My "Source"
I'd like to tell you how I came into kart racing, and why it's a rich man's game.
There isn't a more dedicated fan, die hard, old school, you name it, that's me. I haven't studied racing per se, couldn't name the winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans from any given year, but I know it's the pinnacle of all sportscar racing, and every year LeMans Prototypes and Grand Touring exotics gather at an event of un-matched prestige. I may have been indoctrinated into the Indy 500 as the greatest spectacle in motorsports, but as a driver, an endurance race is the toughest of all- the Indy 500 is 4 to 5 hours, in LeMans, three drivers pull two four hour stints. Pitting in the wee hours at LeMans is fascinating!
Growing up I idolized AJ Foyt, Johnny Rutherford, Bobby and Al Unser, Mario Andretti, Rick Mears and Emerson Fittipaldi. Drivers from the old school were Sir Stirling Moss, not a sir yet, Dan Gurney and Bill Vukovich Sr. and Jr. I loved the American open wheel drivers, but the Europeans raced in a pure kind of way. It showed in the people's love of it. The fans elevated the drivers to near deities. Countries took immense pride in victories notched by their countrymen doing battle in foreign competitions. It was accepted as dangerous and people died, but this was part of the mystique. Some drove in a way that made their continued existence improbable.
The most fearless were those who qualified on pole more than any others. Every generation has one. I love stories of Gil Villeneuve qualifying in the wet and Ayerton Senna...he was purity and Bill Vukovich sailing around the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, taking pole in a rainstorm. Some drove with animal abandon and some drove with cool precision. They were the best.
Freeway go karts were the only karts I would know for almost 40 years. I loved it and I was fast. I also raced Malibu Grand Prix, which was a virage race car, open wheeler on a serpentine track. It was against the clock and it was okay, but...Fast forward to 2001 when a friend named Steven Knapps and fellow Gran Tourismo fan told me about an indoor kart center his company rented for a conference-did I say Gran Tourismo?
I just have to say a few words about the game that changed gaming. Gran Tourismo calls itself the Real driving simulator. It is an excellent driving game, with nice automobile characteristics. Lots of production cars to choose from, but the exotics! OH! Steven also introduced me to this game and it wasn't long before I was beating his times. I really connected with that game and when GT2 came out, I was in line and bought it even though I didn't have a Playstation. I did get a playstation later and when Gran Tourismo 3 came out, it was, to me, the culmination of the first two games. In each game the cars got faster and faster. In the first, you learned how to adjust the settings of a car for racing: suspension dampening, ride height, sway bar, then there was transmission gearing, fully adjustable, tires, they would even lighten you production car and put a racing scheme paint job on it.
GT2 took it a step further and introduced full blown sportscars from real life, LeMans-winning prototypes, Porsches, a marked improvement.
Well, GT 3 gave you Formula 1 cars. Open wheelers from history, Nigel Mansell's championship MacLaren from Indy, Senna's Williams, there are almost a dozen F-1's to collect and race. Now GT4 is out and it's all cool... they say online racing is possible. It's what we've all been waiting for.
But I digress.
Everyone got to race that day at Davy Jones' Kartzone and Steven spanked them all. I was beside myself with envy. Where was this place? I had to find it. It was actually a kart center I'd heard about at the Champ Car races Downtown the year before. In the paddock I saw a crowd of people around a guy and asked an important looking man what the buzz was. He said that the man in the crowd was Davey Jones, driver and he was Davey's partner in a business venture coming soon to Houston, an indoor karting center. He handed me a flier.
When I walked into the airconditioned facility, I was buzzing. Inside here was a competitive raceway, and for a fee you could race wheel to wheel on an indoor track, about 24 second laps, with electronic timing. You got a printout of your session with fast times, speed, a hard copy of a memory.
I really wanted to know I was as fast as I thought I was, and those first laps were a revelation. It was difficult, but the perception of speed was excellent. These karts were markedly faster than any freeway kart I'd driven, and the handling was supreme. The track's turns were spaced far enough that the kart got up to it's top speed several times in a lap and those that could brake and turn together would be faster. I attacked the circuit and was the fastest time of the day. I was in top 10 for the month too. I left extremely satified, sweated out, adrenalized, it was hard not to drive aggressively on the way home!
