Why is tracking your car more popular than go karting?
 

Or is it?

Go karting semi seriously is probably a lot cheaper than turbo'ing your miata and buying 225 tires.
One would think karting would be more popular, but I don't get that impression.

Thoughts?

paging @Joe Perez

Well, I haven't done a survey, but here are my thoughts:

- karting beats you up
- karting carries higher risk of injury
- karting either requires kart rental or larger capital investment up front (buy kart, buy tires, buy truck to transport kart)
- karting less relevant to the car you drive every day

--Ian

Because nobody with a big dick can fit in one? Balls. Giant balls would make it hard to go cart.

on another note... me and buddy were just talking about off road trucks. We used to have them, then went to side x sides- because cheaper. Three years later, going back to full size trucks for off roading.

Bigger vehicle is fun.
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Seeing a guy die right infront of you has a pretty big dampening effect. Between that and not wanting to die in a twisted metal wreck I dig roll bars and cages to go along with the helmet. Smart on the track in a "slow" car is lots of fun. I probably won't drive anything faster then a Formula Atlantic in my life on the track. I would need lots of time and money to ever drive that thing to potential let alone anything else.

I've been karting exactly once. With Emilio, Moti, and company. It was a BBQ Feed & Bleed event in SoCal many years ago, where we all got DNA tested to see if we were a match to some particular individual who needed a bone marrow transplant.

I sucked.

And therefore, I have nothing to offer here.

Good karters are fast. I am not a good karter.

but this is a Jason thread and I know you have a man crush for him so I wanted your input.
this thread hasnt' turned political yet, give it time.

From talking to the guys at the old track we used to frequent in Tulsa, if you want to be competitive.............it's still expensive. IE new tires every weekend, frequent teardown/rebuilds of engines, the frames don't last long if you're actually going out regularly (since there is no suspension the flex in the frame acts like, so they crack frequently with lots of use).

And while you don't need a truck for a kart (although you might want one for all the spares. Now you have a chunk of the garage that can't be used for other storage or your DD, etc.

And like Ian said, it's way harder on you and you need to have much better upper body endurance to drive a kart.

Multitude of classes, engine configurations, etc. If you're interested to go to your local and track and see what everyone runs. No point in doing it if you don't have anyone to compete against.

I think I just ended up with 1 form of racing and heavily invested in it before discovering it. A $1500 used chassis and $1050 for a new sealed world formula engine. Figure $800 for kart suit, gloves, boots, helmet, neck support. $250 for HF trailer and tow it with literally anything its not that much of a capital investment. We have a pretty big WF group here and with sealed engines and shit its pretty hard to cheat and the cost stay low.

A bunch of racers in the Chicago area have been doing a casual karting league every off-season for about four years. If you are interested in competing or just hanging out send me a PM. It’s a great group that helps coach each other and make everyone faster. It’s usually $50 per event at one of the local K1 Speed locations and an assortment of fast gas karting places.

I raced karts for 10 years before racing cars, so I have some observations.

With "tracking your car" I assume we're comparing lapping mildly prepped street cars to karting, not race cars to karting.

With tracking street cars I'd argue that karts are much safer. It's incredibly easy for Joe Blow to arrive at his local track and hit 120MPH+ without batting an eye. And nothing more than a 3 point belt.
"But karts don't even have seatbelts! And no cage at all!"
Correct, but they were also design with that in mind. the seats are shaped as to hold your body from movement on any axis. Karts are exceedingly difficult to roll, without wheel to wheel contact.

Karting, like race cars, have a relatively high cost for the first year. There are many one time expenses, Kart (1k-6k), spares, potentially trailer, truck etc. I'll include estimates on costs per weekend, excluding start up costs.

There's many different levels of karting, I'll explain my experiences in Ontario Canada.

Rental Karts (Indoor Karting) - ~$50 per event.
Often used as a winter practice series for club racing karters during the winter, seen as as much a social event as actual practice.
This as much as the average person sees when you tell them you race karts. Top speed ~50km/h

Club Racing - ~$300 per weekend
Entry level for competitive karting at local to home tracks. Mostly 4 stroke classes, ~90km/h
Most comparable to Spec Miata, E30, etc. Largely momentum based driving, no HP to make up for errors. Typically large classes teach racecraft, passing techniques and smooth driving lines.

Regional Racing - ~$1000 per weekend
Increasingly competitive, regional events pulling from across province and surrounding (or states). Mostly 2 stroke classes, ~150km/h
Many drivers have paid setup teams, driving coaches, etc. Comparable to Trans AM(?? Traveling race series with high HP) Some of these drivers will continue on to professional driving.
At this point entry level race cars become more cost effective.

National Events - ~$3000+
Typically single event championships, bringing in top drivers, and some paid drivers from across North America. Many of these drivers will have some kind of driving career.


So why is lapping more popular?
These days it's much more accessible. You can track nearly any car, and it's a real car!
It sounds more impressive than go-karting. It's sounds better at the water cooler on Monday to say "I took my Corvette to Circuit of the Americas!" than "I went go-karting at the local rental track.. but i brought my own kart!"
The initial costs to join are smaller for lapping, chances are if you're interested in race tracks you already have a MIata, Corvette, etc that you can drive to and from the track.

Race karts require a level of maintenance and repair which is an order of magnitude higher than a race car.