It may seem to some that
after decades of involvement in motorsports - competing in everything from
the Snowmobiling World Championships in Eagle River, Wisconsin to the Pilot
Elf/Renault competion in Magny-Cours, France - that going karting is a
step down. After all, isn't a go kart really just a motorized toy
cobbled together in the garage? Well, not exactly and the move to karting
is more of a step to the side than a step down.
When the idea of getting back into racing began to seem realistic, I knew I would be looking for something simple (I have enough high-tech mysteries to work on at INFONETICS) and inexpensive. The Sports Car Club of America's (SCCA) Spec Racer class (sort of like small Can-Am cars with restricted engines) had a great deal of appeal but in crewing for Steve Kramer I had come to know that it really wasn't the least expensive class out there - not if you wanted to be sure to run up front. Besides, being a pure race car, it would have to be trailered to all the events and the resulting trailer/racer package was way more than the ol' Villiger would be able to tug. And our race budget didn't allow for a Suburban or Dually to replace it.
Showroom Stock was just as pricey but had the advantage of not necessarily requiring a trailer and the super advantage that the racer could double as a work car. And that's about all it could be since by the time the roll cage was installed, there was precious little (soft & safe) areas for passengers. But, I always figured for racing to be worth all the effort that goes into it you had to be able to drive on the absolute limit and then be able to accept the consequences when the limit is exceeded. This includes being able to walk away from a metal ball that moments before was your race car. This I found hard to do when that race car would be a heavily financed, insurance excluded, work ride.
The SCCA's Improved Touring category seemed a much more likely place for me. A rear wheel drive (it had to be RWD or I wasn't going to bother) such as an RX-7, 260Z or even a BMW 2002 could be found for $4k - $6k. In spite of racing friends saying it couldn't (read shouldn't) be done, I saw it as possible to drive the car the hour to Mid-Ohio several times a year, locking the diff and changing tires when I got there and hitting the grid. Lynn and the girls could motor up later in the van and presto!, instant shoestring racing team.
The one flaw in this entire plan though was that I would be the only one who could drive. I'm sure the kids would have gotten a big thrill out of just being part of the team, cleaning and tinkering with the car, cheering Dad on out on the track but Dad would be the only one that could get behind the wheel. The reason this bothered me was because over the years each of the girls have gotten pretty good on the CART Racing simulator program. They knew the importance of the lines, the braking points, turn-in points, consistancy lap after lap, etc. With the IT car as the center of our race team none of them could apply what they've learned on the real thing. Not even in practice.
So enter kart racing into the picture which not only has classes for racers as young as 8 but has no age restrictions on practice. Circleville Raceway Park is open almost every Friday evening for open practice and I could see this as being just as much fun as race day with the girls able to run laps at a pace they're comfortable with. If they never get the urge to take the green flag, that's fine, but every lap behind the wheel would give them more of a feel for what each of their Champ Car heros are experiencing at 200 mph as well as make them better drivers out on the road.
Speaking of Champ Car heros, the 2000 edition of the CART Champ Car preview illustrates the sound basis kart racing provides. Clearly 80% of the drivers that make up the CART line-up this year started in karts. The figure is likely 100% in Formula One.
One of the reasons karting
is such a good training ground is that everything is to scale. Yes, the
karts are small (in fact, when I'm working on ours I almost feel like I'm
working on a miniature) and yes, the engines don't make much power but the
tracks are narrow and have short straights between tight corners, the karts
are light allowing them to corner faster and stop quicker and share all
the handling principles of their full sized counterparts. So, with
all these things in scale, a kart driver lapping at a 20mph average
is about as busy as a car driver lapping at 90. A kart driver averaging
about 40mph around the course would be like 180 for a formula car driver.
In other words, our Margay (the few times it was running well enough) with
the rate that corners draw up and flow by feels about like a Formula Ford.
The guys who race the fastest karts, the "shifter" karts, likely have the
sensation one would get in a Champ Car or F1 car.
As for a racing kart being
a toy, some may see it as that but it's certainly something to be taken seriously when behind the wheel and it's nothing that is easily built on the
neighborhood variety workbench. Today's karts are highly engineered, fairly
technical machines. Even the Briggs & Stratton stock engine we run has to be
balanced and blueprinted to be competive. Chassis construction is a science
and chassis set-up (from what I can see) is an artform. Racing tires are
carefully selected and a great importance is placed on reducing rolling
resistance as well as freeing up any and all moving components - right
down to the type and viscosity of the engine oil splashing around the crankcase and
slowing things down ever so slightly.
We purposely chose one of the slowest classes for two reasons: 1) I'm too old to crash into anything at a high velocity anymore, and 2) as a training vehicle for the girls a low powered machine is much more valuable than one with horsepower to spare. The art of driving is all about smoothness and conservation of speed once it's attained. A powerful car or kart allows the driver to get away with a multitude of driving sins, masking mistakes and allowing bad, or at least, undesirable habits to form. A car or kart that fights for every mph is much more sensative to corrections in a corner and mistakes on the track in general. A low powered vehicle demands that it's driver be smooth, be consistant, maintain momentum and carry the speed accumulated down the straight through the turn for use on the next straight. As I said, even if all we do is practice and the track time only gives them a better idea of what's going on out there, for what I want the girls to get out of this, the simple 5hp B&S is all we need.
Race back to 2000