I have been picking Dom’s brain about his opinion on expansion ideas we’ve been considering of our 206 A&D program since he is a frequent A&D competitor. The idea is to add season long packages to our one-off practice and race day offerings. Basically the traveling tent type program but without ever leaving the club.
Dom suggested starting a thread and seeing what the feedback could be so here we are!
Here is what I sent to him originally:
Could use some feedback from some A&D consumers.
Our current and possibly new 206 A&D platform:
Practice - Hour of track time - usually 4-5 sessions $250
Race day $350 (includes weight, fuel, tent, support)
Proposed Race season $5000 - 10 races, 10 practices, 1 new set of tires to start the season, weight, fuel, tent, support
Responsible for crash damage but not consumable wear and tear.
Responsible for practice fees, race entries, transponder rental, safety gear. (We make safety gear available for practice days)
How does that compare with what folks have seen on the market???
As AD guy my wants are more parity in the racing due to karts that haven’t been bent by Marge and Phil on a bender in the pub sessions.
What I keep,seeing is leagues that sort of die off a bit as the karts get worse and the field more about kart draw than driver skill. People lose interest and motivation when your racing is almost entirely about kart draw.
It’s not your racers that destroy the karts, it’s the rental noob sessions. Your series keeps them away from the race karts and lets them mangle the much stronger centurions or whatnot. If they start to git gud they will want to move up to the lo league I think (and will have enough experience to not drive straight into walls, Marshals, or other vehicles).
My dream has been to have something like OKC speedy kart league… arrive and drive racing in race OTK chassis with reliable, low maintenance 4-stroke engine package.
But that doesn’t exist much of anywhere that I’ve seen. It’s probably too expensive to have what amounts to 2 rental fleets for most facilities.
I would,likely jump on your offer if I lived near Pitt. 10 race weekends for 5k is very compelling. What you propose seems to basically offer what I want without asking me to spend 5k plus upfront on the machine and stuff before I even get going.
One nice thing about your pricing is that I don’t own the kart and have to haul it or pay you to store it for me.
I assume you are going to run these in economical harder tires so that we aren’t buying a new set of reds every weekend? There are some very nice hard tires out there that go a really long time.
We run the Mojo D2 - should be good for a full season at that use level.
We would use the karts for other weekday A&D but never for public rental. That’s where it becomes feasible for us.
And we will gladly sell you one if you want! Lol We offer trackside storage for the kart owners and prep/post event services if the customer requests. Pretty flexible.
Would there be more of a desire to run at a single facility for a championship or a couple races each at a couple different tracks?
I was thinking that one could have an owner kart league but also have the same karts available for rental for folks that are not yet ready to commit to a season and need to try before buy.
I think for most multiple tracks would be preferred.
I’m a bit of an odd duck maybe in that I’d like to have a “local” that is my weekly stomping ground. Bit I also want to go to many different tracks so I participate in a variety of series… EK, GRX, TKC, NJMP endurance weekends, and whatever else pops up.
So, in short, either way works, but I suspect most racers who maybe will be a once or twice a month kind of driver would appreciate having a couple tracks to race on.
(Hol up, if you do multiple tracks you gonna have to haul your operations around? Does that eat into your profitability?)
Lemme throw your description into my discords and see what my AD pals think, wether this is something they’d want to do.
Here’s what I think. I think it should be like K1 Circuit. Do different power levels and you have to meet certain criteria to be able to do the Arrive and Race series. Or have a Rental race and the top drivers get to do the series… My grandson races at K1 Speed and thats the way it is for them power levels till you get good…
Definitely would change the expenses if we were moving karts around so may not be feasible. Or at least may cause a need for a transport fee. 2 tracks would be easy as we have home bases at both. The third would probably have to be more of a once or twice a year adventure.
That’s not a thing with gas karts. Power isn’t regulated and the engine package pretty much dictates what the pace of the class is. Yeah there’s some pipes and slides and stuff but it’s not really the same.
This is just Arrive & Drive karts running in an existing series. There are already ample places people can go and do the indoor/rental ladder. I’d like to think this is the next step past that.
I think what he’s shooting for is a specific slot in the hierarchy… above the full Wraparound rentals but more economically and logistically feasible than general race karts (x30/ka/ regional LO).
So it’s not for total newbies, and it’s also a way to get more folks to transition to “serious” racing from rental stuff (as we generally know it).
I think its a great way to bring new people from rentals into pro racing. Would be great for the older karts that are not as competitive as the newest karts like a grass roots beginner class … Needs to be a class for the older karts … For people starting out and not really know if they want to buy a new one or newer one or want to continue karting … Need more ways to bring people into sport at a lower cost…
I know everybody knows my opinion But Tillotson is trying to do that with the T4s lower the cost for a certain class of racers … People just off rentals…
If you think about it, what Dan is doing here is very very similar.
They will use a specific engine along with presumably specific tire/chassis. Just like T4 or Ignite.
The thing that is different here is that they aren’t initially asking to buy in with kart. The karts will be “rental”.
In my experience the spec racing t4/ignite are predicated around the use of a bunch of people buying the kart to use in the spec series. Here, he’s not asking clients to buy the kart. But they could if they want to… but if they get there the better option may be to switch up to the more competitive lo206 regional stuff that they do at Pitt. It’s a big facility with lots and lots of stuff going on.
Whenever arrive and drive comes up I always think of Club100 in the UK. I’m not sure what chassis and bodywork they use, but that might be worth looking into. Obviously you’re not running Rotax engine, but the chassis might be worth a look.
Engine wise if you wanted to try a Tillotson, K1Racer would sell you one of his?
Much as I love the idea of 2-stroke rentals even limiting rpm must result in maintenance schedule that’s more involved than slapping on a 9hp sealed 4-stroke?
Jim Halls operation used kpv100 and iirc they were able to get a lot of hours out of it.
I’m not suggesting the engine, just the chassis that club 100 uses. It seems like the bodywork and whatnot is a good balance of safety and racer-y-ness.
I’m not going to open the Pandora’s box of two or four stroke
