Mitch
With the Motar bikes I get about that much now. Before SKUSA and now the CSC, we were getting 120 every race. When SKUSA started here our club races went down and we were giving SKUSA the money for the big races, which were not as big as our club races the year before. We started the CSC to at least get some of it back for the tracks. In reality, if we did not have any series going on then the club races would be the only game in town and they would grow. It does not matter if you had a 5 race or a 7 race series. It is in the mind of the racer that these series races are the most important and the club races are nothing. It is all a matter of perception. When my club races had 120 karts they were the big deal. The point is it is still the same people. What do you think the Nations cup was? 75 karts from our state and 15 karts from out of state, more or less a CSC race with less karts, about half of our total group. If the Colorado karts did not attend, what would you have had? A cancellation is what you would have had. The Nations cup is just an example of one more event for Colorado that is added to the calendar for the 150 Colorado karters to choose from.
What the sport needs is less sanctioning bodies for the whole nation. Stars, SKUSA, WKA, and IKF are all going for the same crowd. With the price of gas the way it is now not all of the national races will survive. They are canceling events all over for poor turn out. You can?t even put up $50,000 and have any karts show. It struck me in Vegas last year looking at who attended; it was not in town by the casinos and the general public. It was just the same group of karters that were there, no crowd to watch, just the racers and their pitt people. When I attended IKF national events in the 70?s there were 500 karters there all week and big crowds to watch on the weekends. Things have really changed since then. The dirt races are getting the 500 karts to a national now. When you have to spend $7000 on one shifter engine to be competitive, or have to buy a new animal engine every three races, you run off 90% of your possible new karters. TAG is even expensive to get into but at least the engines last for a while.
Like I said, the bottom line is we need more racers, not more races and more tracks. We need to reduce the cost of getting into racing. I was talking to Mark Kite, the sales manager at Sun Honda this weekend and he said if it were not for the financing they have available to them from Honda and others that Sun would only sell 20% of the bikes that they do now. That may be right and I have been looking into getting financing that is affordable for new karters. There are over 1500 motocross racers with an AMA card in Colorado, and thousands that do not race. I do not see why karting only has 10% of that amount racing.