They say that lightweight, low power cars can outperform heavy, high power competition. But what if you took that to the logical extreme?
Normally I wouldn't call a stripped and caged Delta Integrale hillclimb car a heavyweight, but compared to an R/C car, the Lancia is a monster.
The R/C car (piloted by an accomplished R/C racer) has just one horsepower, the turbocharged Lancia has 600.
This German show had the cars face off in three challenges - a race on a circular skidpad, a best-time competition on an oval skidpad, and a 300 meter drag race.
The R/C car outperformed the full-size Lancia in the first two challenges, then held about even with it over two drag racing runs.
I'm not going to say that these tests were perfectly designed to give as even a playing field as possible, but they do give good evidence that lightweight is paramount in performance car design.