The Garage: Your daily dose of automotive news, reviews and motorsports coverage
The F1 guys aren’t the only ones who get to race hard in the Principality of Monaco. The kart racers get their chance too and often they are more aggressive than the big boys.
On October 17, the KF3 Final race was on a wet track. It seems that one section was a bit more wet than others.
This past weekend at Inisfil Indy kart track, Canadian Karting League owner Russ Bond announced a huge development in the long term growth of the CKL. Bond and long time racer Chris Bye announced that Bye’s company Franczak Enterprises would be providing a sponsorship opportunity that is pretty much unheard of in the Arrive and Drive karting world.
Later this Fall, 10 carefully selected CKL drivers will test a Formula Vee prepared by Vallis Racing courtesy of Franczak. Beyond that, Franczak and Bye will sponsor one driver who competes in the 2011 CKL season by providing a fully funded Vee ride for the 2012 season.
What makes this announcement so unique is that this type of opportunity is rarely offered in the world of arrive and drive karting. Usually sponsored rides go to the folks who have competed and won at a National level. In most cases, these drivers are already well funded.
The beauty of arrive and drive is that when done properly, as Bond has done with the CKL, the competition comes first and evenly prepared karts ensure lots of close racing. Even more important is that a driver who is successful in low powered 4 cycle karts, which reward smoothness and consistency, is almost certain to succeed in a Formula Vee. In both cases, the low power threshold means that drivers must be very skilled at keeping their momentum up.
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There is no less expensive way to get involved in motorsport than arrive and drive kart racing. For those of you who haven’t heard of the concept, you arrive at the track, pay a small fee for your day’s racing and head out on the track. It is absolutely the most affordable way to go racing. Often though, there are complaints about karts that don’t run or are far from equal from each other.
That’s because many of this type of facility also use their race karts for schools and corporate events. Call it maximizing your ROI. Great for the investors, but not so great for the racers.
The newly announced Canadian Karting League hopes to change that. Program owner Russ Bond is a racer first and investor second, which means he wants races to get the most bang for their buck. The karts are professionally maintained and will only be driven by racer members. No corporate events. Russ has a few pro drivers on staff who will test each kart before every event to ensure that all karts are within 0.2 seconds a lap of each other. This means that the racing really does come down to who is the best driver, not who chose the best kart.
I’ve mentioned that the CKL is affordable. How affordable? How about a $99 season registration fee and just $50 per event! Most club racers spend more than that on fuel taking their small bore race car to a lapping day and they still have to make sure everything works. 50 bucks to show up and drive!
To learn more visit the Canadian Karting League online
What a great concept: Hold a giant kart race in a hotel parking lot in Las Vegas. Have quite literally the best of the best racers in the world come for the weekend and actually race. Not an exhibition, a race! Pit the best car racers against the best kart racers from around the world and let them duke it out.
Oh yes – don’t market it. Let the automotive media find out about it from an inside source during the second day of the event. That way you’ll be sure that hundreds of thousands of spectators don’t fly in from around the world to see a 7 time World Champion race. Oh well, the kart racing fraternity has never really been known for making smart business decisions.
Despite that, fans and local media got a great show this past weekend thanks to a truly world class depth of talent. Where else can you see up and coming kids, international racers and the best race for nothing more than a trophy and then go shake hands with the spectators?
In the SuperPro class, Bas Lammers from the Netherlands took the win while Michael Schumacher ended up in the 7th spot out of 23 that finished out of 43 starters. Piquet ended up in 10th, while Canadian Mike Vincec was one of the 20 DNF’s.
Once again, a big thanks to Tom Donoghue for the huge collection of photos he has allowed us to share from the event. We have another giant gallery after the break with lots of up close shots of Mike.
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Today we have another huge gallery from the SKUSA nationals in Las Vegas courtesy of Tom Donoghue. This set includes a variety of different classes, but obviously the main focus is on the big boys. Michael Schumacher, Nelson Piquet Jr, Buddy Rice and a few others.
You can find the full results from yesterday at the SuperNats site, but in the SuperPro series there are a few interesting stats. Following all the heat races, Schumacher will be starting 27th out of 44 karts in today’s big finale while Sebastian Buemi is way up in 8th. Not bad for guys who don’t race karts all that often any more. Ontario guy Mike Vincec is starting in 19th, ahead of Piquet.
