UK Karting - Notice Board (General Karting) : Re: Is it a stupid idea ?

Notice Board (General Karting)

Re: Is it a stupid idea ?
Posted by 'SimonS' on 29 Jan 2010 @ 11:52

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SimonSJoined: December 2004
Total Posts: 4
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"it would bring a great deal of coherence to the 'karting system' make these titles highly coveted and valued."

And in the very seeds of your idea lies its destruction.

Very coveted prizes leads to all sorts of expensiveness. Did you ever read the report on the Christo motors? It was commented that the "team had spent F1-like quantities of money" in the search for technical advantage. (the further explantion was that the money bore the same relationship to the average race budget as F1 budget bears to the average racing budget, not that Ł200Million had been spent)

The implication is that restricting racing still further would leave us with grids of twenty karts nationally and half of them would be daughter teams of the few mainstream teams.

What is happening at the moment is that certain drivers are requesting that different subclass grids are created to separate them from other drivers whose motivation and racing ethic is different. So, one club has a request to run a separate 'older driver rotax class' because the younger drivers cause more contact, drive more recklessly, cause more damage and win more in a combined class.

Once you have clubs acceding to these members requests, is there any more justification for not having grids with other motors? Or would you compel the clubs to run only the grids of which you approve.

Let's clear up the confusion as well. Drivers very rarely make an informed decision about entering a class when they start racing, and often go with an illusion when they subsequently change class.

My guess is that most drivers start in one class because that is all that the trader sells, and that the majority start off in Rotax becayuse teh profit margins in Rotax are larger than any other class. (I've had a trader tell me that he would love to sell Formula Blue, but he makes more than 4 times the profit from a Rotax)

Illusion 2: Bigger grids don't automatically mean better racing. Normally, all it means is that one has more chance of finding someone of a similar speed. Now for a number of years I have raced in a small club grid where all the drivers were nationally recognised drivers or close to it, and the racing was excellent. Indeed one visitor remarked that he preferred it to his larger club grid because we had a race with 5 karts nose to tail and numerous changes of position and no-one made contact or took a stupid risk with a kerb.

Illusion 3. Kart Speed matters. Most of the Clubbie-100cc classes have identical speeds. (Clubbie-100s because we are talking Rotax, TKM and Blue rather than specialist freetune ZFs etc). The Laptimes differ more as a result of rubber and power curve delivery than any significant BHP. One arrives at the braking zone at approximately the same speed, or at least needing a datalogger to spot the difference but the technique from there to the outrun has been vastly different. Indeed I suspect the difference between Blue and TKM will largely disappear thanks to the new rubber, but then so will the cost advantage.

What is true is that the presence of an evangelist at a particular track will make a huge difference. Not only in the karts, but in other activities too.

Clay for example has seen a resurgence in TKMs because of significant evangelism from a few people. Other classes have fallen. The NKRA has struggled to get recognition at some tracks, despite the format being recommended by drivers on this forum, because there is no-one willing to push it at the track.

It goes even further, some clubs struggle to continue simply because there's no-one prepared to get onto the committees, so the same old people carry on doing the same old thing without any dissent....and the membership becomes only the people who agree with that committee.

Message Thread:

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Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'richydehav' (27 Jan 2010 @ 8:10)

Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'dth07' (27 Jan 2010 @ 8:59)

Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'kai' (27 Jan 2010 @ 9:12)

Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'michaelg36' (27 Jan 2010 @ 9:27)

kai.... by 'dth07' (27 Jan 2010 @ 11:14)

Re: dth07.... by 'kai' (27 Jan 2010 @ 11:59)

Re: dth07.... by 'dth07' (27 Jan 2010 @ 13:37)

Re: dth07.... by 'kai' (27 Jan 2010 @ 14:06)

Re: dth07.... by 'dth07' (27 Jan 2010 @ 16:40)

Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'SimonS' (27 Jan 2010 @ 9:51)

Re: Class Structure in British Karting by 'MattScott' (27 Jan 2010 @ 12:22)

cadets by 'TheMantis' (27 Jan 2010 @ 12:58)

Re: cadets by 'MattScott' (27 Jan 2010 @ 13:27)

Restructuring of karting by 'QuickOldTimer' (27 Jan 2010 @ 16:17)

How About looking at club car racing...... by 'Aquila' (27 Jan 2010 @ 18:29)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 8:51)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'Ballhatchet' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:16)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:23)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'kai' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:30)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'Ballhatchet' (28 Jan 2010 @ 13:27)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 14:02)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'Ballhatchet' (28 Jan 2010 @ 14:34)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 14:58)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'iant' (28 Jan 2010 @ 15:16)

Re: BRP by 'kai' (28 Jan 2010 @ 15:22)

Going off thread a little........ by 'Newshound' (28 Jan 2010 @ 15:31)

Re: Going off thread a little........ by 'kai' (28 Jan 2010 @ 17:20)

Re: Going off thread a little........ by 'Newshound' (28 Jan 2010 @ 19:00)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'Marc' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:31)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'iant' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:40)

Re: Restructuring of karting by 'pccsystems' (28 Jan 2010 @ 9:49)

Is it a stupid idea ? by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 11:45)

Re: Is this a wind-up ? by 'kai' (28 Jan 2010 @ 12:21)

Its not Kai. by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 13:49)

Re: Its not Kai. by 'Marc' (28 Jan 2010 @ 14:46)

Re: DavyBoy by 'kai' (28 Jan 2010 @ 15:24)

Re: DavyBoy by 'DavyBoy' (28 Jan 2010 @ 15:41)

Re: Is it a stupid idea ? by 'SimonS' << You are here!

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