There may be teams in your area that run in the Experimental class all the time so you'll have somebody to compete against. You'll need to go to an event to find out...

Actually, the kids involved seem to be a pretty equal mix of gearheads and nerds! When I was teaching and mentoring a team I was always amused by such diverse kids working together so well. Ordinarily the grease monkeys and eggheads avoid each other like they have contagious diseases, but Electrathon seems to bring them together and they end up making new friends.

Yes, price can be a critical factor to some teams, especially the high schools. Most of them don't have expendable funds to experiment with, so they stick with the "tried and true". I run Optima Yellow Top batteries. I bought 4 of them in April of 2010 and 4 more in December of 2010. I'm still using them!

There have been attempts to equalize the different battery types before. Usually, ballast is added to make up the difference in weight. For instance, Standard Battery class is limited to 73 pounds of batteries while Lithium is limited to 22 pounds. Simply add 51 pounds of ballast and the cars should be equal, right? It doesn't quite work that way because Lithium batteries perform differently; they still have a performance advantage. If you can find a viable way to equalize the Experimentals with the Standards I'm certain that Electrathon America would be very grateful.