Club Solos

[John Denman]

We've been running a little market testing through the summer with shifter Solo's it appears as though the word has gotten out.

There are a lot of 125 packages sitting in garages among drivers who have retired from karting but didn't want to give away their karts. They don't want to spend the time or money to go racing anymore, but hate to let a shifter they invested ten grand into just rusting away. After a little round up earlier this year we had about a dozen "retirees" meet one afternoon, clean up & debug the karts, ran some laps, and did some Mychron Solos. Had a blast doing it, not to mention a little reunion.

Some of them have been coming back to the track just to run laps and want to run a few more this year when the weather cools a bit. BTW, nearly all of them ran on YGB's or the old MG "square" Yellows - the same tires they had on their karts for 3 years or so now.

With lots of 3+ year old shifters sitting in "barns" it doesn't make sense that club races don't see the 12-18 125 entries like they did 4-5 years ago. Until you look at what the cost did to shifters.

I wonder

How many shifters would show up at club races to run a Solo?
_________________
John Denman
Producer for RTMP
http://www.kartweb.com

[Dave Robinson]

John,

It depends why they left in the first place. The cost of competing or the pain in the rear competing. Autocrossing for the most part seems much more relaxed then kart racing does.

Up here in Kansas the KART MASS series has a group of guys who still autocross, but all of them bought shifters in the last year. They seem to be having a blast racing, and for most of them the cost of autocrossing is pretty close to what the cost of running MASS is. track time per dollar is a bunch higher. This group seems to be having a blast at events, even tho the older ones seem to have to rest quite a bit between heats.

I think if people would put in perspective what they want out of their hobby, enjoyment and having fun or winning trophies. I am not saying to do be serious on the track and compete at the highest level you can, but just do not take yourself too serious where it is not fun anymore. This group of guys seem to be having an awful lot of fun, running modified shifters and sticky tires.

I would show up for a solo even mostly due to the fact, I cannot afford to run regionally so I end up spending time at our local track chasing my son around for fun. Having 3 kids all involved in different sports, makes time and money for my play time pretty tight, but running a solo type of event at a track on a given evening or Sunday would be fun, especially since I bet you would get more track time then with an autocross. I just would not travel To Dallas from Kansas to do it.

Dave

[Brian Garfield]

I'm confused, are we talking about what used to be called "Solo I" which is on a track by yourself? Or "Solo II", autocrossing, around cones on a parking lot, now called "Solo"?

Obvioulsy autocrossing in a kart is nothing new (at least 7 years old).

Brian