If you take a look at:
richardvannoy.info/tech-fest.php
…you will see several videos of a 3pi contest held at our school recently.
The out of the box maze code took about 20 seconds to complete the maze used. As you will see, the top two contestants reduced the times to 16 seconds (2nd place) and the winner clocked in at 13 seconds.
As you will see, the 3PI speeded up considerably on the “straight-away” portions of the maze.
The winner also set a timer that read the exact solve time when the robot finished. In test mode, it also displayed the path in string form (LLSBL, etc.) so he could troubleshoot during testing.