Agreed. Totally different to the clip I posted above of just smashing each other into a wall and spinning each other.
My point however poorly worded, is that the recent racing is detracting from the “entertainment and value.”
I’m not alone. Just read the top handful of comments here.
This Drive to Survive fake or real drama sucks. I don’t think we should be interviewing guys in scale lines the second they come off the track. That area should be off limits to KartChaser and race crew alike. Officials only.
I’m not the coolest heads. If someone came up to me with a mic after I just had an incident the guy bleeping out swear words would have his work cut out for him.
Here’s the inherent double standard. You don’t care but you can name both drivers by name in the second sentence. Just from a human behaviour standpoint, any lay person will thing “oh, there’s two drivers who are rivals and there is bad blood”.
Close racing isn’t in short supply in motorsport, and I tend to not believe it when people say that’s what they ‘want’. People actual behavior doesn’t reflect this at scale. People want above all else - high-stakes racing.
There wasn’t a huge amount of entertainment value though. Were we all going to talk about the race if this didn’t happen? Probably not. This isn’t condonation by the way, just accepting a reality. Whether you liked it or not, people are watching it, we’re talking about it. We aren’t talking about the FIA European Championship are we?
There are better ways to generate a feeling of high-stakes, yes, but this is a very difficult cultural bar to breach. I would be very heavy on Morgatto and the bump and run stuff, but also from a marketing perspective… it absolutely adds spice.
Disagree. We absolutely should. We either generate an audience or we don’t. We either want professional top level opportunity or we don’t. I want professional drivers, not club drivers for a fancy title name. Kids shouldn’t get it, but everyone else? absolutely.
This isn’t drive to survive stuff either. DTS was unique in the fact it was edited months later to portray things that didn’t exactly align with what happened. Suggesting that’s what is going on here is disingenuous.
It’s more like you’re standing in front of me eating white chocolate, bite after bite, telling me how you don’t like it, and actually prefer dark chocolate, while 90% chocolate adorns all the shelfs behind you.
“The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think, and they don’t do what they say” David Ogilvy
It doesn’t matter of you like it or not, you’re here talking about it. That’s the one metric I personally value above all else. if people are talking that’s a good thing. We have thousands of races every weekend in karting that literally no one talks about, and no one reads about either (the data really doesn’t lie on this).
In ~2010 I went to a “pro” race at NCMP to watch because I was considering racing and wanted to feel it out. I remember seeing two guys side by side on the straight away, one looked over at the other and just cut the wheel to ram him off the track (he didn’t actually hit him, but aggressively moved towards him to scare him). Seeing that kind of driving was enough to keep me out of kart racing for 15 years. Personally I have no interest in racing people who drive like that, and I know if someone did that to me, I’d be banned for life after I got ahold of them in the pits.
They should really push to make the racing cleaner, not allow bump and runs, overly aggressive driving, etc.
Well, this has kinda devolved and it seems clear that the OP question was answered - abysmal driving standards IMO rivalries are exciting, but what was seen in Summernats was animosity.
The rivalry between the KA Masters drivers at Quaker City was epic, and most of all everybody shook hands and had a great time. We can have rivalries but still root for each other to perform at their best. Its exciting to see the rivalry between Norberg and Turney, or any number of the top KA Sr drivers, but the last thing I want to see is them ramming each other off track out of hate, and then throwing social media punches where (I quote) a burner account called Budjoso an “inbred”. That’s messed up and is not helping the sport, among other aspects of life, at all.
Formal, Wick, and Musgrave all gave what I thought were productive answers/interviews.
My best friends growing up were fellow racers and competitors of mine…I also played soccer AGAINST one of them for school, and WITH the same guy for township play. Karting absolutely needs to rediscover friendly rivalry, IMO.
I respected my friends because of their skill AND class. They respected me for the same. Bash-to-pass and punt-to-punish don’t belong in the sport, IMO. It should never get that far. Racers will settle to the level the officiating requires of them.
From a marketing perspective, you want the public to think it’s “Have at it, boys!” but behind the scenes you’d better be calling the offenders to the trailer and making it absolutely clear what will and will not be tolerated. I think private SEVERE penalties and probations are the way. Except for cheating – that should result in public shaming and even more severe penalties…
In ‘professional’ sport with stakes, some will use the drive for excellence to motivate themselves, some will use hatred (of their competition and possibly, self), and some will draw their own personal limits short of the rules without pushing to the nth degree (field fillers and underfunded racers.) I know which I subscribe to, and which I’ll put up with…
Totally sums up my 18 year old. I don’t even go see him at the scale line if things go to . He is a total jack@ss until he calms down. If things are really really bad it can take long enough for him to cool off to make getting tuning feedback in time to make productive changes a challenge.
Still quite common. Officials can’t have eyes everywhere and often tend to focus to the front of the field. Mid-pack has lots of unseen mayhem. At least for us, my son’s size (biggest guy in Sr) and demeanor if done this way (see above) tend to make someone only try it once.
I was just showing my wife some onboard from a driver at our club. He smashed the guy infront of him every time he made a pass. She said “why isn’t he getting penalized”, i said, “because he’s passing for 2nd last place. Nobody is watching there.”
When you have 20+ karts, and one official, lets of stuff isn’t going to be seen.
IMO rivalries are exciting, but what was seen in Summernats was animosity.
. He is a total jack@ss until he calms down. If things are really really bad it can take long enough for him to cool off to make getting tuning feedback in time to make productive changes a challenge.