The first race of the 2023 US Pro National Season is upon us!
SKUSA stepped up in a big way for us this year by removing our KC Premium Subscription for all SKUSA National events. So this week you can watch Qualy through to the Mains for free!
Fore won the World Cup in S-ICC (KZ) in 2006 iirc. His official World Championships came in FSA and subsequently FA when that became the premier class.
Nothing known as to why. Had him testing in X30 Wed-Thurs.
PSL is running him next week in ROK Shifter. They’re covered well in their eyes with Ramos and Morgatto for X30, and it’s really AJ vs Carrara and Isambard in Pro Shifter’s class of 10. Not worth the money to them.
Which is a bit silly in my eyes, since they flew him here, have a data guy and enough mechanics. But hey, 2K saved is 2k saved.
I’m looking forward to seeing Louie Westover in action. I know the name from when I was trying to be fast at PFI in x30 KartKraft. At the time, he held the lap record for PFI in real life, which is pretty awesome. Looks like in may of 2022, he got pipped by Sam Shaw with a 56.63.
I am also bummed that Adakonis isn’t running this race as he’s local.
Did SCR switch to TB Kart or are they also running CRG and OTK. I find it interesting when teams run multiple chassis brands as normally a team sticks with a single chassis supplier but I kind of like their willingness to try and grow different brands.
I believe Adakonis is local to the Northeast, GoPro would be his “home” national track. I’d like to see him racing more, but I don’t think that’s in the budget for them at the moment.
I think I wrote down for Xander somewhere that Fore won a Gearbox World Championship. I figured the World Cup races (2003-2012) were basically a World Championship, unless there’s any reason they shouldn’t be?
Correct! I meant local to me. He’s in our rental/comp racer discord so he’s on my short list of pro drivers I am interested in. There’s also another fella, younger, named Vivek Kantham who has done well in pro cadet stuff. He had a great showing at Nats last year iirc.
If I am not mistaken, while Adakonis runs with a team, I think he and his dad do most of the legwork.
@XanderClements explain to a noob if you are so kind, the difference between SKUSA and USPKS. Are they both the “pro” tour? How does that work? I get it that FWT is the off-season pro tour, I think.
Someone will know the specific reasons, but in 2000 for example you had a world cup and world championship for FA/FSA. So you can’t have two world champions at the same time. it’s one of the weird nomenclature quirks of karting
I think that period was when the FIA had a thing about only one world championship in each type of motorsport. So there was a world cup for everything that wasn’t the top direct drive class.
Interested to generally see what Joe does this year. Hoping KR helps him get that final little bit he needs to win to a major fia championship.
Obviously I’m not Xander, but I like to break it down as National West and East championships. You basically have SKUSA west of the Mississippi, USPKS to the East, FWT and SKUSA Winter Series are pre-season. Pro Tour and USPKS are somewhat equal, for a while Pro Tour had a stronger X30 field but I think they’re level fields now, we’ll see how shifter plays out at USPKS.
Typing that out also makes me think of SuperNats as the playoffs, in major sports terms. You don’t need to be the best player from the regular season, everyone remembers who won the big one at the end of the year.
Note that SKUSA’s national touring series is literally called the “Pro Tour”, so while both SKUSA and USPKS would be considered national “pro tours”, the “Pro Tour” is an actual proper noun name for that specific series.
Aaron broke down how the puzzle pieces fit together for the major national series calendar. Essentially USPKS sticks to the east side of the country and SKUSA sticks to the west, generally. They have no affiliation, so the country is big enough to accommodate two “national” series.
Also forgot to mentioned, I only picked 4 drivers on KC Happy Hour the other night, so I’ll take Austin Garrison as my final dark horse pick.
That last sentence is important. Our national championships are almost equivalent to the WSK/European Championships in, well, Europe. A national championship in Europe is similar to our regional programs, but due to the size of the US the labels get shifted around a bit. That’s a discussion for a different thread though.
I miss getting to throw my fantasy picks in on Happy Hour, Garrison looks good going off first session times. I was hesitant about the TB Karts but they’ve been strong in the past, just missing support from a team since OGP folded.
