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Bob,
You will start seeing regular updates now. There was a transition period between person that was doing that before, to the person responsible for doing it now. You will also be seeing a completely new website coming very soon with more information, and easier to navigate. I know you are pushing for info, and probably truthfully, there is info waiting for pieces to fall into place, and other delays, that I wish we could get out. I make calls to try and get the info out as well. I would expect the Trustee meeting minutes to be posted either sometime tonight, or tomorrow. I wish they had been posted last week, but there was a lot of detailed information discussed that needed correct reporting, before they were approved.
I totally agree that Karting needs one strong organization that makes the right decisions for all of the series. There is strength in member numbers. When I started karting, most enduro racers came from the sprint side. They wanted more track time, faster speeds, less contact, etc. So Road Racing needs those tie ins to the dirt and speedway groups.
The brake proposal was started by me, a road racer. I brought it up to the RR committee, comprised of 7 people, representing laydown, and both 2 cycle and 4 cycle sprint road racers. I personally wanted more classes on the 4 cycle side to be single system eligible. I want to say at no time did we ever say you have to remove dual brake systems by rules in any class. We only created classes that they were optional. The 2 cycle sprint racers spoke up and were wildly in favor of single brake systems on the CIK karts, so they could both sprint race, and road race without adding $1000-1500 systems. There is a solid foundation that this works, because it is legal to do up through the TAG classes in IKF, KART, CES, and MKC. This will allow more sprint racers to give road racing a try. When it came to the 4 cycle laydown sprint guys running the narrow karts, they spoke up and said they did not want to have single systems allowed on those karts. So therefore, you see Stock Animal requiring dual brakes. The Crossover classes from the Gold Cup, that are running GC legal karts, may run the single brake systems to encourage them to try road racing. So that turned out to be the Pro Gas, and Limited Mod Animal classes. Would I have liked to see the Stock Animal class remove the requirement? Yes, absolutely. And we can do that later, if people speak up for it. So I believe you got a rule change that was started, written and approved by road racers, that received unanimous support in the committee, and was then recommended to the Trustees. Personally, I feel the procedure worked in the manner it should have, by starting in the committee, and working it’s way up without interference from above, until it made it to the Trustee level. We made numerous inquiries to the racers for input. We got it, and listened to what they had to say. Was it a perfect change? No, as you mention, the slowest kart on the track still requires dual brakes.
The result in the change of this rule will allow racers from IKF, KART, CES, and the sprint tracks to come and try road racing and increase entries. Isn’t that what we all want? Remember, if you make the rules for only the existing racers, you shut out a lot of potential road racers, that might be long time road racers in the future.
Dale Coffey
