[StevenB]

Elite teams do not just drive fast, they are fast at everything. Why? Because there is only 2:15 in the match to score points. Elite teams put in the design work to get the most out of every motor and mechanism they put on their robot. Most of us are content to get the motor to drive the mechanism at all, but elite teams do the math to figure out what designs and gear/pulley ratios will actually squeeze the most performance out of the motors they have.

The idea that a slow robot has more pushing power than a fast robot is not fully correct. If you have six motors on your drive and wheels with normal-ish friction, you can build a single-speed traction-limited drivetrain that still goes really fast. You should always build things to be as fast as possible (but no faster).