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Two day races, forget it. Twice the expense for the promoter and not twice the gross and another day of lost rental business.
And Doug:
1. California has over 2000 karters.2. Two race series will have less racers and will have the same turnout as a club race gets now if that much. Where are the increased numbers coming from? There will not be enough to run two series and make any money with half the karts.
3. I have two good races now and still have club races that are making some money.
4. It will be a long time before THE TRACK will get 70 new racers into the sport, in the meantime the racers they get will come from the same crowd.
40% of the racers are from that side of town.We should call FEMA now as it will be dog eat dog!
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.
If you drop TAG from the series you will have half the entries. Then having a TAG only series you will have twice the 5 races and a low turn out for all of them. All of that to have two races that make no money. I have two races now that make money. Makes no sense to me. If I have to compete with two series then why even do club races. I know I am not willing to drop one of my CSC races, they are the only ones I make any money on. You have to have at least 50 racers to break even for any race. We just get enough now to keep running club races. If the Track ever does open 90% or more of the racers will come from what we allready have. Just because you open a new track does not mean all these new racers come out of the woodwork. That will mean all of the club races at my track will go down in numbers until more new racers are found. Racers will only go to a limited number of events no matter how many events and tracks there are. Bottom line, we need to find more racers to fill all of these events. Add another track, add 12 more events for club races, a CSC, throw in another SKUSA race and you have 14 more events for the 150 karters we have now. Do the math, why do you think JB quit running club races. It would be nice if people would stay in the sport for more than two or three years but that is how karting has been since I was a kid. The new racers just replace the ones that quit. Next year we will lose many karters to the sprint cars and will be lucky to get that many back in new karters for next season. Hey Doug, wouldn’t be great to have twelve tracks near Denver and have one race at each track, then you would not have to do any club races or even go to any national races :loony: Only problem is all of them would go out of business.
Rich,
You can have your 395 for Masters and we will run the Juniors alone. I think I will provide the gasoline for a few of them next race and see if that makes a difference. I have heard rumors of hot fuel at the IMI club races since we don’t check, in more classes than the TAG jr.
Rich, I don’t mind you complaining, I just want to make it fair and if you as a racer think the weights for your class are wrong then I will change them.
I did not hear about the accident, what happened? I do think the juniors are going to fast and I do not think they should be running with the rest of the TAGS.Rick, we had plenty of VP fuel, I am sorry that you were told by Bobby that we were out.
I am not recruiting a dominate driver, only a awsome Italian engine from the mafia.AGAIN, WE ARE NOT OUT OF VP FUEL AND HAVE NEVER BEEN!!!!
I am glad I increased my insurance to 10 million!
Rich, if you really think the weight is to much for Masters I will change it back for you the next race, if the tornado has left anything. I have not met any Vito’s yet but if they are in the Italian mofia I should be seeing them before I leave.IMI is not low on fuel, we have more barrels in another container. Bobbys brain is low if he told you we were out. I can’t even leave for a few days without having the place fall apart. Arin gets a DUI, Doug is MIA for the race, Bobby forgets about 20 barrels of fuel. :idn:
It was obvious to me that the weight changes for Jr and senior TAG were in the right direction, masters I don’t know yet. I also know from working with a Leopard for two days last week, with and without the restricted header, that the exhaust restricter at our altitude and at my track does very little to change the performance and lap times for the juniors. I still think there is more to do to make the racing more competitive between the different engines at my track and for every track that runs TAG.
I changed the weights for this year because I have known long before this year that the weights were not right for my track. I just wish I had done something sooner rather than later.
I don’t understand why SKUSA won’t change anything during the race season, they should at least allow the CSC to make adjustments for the different tracks and address the junior TAG weights overall for all tracks. In the beginning of the year they say it is too soon make any adjustments without having more information and then when we are near the end of the season it is to late to make any changes. If they had been making adjustments all along we would be done with it by now. How can you figure anything out if you leave it the same all year? We all know that the weights are not right for every track and that the weights overall need adjusting. Having every junior engine at the same weight is a oversite on their part or a lack of any real testing from the beginning.
Only a few of the Rotax drivers have figured out the proper combination of parts for the carb that brings the engine to life, most are using the stock setup. Maybe Doug would be nice enough to explain what they have done with their carb setup and explain how those changes have affected the performance over the stock setup. It is tough to make changes to the weights for the Rotax when there is such a difference in carb setup and gear ratio between everyone.
My only objective is to try and get more parity between engines so that it does not become a one or two engine class, which is what is happening in Jr and senior for sure. Rich Vito was the only one who said the weight changes did not work for him so we will have to see.
You can expect more changes for TAG from me, every race if necessary to get it right. I will be in Italy this next week and will miss the race this weekend but I still may make more adjustments for this weeks race.
I was told today that the engine in question was not torn down and there is not a protest in the works. Quit your whinning. My point is if you choose to run a sealed engine in a class that does not require seals then you take the risk of the tech director wanting to open it up since we are using SKUSA rules. If the Rotax has such an advantage over all the other engines in the class at IMI and GJMS then the weights should be set different for each track to make it fair. I will tell all of you that the weights for all the TAG classes for the IMI series will be adjusted for this disparity before the next race. I agree with Doug that if everything stays the same it will be a two engine class and you can see that by the type of engines that have quit running the CSC series. I would welcome any comments as to how the weights should be set for each engine at IMI to even the field. The way it is right now the Leopards have the advantage in TAG Junior and the Rotax has the advantage in the senior and masters class, this is obvious. So what should we do about it?
Gee, it could be that it was the only Rotax that has ever run a 53 second lap, which was about a second faster than any other Rotax has ever turned and it was on a hot day. Why should any engine be allowed a free pass on tech just because it has a seal? It could also be that Dennis is the tech director and that is his job and there is no policy at any track I know of to pay for resealing.
