Masters qualifying was a bit of a farce. They split us into two groups for a 16-kart field 
…Paul and I were in the first group to qualify since we did not put on new tires in happy hour. I wound up P10 overall, .2 off pole…very tight field!
Also the 3F wheel wasn’t quite enough grip for the short 3-lap qualifying run, but I’m going to leave them on and leave the kart as-is for the pre-final. Will be looking to ride the high line into turn one 
Qualified P31, not great but we finally made some progress in that session and I think we can continue working forward now. Going to be a long day from there but I know we will race better.
I’m really dragging ass though.
Really nice masters prefinal! I’d say @jfeder got his money’s worth for sure. Nice job! What happened early on? The cameras missed it. Heck of a comeback.
Started 23rd, kid in P25 tried to go past me in the grass in the start, then he fell back, then when we got to turn one that same kid torpedo’d me going four-wife up the bottom and went under my kart. My throttle cable got mangled and stuck the throttle open so my kart was melting the clutch as I tried to pull my kart off his.
First one out of the race unfortunately.
Bummer! It was great seeing you (and by that I mean watching KartChaser on youtube) out on track again though.
torpedo’d me going four-wife up the bottom
I’m sorry but this typo had me rolling 
That’s a lot of wives. In all seriousness, that must have sucked. Grr. Prefinal A looked like it was a good result.
I’m gonna leave it.
Knowing the grid, we’ve had to succumb to the same treatment from the same person that got you today. And yes, he is just a kid and is actually younger than my daughter.
Thanks! I just had a really awful start that set me back a bit. My start in the final wasn’t much better but the pace felt really good. The thing is the field is so tight that any degree of battling allows the guys in front to build a gap, and since we’re all about the same speed it’s tough to make that ground back up. Still wound up P6 against a really good field so I’ll take it.
Unfortunately I ended up tweaking something in my neck/upper back, so I’m not 100% confident I’ll be able to run today 
We’ll see how it all feels in the warm up.
Update: felt decent enough in the warm up, we’re gonna give it a go
Small step forward to 25th in qualifying today, then an engine issue in the pre dropped us to 21st and just out of the transfer spot so we had to run the LCQ from pole. Continued engine issues and conservative driving to try and maintain the transfer spot and save some tire got us 3rd and into the final. Rolled off the last row for the final and moved up 18 spots to end P25.
Frustrating weekend, don’t understand this track really. Just struggled to keep the setup in the range and we threw everything at it. And never really felt comfortable with the driving here either. The surface is so strange compared to most other places and it doesn’t really suit me. Wish I had chosen a more normal track to come back on, maybe New Castle is in the cards…
Track surface is weird how? Slick low grip or sticky high grip? Haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch the races yet, but your climb from the back of the field for the final sounds great. Seems like if the pre final went better you would of had a better chance to fight in the final.
In hindsight, what would you have done differently? What did you learn and how would you approach it a next time?
It’s slick because it was repaved in 2017 and doesn’t see much racing. Sticky and grippy I’m pretty used to dealing with.
Our struggle was finding the right level of side-bite without binding the kart. It seemed like the kart was just skittering around on top of the track for the practice days, probably because there was no rubber down. So we attempted to add side-bite with some track width changes. We narrowed the rear 1/4", but while we got the side-bite we were looking for, then the kart just felt like it was binding mid-corner and we slowed down 0.6, which is a huge amount for such a small change. We widened it back out and it picked the time back up. My theory is that the track’s low-grip surface just wouldn’t take the increased force into the tire. Trying to drive the tire into the track harder was just binding it up and the kart would still be flat.
So we basically ran a neutral setup through Friday, focusing on some gearing changes and small adjustments, but everything we did to the kart made the kart worse. Finally on Saturday we decided to take the path of adding more side-bite again because the track had picked up rubber and we thought it was now enough grip to get the kart to hike the inside rear better. So throughout the rest of the weekend we raised the seat, raised the rear ride height, went to max caster, stiffened the front bar, and narrowed the rear. We also threw the A axle in. Our qualifying on Sunday felt the best any session had all weekend, and the front was reacting the way I wanted it to, but the kart overall was not where it needed to be.
One issue I always have at RA is because of the surface, the front of the kart doesn’t really work the way it needs to, so I end up doing a lot of rotating of the kart on the brakes, and (for me at least) this is pretty difficult to be consistent with as it’s completely contrary to my normal driving style.
The only thing we didn’t try that I regret was the Q axle and added seat struts. We couldn’t find any seat struts on short notice Sunday that fit and the Q just didn’t feel like the right call. But given how our other adjustments were going, it was probably worth a try. If we would’ve gone down that path earlier in the weekend, maybe we would’ve kept up with the track and been on the right trajectory. We had considered doing the ‘traction’ setup Friday, with low rear ride height, no struts, and a Q axle - trying to make the kart a noodle not to overwork the tires and keep it from binding, but it didn’t feel right at the time, and it’s hard to pull such an extreme 180 halfway through the weekend when you’ve really committed to the opposite path. And on Sunday we got closer to the leaders’ times for sure.
