I agree nitro is cool but outperformed by brushless. Nitro has a lot of stuff to tinker with: glow plugs, glow plug igniter batteries, receiver batteries, fuel you have to inconveniently buy at the hobby store, piston/sleeve wear, porting/polishing/balancing/fanging/blueprinting the header/sleeve/crank/piston/rod, cold tuning, hot tuning, glow plug temp range, bottom dead center after running, oil after running, charging receiver and glow igniter batteries after running, etc , etc. If you love tinkering but love driving more consider with 1/8 brushless you can have BETTER performance, less maintenance, and more reliability, and more wheel time. On offroad tracks brushless is faster in skilled hands than nitro. If youre into speed the world record is held by an electric right now (nic case) something nitro cant do. One argument I hear over and over is "but brushless is so much more money". Brushless is actually cheaper in the long run. The follwing is an example of 1/8 scale. One good $260 brushless motor/esc can outlast at least 3 $150 nitro motors. 2 lipo batteries for $125 each provide 30minutes+ of runtime where 6 gallons of nitro fuel plus 25 glo plugs plus glo igniter battery plus receiver battery can cost $350+. That is food for thought.