Professional race teams have ruined karting in my view.
But I don't mean the "teams" that charge say £50 - £75 a day providing awning space, air and basic guidance. Good luck to the guy's making a living doing this.
It's the big teams with quasi F1 setups (better than many F1 teams in the 80/90's) with a host of mechanics that all seem to have a particular look and unmanly style about them. You know the ones I mean, tight shorts (even in the middle of winter) and totally focused on "their" driver without an ounce of friendliness or humanity about them.
Perhaps they're droids, able to remember every setup for every condition over the last 10 years!
And that's the rub. When one of these team awnings appear at a club meeting and the drivers come out like locusts it is very difficult to compete, even if they have average drivers.
Why? Because they will have been testing at the track either the weekend before or from the Thurdsday/Friday (in the case of PFi).
So whilst you work through your 6 practice sessions to try and get the optimal jetting/tyre pressure/gearing/chassis setup for the conditions these teams are already 3/6/100 days ahead of you. They already know the optimal settings for the particular month/track conditions so in each session the drivers just work on refining their speed.
It's rightly said that track time is everything in Karting, but even better if it's always on the fastest setups right from the off.
Yes have a go at competing but choose where you race carefully and be realistic when measuring your kids performance against anyone run by a major team.
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