I was on another forum reading a post when it occurred to me that the one resource we don’t have on KP or anywhere else that I know of is a sort of directory for the “I want to get karting but don’t know where to begin” question.
My particular journey down this path involved: googling kart racing, deducing that something called the f-series occurs in my state, that it runs at two tracks near me, and then proceeding to be baffled by their websites.
Without getting too wordy, what we need is a resource that you can point someone to that will get them into a rental performance kart, on a real track, near them. In addition to renting karts they should be able to answer all the basic questions about getting started, who to talk to etc.
As far as I can tell, there are no “shops” that you can pop into that will gladly sell you a kart and point you to the nearest track and club races. At least not around here. It all seems to be online retailers or karters selling stuff to other karters via word of mouth or classifieds.
So in my case, after much noodling of the Internet, I deduced that the local arrive and drive organization also rents TAG karts. I hooked up with them, which got me into a rental kart, into discussion with the guy who runs the local version of the f series, and ultimately an intro to John from compkart who I’ll be buying my karts from and will likely be a good resource for me and nick as we start racing next season. His partner Jerry will most likely do all the wrenching and logistics etc we need. It sounds simple but it took me a while to figure it out.
If someone had simply said, “Hey talk to Keith at Full tilt racing. He rents and sells tag karts and can answer questions about getting started.” That would have made life a lot easier.