Ahh, I see! Thanks for the responses, I thought it'd be a bit unusual for Mentorn to tell a team to make their robot less competitive despite being perfectly within the rules, especially considering Typhoon 2 came along the year after Hypno-Disc 'retired'! I suppose the better armour meant spinners weren't quite as dangerous as previously - bit like how flippers were easily the dominant weapon around S1-3 before all the other roboteers got wise and started putting srimechs on their machines...

That's interesting what you said as well, Maddox, especially qualifying! Didn't realise it was that sort of a thing, just thought it'd be like one of those 'charity' events that they used to do, still going for the win but with a lot less damage being done - that said, the only bits of 'qualifying' I've ever seen are the ones from that Robot Wars Series 1 documentary and the very brief clips/team descriptions of the Series 3 qualifiers, where robots were apparently just demonstrated against breezeblocks or watermelons or something (Hypno-Disc and Toe Cutter respectively)

I do remember that about Typhoon 2 as well, that was a scary, scary machine... no idea it had done that in qualifying too!