Its a falllicy to think that lead alone can balance the various TaG packages. The engine characteristics are too different. You bring up a good example, why 10# weight break for motos at the Supernats. Clearly its wasn’t enough. Yet if you talk with some knowledgable people, the motos were delivering more power. Yet they were slower. Do you know why? How much lead would you have to take off to make them even? I would contend that you can’t take enough off, the power characteristics of the motors are just too different. You need to find .5 a second and that would take stupid amounts of lead.
I can give other examples. The weight and power characteristics have a huge impact on how a kart handles. And unlike what most racers think, handling is everything, the motor is secondary. A chassis designed for 350#, will not work near as well at 395#. A chassis designed for 40hp running a 30 hp motor will not do as well as a chassis designed for a 30 hp engine. We can even change design based on tire used. For example, I have in our shop a chassis designed specifically for the Rotax engine and the Mojo tire. It is completely different from anything I’ve ever seen. Yet to most racers, it looks exactly the same as every other kart out there. But I can tell you that it is faster than a regular Tag chassis when running Mojos.
Given all these variables, do some of you think you can still use lead to balance the karts at the local/regional level? It is a very rough equalizer at best. If lead really had a signficant impact, how could a guy like AJ Hathaway, who is way over the minimum, do so well behind the wheel as he has. I’ve seen him take a kart that’s at least 40# heavy and beat guys running on weight.
This past wekeend, we delivered a new chassis to a customer in Florida. He got the kart on Friday, put his engine on it and raced it on Saturday, with no chance to test or practice. It qualifed on pole, .4 second faster than previous track record. The kart, while it looked like a normal kart had a couple of significant differences. Not your off the shelf kart yet it conforms to every rule.