This was truly when the racing bug bit me. My bud, Atom and I went back there lots of times for the next couple of months, while work was good.
Several months later I made a deal that bought a racing kart. I'm a carpenter, a contractor, and I'll build just about anything, and a guy was having trouble selling some stuff on E Bay to pay for his deck construction. Nice deck, pretty pricey. I was hot to ink the deal so I asked what he was trying to sell. "A racing go kart", he said and 'bing' it all clicked and I made a deal to build his deck for the kart.
It is a 1998 Birel TO-32, a Championship chassis from the Italian maker. Mike Range, the owner, was racing out in Katy, near my house, wouldn't I join them on the next Sunday to check out the kart and watch the races? Hell yes, and Chris, my son went with me. Chris is 18 now, but he was 16 or so then, and we tore it up in that kart when I first got it. We didn't have access to the track at first, so we went to parking lots and set up cones and raced around against the stopwatch. Chris, Atom and I went many times to the Movie theatre parking lot-sometimes at night with the lights on. It was great- that kart simply kicked ass! When I did put it on the track, it was fast there too.
The first couple of races I didn't even finish. Mechanical difficulties at first: broken chain, new clutch needed, but when we got it repaired and running, we just went to the track and ran and ran. The expense of this sport is considerable and by all rights I don't have the money to do it, which is painfully evident at the time of this writing- I haven't raced in 3 months. When we started out we knew we had to upgrade our equipment in several areas. Frank Newsom is an engine mechanic who has help me in so many ways...lets start at the beginning.
Mike Range was on a team with Frank Newsom and another man, Colin Walker.
Colin is an Englishman who has some 50 years of kart, motorcycle and auto racing experience. He started out in Great Britain and has raced everywhere he has been. When providence brought him to Houston, he sought out the kart track here in Katy and began helping it grow. Colin is partly responsible for the major growth of Gulf Coast Karters Inc., track resurfacing, new scoring tower and assembly hall, and a track expansion this year. Colin is also a Fullerton Racing Kart dealer, and that is what they race, a Fullerton and a Yamaha KT 100cc motor.
This is where Frank comes in, he's the engine mechanic. Frank has a shop on the north side too, and is a Yamaha dealer. He has been in racing for thirty years as a driver with his father, and now as a sponsor and full bodied racing team. Team PPK/Fullerton are the team to beat here in Katy, and they're very successful when they enter larger competitions such as IKF's Road Race Grand Nationals last year at Henderson, Tx where they entered and won in several classes and took home a handful of "Duffy's". This team has also been very helpful to me when I've been out there, they invite me into their pits, and assist in any way. Frank, PPK/Fullerton, Colin and Craig McClain have been super nice to me and I've learned lots. Mainly how to win.
Being a new driver, I had no vocabulary for describing handling. I've heard terms like "push" and "loose" or "tight", but you can't know it until you feel it. My son or my bud's Griff and Nicosea and I will go out to the track and just run lap after lap. We'll make changes and retest, make more changes and all the while, I'm learning about the track.
They say that a track will own a driver until the day as the balance shifts. In other words, after a period of time, familiarity with a track gives way to deep knowledge of the track and the driver doesn't have to think as much anymore-He'll own the track. He knows how to enter each turn and how to exit them. He'll know different characteristics of his karts performance on this track and he can tune his machine to run optimally. He has a definite advantage over competitors that are not home to that track because of the sheer number of laps he's run there over the years.
Karting has moved into the technical stratosphere. And prices have grown as well.
In Europe, where karting is supreme, competitors in major series, and they are major, have budgets that run into the millions. Kart manufacturers spend huge budgets and drivers compete for thousands in prize money with equipment on the cutting edge of technology.
Karting is the admitted breeding ground for future professional drivers. It is closely resemblant to the open wheel racing cars, Champ Car, IRL and F-1, but lots of stock car drivers come from the karting ranks. Wherever there's a 1/4 mile dirt oval you can bet there's some karts that get on it and race.
My karting club is in Katy, Texas, Gulf Coast Karters Inc., and it's been around for over twenty years. It's a permanant road course, a sprint track, paved asphalt. I am having a blast at it, and once the money crunch has abated, I'll be back out there. Check it out at www.racekarts.com.
While there click on the Fullerton link and say hello to Colin Walker.
posted by Katykarter @ 5:45 PM
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