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@Russ McGrane wrote:
…. but the bigger issue is that everyone (with the exception of Scott who’s response was totally cool) is so damn ready to start a fight, being overly sensative, picking sides in some sort of political war that for the life of me I can’t understand.
There are some who want to make it political or claim it is political but it is really very, very basic.
I estimate that the average racer (about 75 to 80% of total racers) has both time and money to do 10 races per year. I can give specific examples but in the 15 years I have been racing go karts in Colorado, 10 is the magic number. Right now we have a total of 22 events competing for the same 150 racers. That is roughly the same number of racers we had 15 years ago when we started.
Someone is going to lose. It’s not politics, it’s economics.
People ask me all the time how do we get everybody to race together. It is really very simple. 10 races. 1 series.
To everyone putting on races, put the racer first. Find a way to work together.
Greg has turned a 52 in his Rotax TAG. The track record is under 50 (Ben). Jeff has run his stock Honda in the low 51.
Mitch
A small group of Shockwave racers are coming over. They will be arriving late Thursday. They are really excited to come.
The SKUSA layout looks a lot like the SuperNats track two years ago.
@Curt Kistler wrote:
@Jon Romenesko wrote:
Looks fun! Will this be the same layout that SKUSA uses?
Jon,
Does this look familiar?Sheldon
I have a slide hammer that works great on knocking them out. Bring the pipe by the shop, only take a minute.
There is a lot of good stuff I picked up for Rich. Greg will have it at the swap meet. There are some spare parts for Rotax, some CRG stuff and lots of gears, tools and other misc stuff. See you there.
For a Leopard, I would only run the VP 98. You need the higher octane of the 98. If you want a cheaper alternative, Hill Sinclair on Ralston Road (just west of Sheridan) in Arvada, sells 100 octane at the pump for half the cost of VP.
They produce the best power a tad on the lean side and higher rpm. Both of which reduce engine life. But a fair compromise is to run it around 15,500 top rpm and try to hit the jetting about on the nose. 1-1/2 turns on the low and between 7/8 and 1 turn on the high.
Keep the carb filter clean, your fuel well mixed and 18 to 1 with a good caster like Burris or Maxima 927 (actually the same oil but with dyed a different color). The Leopard should give a good solid 15 to 20 hours of competitive hp if you run it like that.
What a race day! First our host, Juan and his son Juan Bosco. Juan Bosco run in the MicroMax class. There are 6 or 7 kids, 3 of which are very fast. Juan Bosco was very fast but was behind the pole by only .007 of a second! We knew we were going to have a race. In the pre-final, Juan Bosco took the lead and never looked back. While the other driver kept it close until lapped traffic came into play, Juan Bosco was never really threatened.
In the main, Juan Bosco used his pole position to take the lead and this time, he was able to pull out a fairly large gap. In the pre-final, we noticed that we were losing a bit in the high speed sweeping turn 1. Greg and I thought the kart was binding just a little bit and Juan Bosco was losing about 3 or 4 kart lengths every lap. However, he and his kart were very strong through the rest of the track to more than make up for it. So we made a small seat adjustment for the main and it worked. Juan Bosco picked up almost .3 per lap and that was huge. By race end, he was up most of a lap.
Greg’s class was a little different story. The class was big, 16 racers. More importantly, the quality was very good. The top 10 were separated by less than .4 of a second. We had a king bolt come loose in qualifying and Greg started 8th, .3 off pole time. Greg had a really bad start and came out of turn 2 in 10th. But Greg did what Greg usually does and moved up 5 spots to finish 5th. He set a time faster than two of the guys who finished in front of him. That was no small feat as on this very tight and technical track it was very difficult to find a way around a racer.
We made a few more changes to the kart to find just a bit more speed and Greg was gaining confidence in his ability to handle the difficult racing surface. We had high hopes for the main.
Greg had a terrible start, 10th again out of turn 1! By lap 7, Greg had moved to 7th and was passing for 6th when he was chopped off and spun. Back to 10th! He put his head down and started back through the field. He was again in 7th when the guy he just passed used him instead of his brakes and that sent Greg off at high speed almost hitting a concrete wall. By the time he got back on, he was in 10th! Greg passed one more kid to finish in 9th. Greg did manage to set a very quick lap, only .009 off the fastest lap of the race. Greg had the speed to be on the podium, just not the racing luck.
This again brought home to me the great thing about racing Rotax. We went to another country and raced exactly the same package we race in our local series and were competitive. Other than basic setup stuff, gearing, axles and tire pressures, we made no changes to our package other than removing 4lbs for the scales. (Could all this good food finally be adding weight to Greg?) The competition was very, very good. The racers are strong, aggressive but some what fair. The racer that punted Greg did apologize.
Most of the other racers were very friendly and helpful. Many came up to us to thank us for coming and hoped to see us again. The announcer mentioned us several times. I am surprised how many speak English and very good English at that. It made us feel like we were at home.
We enjoyed another great meal last night, one of the best since I have been coming to Mexico. It was a small local kitchen and cantina with several large screen TVs. The local soccer team was playing in the finals in Mexico city so it was an important match. With a draw, the Monterry team would move on to the semi-finals. As I enjoy soccer, it was fun to watch in a partisan crowd. We cheered, we booed bad calls, and they played to a 1-1 draw. And we drank a lot of wine.
I’ll post more photos later.
