ultimately i think your fighting a loosing battle because his car has more top speed potential than yours... but if you want to try... i think i saw a 24t pinion in the rc-monster store... theoretically that will give you a 20% increase in top speed and its quite cheap compared to getting a whole new motor... if you still have your emax tranny, you can slap that back in there for the race as well, that should theoretically give you another 20%