Huge gallery after the break
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While obviously there is no new news from Vegas yet this morning, Tom Donoghue has been hard at work editing his shots from yesterday and has been kind enough to share more of his incredible work with our readers.
As we hear more today, we’ll be sure to share.
Another huge gallery after the break.
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Yes, that is Michael Schumacher with his steed on the rollie stand. A friend commented tonight that it would be fun to see the local boys put Mikey on the trailer. It really isn’t a fair comparison though, as many of the regular competitors are driving their own kart, working with their own tuner. Michael (and most of the other big guys) at the SKUSA SuperNationals is using an off the rack machine and I’d be willing to bet that he’s never worked with his tuner and nor have they. The home town boys have an advantage. The ace in the hole for the pros is their ability to bring it all together for the big race. Schumacher broke in qualifying and the MyLaps numbers don’t look so good from today’s heat race but you can be sure that he’s learning in each session. You can’t count him out on Sunday!
After the break, we have a huge gallery of incredible photos from the past 2 days in Vegas.
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The general public here in North America doesn’t really have a concept of how huge kart racing is in Europe, but they even the most motoring oblivious soccer mom knows the name Schumacher. She may not know why she knows it, but she does. Just Like the Andretti name, Schumacher is a household name.
What most North Americans also don’t realize is that just about every pro racer in Europe, whether they race Formula 1 or Porsche Supercup, began racing karts as a child. Many of them continue to race karts even though they earn their living in cars. Karts keep their skills sharp and are a heck of a lot of fun too.
This weekend in Las Vegas is the Superkarts USA Nationals (SKUSA) and the entry lists not only read like a who’s who of North American racing but also include some Formula 1 royalty. When I heard this morning that M. Schumacher was there I assumed it was for a media race, but nothing could be further from the truth. King Michael of Germany is racing him in the SuperPro class along with one of the princes of the sport, Nelson Piquet Jr. Also from F1 is Sebastian Buemi. The IRL is represented by Dan Wheldon and Buddy Rice. In other words, the depth of talent here is very deep as are the photo ops for fans.
Unlike the Formula 1 paddock, there is a very good chance that spectators can get up close and personal with these racing superstars. Perhaps even better is the opportunity to see the young stars of motorsport who are the champions of the not too distant future. Of course we’re keeping our eyes on Canadian talents like Mike Vincec, Daniel Morad and Michael Valiente.
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We took advantage of some great spring weather today and made the most of Good Friday by taking the boys for their first track day of the season. In fact, this was to be 8 year old Riley’s first time driving and 10 year old Duncan has only been out a couple of times before.
We arrived at Mosport to find a fair amount of snow still hanging around, even covering the track in spots. Over on the big track, we could see the occasional new Porsche making the rounds. This is in prep for the driving event we’re attending early next week. I’m sure I’ll have lots of stories to follow!
Out on the track today, Duncan blew out some cobwebs. Lat time out, he was pretty tentative around the turns. Something about fear I think. This time, he gradually worked his way up to speed. Still not fast, but a think a few lapping sessions and he’ll loose some of the apprehension.
Little brother must have a bit of crazy in him, because he went hard right out of the box. A couple of spins slowed him down again until he began spinning as he tried different lines and found his way around the track. The interesting thing we noticed was that Riley has never been taught about dealing with oversteer and yet within a few laps he was an old pro at hanging it out with just the right amount of opposite lock. Perhaps a bit of a natural talent there.
From our family here in The Garage to yours, we wish you a safe and happy Easter weekend. May you get to share some quality family time at the track too!
For the past few weeks, Matt Farah and the crew at Garage419 have been hard at work promoting the first ever Garage419 Invitational, an indoor karting extravaganza pitting teams of pros and peons against one another. Of course the pros are questionable given that they largely consist of us writer types. At least auto writers think they can drive and certainly know how to have a good time, so one can be certain that fun was on the agenda.
The rapidly growing team at Team Polizei has put together a fun vid of Der Attack on Der Opponents. Certainly the highlight must be watching Team Polizei head Piloto Alex Roy, complete with scarf and balaclava, spin in front of the entire field. Fortunately, no Lambo was damaged in the filming of this video! Sorry Alex…just had to poke!
Watch the Polizei Army after the break
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