The Racers Edge

At the age of 40, I decided to go motor racing - The ultimate mid life crisis.

Sunday, April 16, 2006

Slow, Slow, Not Quick, Slow

Raceland finally got their newRX7 karts - They are made by Sodi and have a single 270cc engine - And they are really slow.

My best lap in one of the twin engine ProKarts was set when they were new and on decent, Dunlop, tyres. The fastest lap today, set by young Dom, was over 5 seconds slower. Even in recent times, with the harder tyres and old karts, anything over 60 seconds was really slow with high 57s/low 58s being on the pace. The problem is that appart from the 2 hairpins and the 100 degee left, all of the corners are easily flat out. In the ProKarts, there were a few corners that needed the driver to balance the throttle to keep momentum up - now anyone can just go flat everywhere. And because of this, if a lighter driver gets on the throttle, out of one of the corners that requires braking, at the same time as one of us ~75kg guys, he pulls 2-3 kart lengths from there to the next braking area.

Today I was sharing a kart with Jack, who is part of the F-Sport team for the Thailand trip at the end of June. After 15 mins of qualifying we were in 12th place, which seemed odd - I took over and as I'd never driven one of these before, I pushed to see what it would do. I could see Young Dom catching me so I let him past and tried to follow him, but on the straights he pulled away really quickly. At that point, with 5 mins of the 30 min qualifying session left, I came in and swapped karts. Allthough I only got 4 laps, on cold tyres, this kart was a second and a half quicker, and we ended up in eighth place. Not a good sign with brand new karts!


Jack stated the race and got us up to 6th place where we stayed for the rest of the, processional, race. My 45 mins passed really quickly, but was pretty boring as there was no real driver input.
When I started my stint I was half a lap down on Michael, and with another 2 laps, I'd have passed him - Thata was about it - A fastest lap of 61.8 against Dom's quickest of 61.1.

These are the same make of karts that we will be racing in Thailand, but thankfully, the engine is 30% bigger! Maybe I need to think about buying a kart again.

posted by Unknown @ 6:25 pm

4 Comments:

At 9:39 pm, Blogger Patrick said...

Disappointing that the new karts at Raceland are slower than the old ones.

I've only raced there once - a friend's stag do, but despite having never driven a kart before, I won the thing and was lapping in the 60s bracket, so I was toying around with doing some rounds of their open series. But the stories of the karts breaking and the fact that the course is now flat out bar the three hairpins (although that was almost true with the old karts, if I remember), I'm not sure I can be bothered.

 
At 9:51 pm, Blogger Unknown said...

To be fair, that was their first time out - I was back last night for a work night out and was 6/10ths quicker that before - They've loosened up a bit, but still much slower - Most folk who were there had been out in the twin engines before - Most said the new karts were easier to drive.......The open series ( sprint and enduro )are great
fun - The more the merrier......

I guess what we need is another outdoor circuit (in the west:-)) with quick karts - Nirvana.....


DJ

 
At 11:24 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

How quick do you want to go?
Two stroke or four stroke?
Why not an outdoor and indoor?

 
At 2:13 am, Blogger Unknown said...

Quicker than everybody else of course! 2 stroke would be great, but I don't know of any current circuit that has rental 2 stroke karts. Indoor & outdoor circuits are fine by me, but all the indoor circuits I've raced on, are way too short. I guess what we all want is a decent circuit with decent karts.

 

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