report back after racing today. I ended up running a ratio of 5.47 (as a 41 tooth pinion was the largest that would fit with the 115 tooth spur in the car) and the motor came off after five minutes at about 41 degrees C. I've ordered a 104 tooth spur so will be able to achieve much lower ratios - I expect I could end up around 5.0. I've found that my current GM motor (coupled with the Tekin esc) is much more capable than the X11 LRP that I ran a few years back - the acceleration would really suffer when I tried gearing that motor up but the GM has so much torque that each time I went for a larger pinion the top speed went up and there didn't seem to be any reduction in acceleration at all.
As for my thoughts on blinky - the main difference I noticed was a slightly lower top speed and noticeably less power at the top end. However the difference was not that great as the track consists mostly of corners - so the key aspect of motor performance is acceleration from low to mid speed. In that regard it wasn't that much easier to perfect the racing lines. The regulation is actually 17.5 blinky (I'm still on 13.5 as I haven't yet invested in a 17.5) - so I suspect that that could have a greater impact on making the car easier to drive.
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