EKN Trackside - 2012 Rotax Grand Finals - Team USA

David Cole · Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 1:52 pm Post subject:

Really, you think a 'national' Rotax series will make Team USA score a victory. What about the Florida Winter Tour and Challenge of the Americas? Are those programs not a national series already?

The Rotax Grand Finals is about making zero mistakes. Once you do, it's twice as hard to come back. You need to be near perfect to have a chance at victory or the podium. This event takes in the best from 53 different countries into four categories. This is not a club race or regional weekend, it's the world championship for the Rotax Max Challenge.

Going into the event, I would have thought that our Senior, DD2, and DD2 Masters groups had the best shot, with the Junior drivers the wild card as you never know at that age level just who will be able to shine through. We had podium contenders in DD2 and DD2 Masters, but mistakes cost them and it did not materialize. The Senior drivers struggled themselves to get within striking distance and the Junior pilots had a string of bad luck after showing the pace to contend. I chalk it up to just a bad week for them as I would take any of the five in Senior or the four in Junior back to represent the USA.

I believe the team we send each year to the Rotax Grand Finals continues to get better and better, and I hope that the leaving Portugal without any podium only motivates those heading into 2013 for a chance to return and show the potential the United States has.
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Jacob Curtis · Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 3:09 pm Post subject:

I think you may be looking at my comments in the wrong way, David. I am not saying that the only way we can win at Worlds is to have a national series.

I am just giving my idea that we may need to have a series that allows all of our top driver to race against each other more than 3 times a year. I am in no way discrediting FWT or Gatorz. In fact I believe I stated that FWT has the right idea and buzz to potentially generate a larger series.

I think Team USA was on point all weekend. I definitely didn't say that they can't win either. But the more we can get our top drivers racing with that high of talent level is to make sure they can run against each other more often!

How many kids that could race against anyone on Team USA (a Cody Hodgson, Danny Formal, Alan Rudolph or Ashley Rogero) more than 3 times a year would benefit and grow as drivers. Not just in race craft but maturity level and then create stiffer competition in the US?

I am sorry if you think my idea is ridiculous.

Andrew M. Coulter · Joined: 11 Jul 2002 Posts: 147 Location: Quincy IL

This might not be the correct place for this, but I'm very curious as to what it takes to compete in the World Finals. I'm sure there is information out there some where, but I'm being lazy. Financially, what does it take? For Rotax to supply complete setups for everyone competing, I would think there would be some serious money involved for the competitors.

Jim McMahon · Posted: Mon Dec 03, 2012 7:49 pm Post subject:

Personally I believe it's more about raising the bar at local/regional level so that you have more drivers at or near rogero, leasmanns etc level giving them a run for their money. Frequent, high level competition. That's what the smaller countries in europe have but the sport is so damn fragmented over here.

That's my observation as a forigener. How that can be "fixed" is anyone's guess. Much as I loath the FR125 package, it's got very widespread appeal and penetration in europe. It's prettymuch KF2, Max or KZ. That's your lot for the most part. Over here you have the mishmash of TaG as well as Rotax, spec moto, KT, hpd, WF, Briggs animal, LO206, clones, and a little KZ here and there.
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Ihor Bilyy · Posted: Tue Dec 04, 2012 10:45 pm Post subject:

Maybe we should draw for engines in regional and/or national competitions just like in Worlds.

TJ Koyen · Joined: 03 Oct 2004 Posts: 1453

It comes back to our country being so big.

There are great drivers on both coasts, and then down south and in between. It's hard to get them all together competing against each other on a regular basis. Only SuperNationals is where you see all the best TaG drivers in one field.

If you could raise the level of competition by having SuperNationals-like turnouts at each national event, you'd see everyone step their game up.

Plus, like Jim said, everyone in the UK at least runs Rotax pretty much. They've just gotten better at Rotax than us. They've got a series like Super 1 where you get all the best in their whole country competing against each other through a series, and they have full Rotax grids.

FWT probably has the highest level of Rotax competition in the States, but it's all Florida-based. That works fine, it's a great series, but for a lot of guys, it's tough to get down to Florida to race that often, so you see a lot of top-level guys skipping out on it. If we had a series with that level of competition but in a more central location, we might have a chance to get more drivers in on the action and raise the bar for everyone.

I could be wrong on all this, I haven't run Rotax since the '08 Grands.
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Jacob Curtis · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 7:48 am Post subject:

I agree TJ. Maybe there is a way to run 4-6 National events that run in say Nevada, Texas, Indiana, Georgia and North Carolina. That pretty much puts everyone in a relatively close proximity to where everyone would have at least one close race. But in order to get the turn outs, there has to be prize money. It needs to have a justification to spend the money to go.

SuperNats has made this concept work like magic. The shear numbers that are turning out to Vegas is awesome. Maybe SKUSA is the sanctioning body that could put together a Rotax National series.

jim rogero · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 10:04 am Post subject:

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Jacob Curtis · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:42 am Post subject:

Andre Eriksen · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 11:59 am Post subject:

Originally I'm from Denmark although I never karted there. It is a tiny nation with only 5 million people. Still within 3 hours of driving I can find probably 7-10 kart tracks with each their challenges and then you can throw in that it probably rains at half the events.

Although not comparable to all of the US, at least I can compare to NorCal where I'm living. Our series is the largest Rotax series in the US and although it is a great series and organizers the fact is that pretty much all races are on the same track, and when it rains nobody shows up as most are too lazy and comfortable to be out when it rains and they do not want to clean their kart afterwards! I heard these arguments several times.

So if a 15 year old kit from around here shows up at the World Nationals he will get his butt kicked - simple as that, as the kids he will be racing are used to adapting to all sorts of new tracks as well as damp and wet tracks. I'm not saying that's the entire problem, but there is definitely some truth to this I have seen it several times...
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jim rogero · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 1:45 pm Post subject:

Andre Eriksen · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 1:52 pm Post subject:

You are absolutely right and I am not mentioning any from the US team as that would be stupid since I do not know any of them. I have no reason to doubt what you are saying.

What I was referring to was the more generic discussion and what I point out is based on facts, and I have seen it many times.

If you read my post, you will see that "cleaning the kart" comment was about rain and not a clean go kart. More kids (and adults) than not up here do not want to drive in the rain as they then have to clean the go kart afterwards. In other words - cleaning their karts is keeping them off track at times where they perhaps need track time the most.
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jeff grose · Posted: Wed Dec 05, 2012 4:34 pm Post subject:

we had limited time driving like they do and BLOCK everywhere..

Jim
Are you saying that there was a different style of driving this year ?
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