An interesting note was the variety of setups across the paddock. I talked to probably a dozen people about what they were doing and it ranged all across the spectrum. Some of the fast karts were doing what I was doing and adding a bunch of side-bite, while others were going mega soft and trying to get the kart to flex. Even two fast karts from the same brand were doing opposite things. And that made it even harder to say whether we were on the right path or not.
We were also grossly over-geared for the final because we didn’t have a good handle on the gearing after our engine issues. If I had been down one tooth I could’ve made a few more places, as I was getting blocked in the low-speed stuff so I couldn’t use the gear and then got out-run on the straights.
If I were to do it again, I would put in a lot more laps beforehand to get a bit sharper. The reality is that it would be pretty tough to compete with these guys who are doing 20+ races at this level a year, when I have done 1 race in 2 years… But just like last time I raced, I was happy with my racecraft. I felt aggressive and strong on overtaking and took advantage and committed hard when I had to and I didn’t really make any mistakes when battling, so no sign of that lost edge that creeps in as you get older on the front. I was maybe a bit more tentative than I normally would be, just because I was physically sick all weekend and didn’t have the energy or desire to go into a few riskier gaps I might have if I was feeling better.
And yeah the other thing would have been to explore the opposite tuning route a bit more on Friday. We just got a little complacent with our Thursday pace and thought we knew what route to take, but if we had tried the opposite route, we might’ve found something that would’ve helped us more on Saturday and Sunday.
And to try a different track that I know better. My confidence would be much higher at a place like New Castle or GoPro where I’ve done well and have experienced the gamut track conditions there. I only ran this one because it’s the closest to my house and I wanted my wife and kid to be able to come watch me race.
Interesting… One weird setup I ran at the Rotax race here in Phoenix was the Q axle with the long hubs. Seemed like Q to allow the rear to flex, but the longer hubs prevented a hop. Seemed like an odd choice at the time. I normally can’t feel a hub change, but it made the kart work in a slick and greasy condition. Before that setup change I had that similar feeling where it just wouldn’t rotate and I couldn’t hit the apex. Off brakes or off throttle kart felt flat and in a four wheel slide.
May not have been a podium position, but sometimes it fun to start in the back, get in alot of passes, and be racey. IMO nothing is worse than being in no-mans land turning laps by yourself. Loose the draft and the leaders check out and you’re in that weird spot by yourself.
P7 on Sunday in masters for me, which I suppose was a decent result but my pace relative to the top guys fell off a bit as we struggled to adapt with the track. I kinda had the opposite problem where I felt great when the track was less worn and low-grip earlier in the weekend, but wasn’t able to keep up as it got hotter and more rubber got laid down. I could also tell I was making more driving mistakes as I got more fatigued and neck/shoulder/back issues flared up - haven’t had that much seat time in consecutive days in a while.
Going into the weekend my main goal was just to try to hang with the core group of masters guys who are all very good - I think I was able to do that well enough so overall I’m happy with how the weekend went. The plan now is to continue to get regular seat time at AMP with maybe a few local GoPro races sprinkled in the rest of this year, and next season aim for regular podiums over the full USPKS race schedule 
To be clear, I was the same haha. The kart felt kind meh all weekend but on Thursday at least I was probably top 10 at the end of the day. The issue was my 49.6 on Thursday was basically the same time I ran almost every session for the rest of the weekend. Sucks to have that barrier you can’t seem to crack through as you see everyone else improving.
Ah I’m just bad at reading I guess lol
In my case I felt I was able to improve with the track and the rest of the field through Saturday with very minimal setup changes. Sunday was where I hit my wall - I lost about a tenth while the fastest guys found an extra tenth. Very frustrating
I just had a convo with Jerry White about Justin’s race there as well and the first thing he said was “the track was weird. Like fine grained but not super grippy.”
A very nice pass by Mr. Fletcher (timestamp 3:10):
Same thing but it doesn’t work and makes a mess (3:50):
This was a well attended race for KP
: Tj, Jake, Paul, Evan and probably some younger folks as well. 
Yeah that’s a good way to describe it. You can see in the video, the track is blackened and there is a ton of marbles, but it’s like the rubber never really got dug down into the surface, probably because the surface isn’t weathered enough yet to get rubber ground down into the pores. So the rubber just kind of sits on top and grains off as karts go by. My right front tire wear was abysmal and looked like it was almost picking up rubber, but I’m sure part of that is from all the off-camber stuff.
Doesn’t help that the new generations of MG tires don’t really lay down sticky rubber like the old ones did. The Reds especially.
And the other thing was how big of a difference small changes made. Like I said, that 1/4" rear track change dropped us 0.6 per lap and I know other guys who made axle changes and found 0.8. We could’ve been one adjustment away from being in the front pack, you never know.
Not to turn this into another axle thread, but educate me here really quick. You went from N to A? …to try to generate side bite along with higher seat / caster / front bar.
the inverse theory that you never tried, but wish you would have was to go softer to Q and see if making the whole rear of the kart softer would have provided better grip, not necessarily through side bite though?