Pretty exciting race! I’m trying to avoid posting spoilers - what I will say is Joe Turney (as a name we may be more familiar with) starts in the top 10.
It seems like OTK is a lot more popular in the states, Kart Republic is definitely the dominant chassis at the world championship. The Maxxis tire (from my research) isn’t too different than the MG SM2, so I found this interesting. Only factors I can think of are that the major teams are on KR, and therefore the top drivers are on it, or that the Euro tracks have a lot more grip/flow than in the states.
I wonder, is racing in the States more exciting/closer than in Europe due to lower grip levels? It seems like in the States people are able to go “off-line” more and still make it work. At the world championship moves off-line in the dry seemed costly and predictable.
Ramaekers kart (winning kart) had last years front fairing on it! All that talk of how much of a difference these new fairings make and there’s direct proof of the opposite.
Given how well Turney did, and how well folks in the states have done against him, it seems like the US drivers are just as talented. Alessandro de Tullio hasn’t dominated every single race either, so I’d have to imagine that some folks here in the States must have watched that race and smiled to themselves.
It was surprising to me that Ramaekers would be the one to win, given that he started 5th! Well done to that young man.
In the Euro Rotax trophy OTK keeps being the dominant brand for some reason despite KR big territory in other classes.
I remember hearing the explanation was most teams there don’t wanna bother because it still works so why change?
I didn’t expect Ramaekers to win either. I expected to be Turney to be honest.
Ramaekers had some decent results last year so I expected maybe a top 3 or 5 this race. Had my hopes for Costoya, Pradier and the CRG drivers
I have a recording somewhere of my mentor who was a 7x duffy champion talking to me about bodywork. He’s not an aerodynamicist, but they guy was pretty much a bonafide legend in the sport of karting. Made a lot of advancements for the sport.
I kind of recall him saying a lot of the bodywork doesn’t really do much in terms of actually improving lap times. The idea that you have to upgrade to the newest “aerodynamics” in karting I think is a bit of a sham, but maybe others can correct me if I’m wrong.
Most karting drivers would gain more lap time from dieting than they will from a minor fairing shape change.
Certainly true in the past when bodywork was simply for safety and had minimal aerodynamic impact. However over the last couple homologation cycles, brands have hugely stepped up their development into the aero side of the kart, looking to move air around the driver more and direct it to the tires or brakes for better cooling.
Whether it does much of anything is up in the air, but there is definitely a lot of time and money being spent developing it.
I didn’t watch the Worlds but the reality is the US has had a bunch of top level drivers for a while now. The FIA OK Championships aren’t really representative of much beyond F1 kids with a couple of drivers like Turney who act as a yardstick. There are probably about 10 drivers in the UK that should be racing at FIA Worlds, but aren’t.
but yeah, America has some of the best kart drivers.
Good racing. Kristianstad track looks like a blast to drive, especially the the little jump where the whole kart is off the ground. I would really like to try a full power OK package, it looks so punchy.
I took a spin in someone’s OK-N. I’d like to try the full fat version with the power valve and high revs. It was fast, but not as fast as I thought. I think most of the speed I picked up versus something like an X30/Rotax was just due to weight.
I watched the last 8 laps to see if Turney would win. That was the only point of interest. The coverage was flat/inconsequential (could have been any old club meeting). The fact that it’s the factory teams competing was lost. Most European tracks don’t translate to good viewing with too many long sweeping corners (many UK tracks are much better for this). Nothing on the FIA website, one small article on Vroom/TKart/EkartingNews, nothing on Social Media.
The biggest concern though, is that people in the sport are not even interested. Even worse, it seems that even those that take a more pro-active interest in the sport found it largely inconsequential and not worthy of comment. Kartmasters and SuperNats are better. KartChaser coverage sets the standard too.
I’d say the top UK/US/Euro drivers are all on a par, with the UK edging it in numbers at the top (we have so much competitive racing here, even at club rounds). It would be interesting to see more US drivers head to Europe, but the fact that the direction of travel is mostly the other way tells you something about the health of karting in each region.
It’s incredibly difficult to compare drivers from different regions, on different tires, different tracks and different engine packages.
But, Europeans tend to have more success coming to the US then the times US drivers go to Europe. Turney is probably a bit of an alien but right from the start he’s been able to come to the US and compete at the front on whatever engine, tire, track combo you throw at him. But it’s been true of other less alien drivers who have jumped across.
Alternatively not many US drivers go over for one off races but when they do they don’t do well. There is a swell (it seems to me) that are going to Europe for extended periods of time and getting to the front eventually, mostly in the mini and jnr categories.
Took a look at some of the video and highlights. I thought it was cool to see four Americans in the OKJ field, although two of the names (Walz and Ochstein) I hadn’t heard before. Brown and Mcgaughy are names I certainly recognized from the series here in the US.
I believe I saw that Bayliff will be running the KZ2 World Championships in early October. Will be curious to see if any other notable stateside drivers make the attempt in KZ / KZ2.
Didn’t actually want to join in this debate as it’s quite polarizing at times (bit like politics)
The way i try to describte it to people (and in my POV) is that karting in the US vs Europe are two different sports.
The global average level is higher in Europe (due to geography, culture, quantity of drivers…), tracks tend to be smoother and with dedicated racing asphalt, which tends to build up rubber and European develop their driving in such conditions.
This doesn’t mean that Europeans are by default “better”, it’s just that mastering driving in such conditions translates better to low grip situations ussualy seen in the US.
Nonetheless, the top American level also excels vs Europeans in the track & conditions combo seen in America ( Renaudin, Morgatto etc being a good example). Vegas is an equalizer that also favors Americans most of the time.
Nonetheless, there has recently been a good wave of young Americans coming over to Europe and exceling almost imediately (Godshalck, Palacio, Turner, Truchot …)
Interesting TJ. When my TaG is up and running I’d like to do a test with the body work completely on and off just for fun to see what difference it makes.
Also, yeah the race itself I thought was very exciting. Kart racing is to me though. I like to watch it more than a lot of other motorsport.
I think there is a big difference with the engine tuning in OK-Ns to consider, too. Being an “open platform” vs x30 Rotax, the tuning / even using a different carb makes a (big) difference, when same tyres are adopted
Right now for OKN there are two carbs you can choose, TM or Tillotson.
At least from what I have heard from abroad you can’t tune much the OKN compared to OK(J) or KZ engines, but if someone knows more they can correct me
