I agree Brian, I have never run on-road, but in off-road its setup and throttle control that wins races, not batteries

Yeah, it just sounds like an excuse for not winning; "If I had Lipos, I could win."

With the exception of safety (the idiots, not the batteries), the only reason for not allowing LIPO's is money. Battery manufacturers want to ban anything that will cut into their pie as far as racing is concerned, if lipo's were legal, they would have to climb aboard or sink and either way its going to cost them big.

Conspiracy theory's, gotta love them

I race both on-road and off-road. You're absolutely correct about off-road being more about setup and throttle control, but on-road is vastly different.
In on-road stock racing, the most important item for speed is the batteries, followed closely by the motor, then setup, then throttle control.
Serious on-road racers (those just short of the "pro" level) will only use the very latest approved cells with the highest matching numbers they can get. The minor differences in voltage actually means something to people who can run 40 laps in a row with less than .2 seconds variance in those laps. When you get to be that good, you can tell the difference between 1.222 and 1.225 volts/cell in a matched pack.

On the original topic, one thing to remember is that ROAR doesn't actually "BAN" anything, per se. What they do is choose what technologies are approved, creating a list of what you can use, based on lots of testing and 'encouragement' by various manufacturers.

Most tracks only loosely follow ROAR rules anyway, at least for club racing. I've never heard of a track that didn't allow lithium-based batteries in at least one class for club racing.
When a ROAR-sanctioned event comes to town, however, they should definitely abide by ROAR rules.

My local track will not allow them because of the vids of lipo's blowing up, the track owner is afraid of accidents

lol, my local track dont care, just dont say you got lipos. Not like they inspect yoru car. THe scary part would be if it blows up while some1 is trying to pick it from a crash (which cold have caused explssion).