GRX 2025 - Media and Musings

Bimodal_Rocket · March 17, 2025, 3:25am

GRX 2025 - Media and Musings

And so we begin again. The new season brings us new faces and new fun to be had. We started on a gorgeous but moist morning, bright and early 8am qualifying. The track began the day as a rather amusing slip and slide, making for a challenging start for some of our new racers, who had yet to experience outdoor karting, much less in the wet. Despite this, we had no major incidents and I think everyone enjoyed the challenge.

As the day progressed, and we moved to the heats, the track got progressively drier. I qualified P1 in my group, placing me in the A division along with old friends like @RandallC and @nikspeeds.

I had a pretty good day, finishing P3 in both main and prefinal. The main was the most fun, with an extended battle with fast fellow Kamau and a speedy Raman. The heats were long, 21 laps in the main and 16 for prefinal, a good value.

The karts were much better than last year, with Keith and the gang having massaged them a bit. I am sure they will get mangled by the pub sessions as time progresses, but for now we only had one kart that was significantly off pace (sorry @RandallC).

My only issue was with my gloves. GRX is a physical track, and the centurion steering wheels are hardened from time and Sol, making my grip sus at best. In the long main, I was struggling to keep grip. It’s time for new gloves, methinks!

Thanks to David, Keith and the gang for putting on a remarkably smooth race, and thanks to all of our racers for a) showing up on time, and b) being awesome!

I’ll post more as the season transpires, but for now, here!s some pretty photos and videos of our lively and lovely day of racing. Enjoy!

The Races

KeslerDesignWorks · March 17, 2025, 12:37pm

That looks like a really good time! If you wander back out West we need to do an event together.

Bimodal_Rocket · March 17, 2025, 12:55pm

It was and generally is. Chill. Track races so well, it’s brilliant. It also feels special in how it presents itself, with the amphitheater and all, kind of timeless, grungy but not… reminds me of buying small oval in iracing, with all the little details, kinda derelict, kinda wow.

Yeah we should do a race out west, an endurance of some sort. Beat you up a bit, slowly.

KeslerDesignWorks · March 17, 2025, 1:48pm

If you come back out to K1 let me know. About a 5hr drive for me. So not bad at all. I should be out there testing quite a bit this year anyways.

Bimodal_Rocket · March 24, 2025, 12:13pm

WEEK 2 2025

Another week another race, this time with 3 divisions.
We began at 8am with a 10min quali to divvy up the racers.

It was a beautiful, clear, but frigid morning, around 30 degrees. With the wind chill from driving, we all struggled mightily with frozen fingers. I was better off than most, having brought my thicker rain gloves, but I still fumbled miserably, trying to remove the harness at the end of my quali heat, fingers uncooperative.

Fortunately, things warmed up a bit in time for the heat races and we were spared further agony.

I got the days hot kart for quali, finished p1 and moved on the A heats, placing 4th in pre and 8th in the final.

My kart in pre was decent engine wise but was incompatible with left turns, causing me to struggle somewhat and was unable to keep up with the front pack. So, I soldiered on alone in p4, with the rest of the gang having a grand old time duking it out a half a lap behind me.

For the final, I got the 2nd worst kart, and finished 2nd to last, p8. This bad boy not only had a serious dislike of left turns, but also had a laconic approach to accessing the top end. I lost about 2s a lap trying to compensate, hammering brakes to force rotation up into chicane. But, better that than plowing straight, I suppose.

I had one exciting moment in the final. Perhaps in an attempt to make up for its lack of speed and turning ability, the brakes were absurdly firm. Applying normal pressure resulted in locking up the rears.

So, having navigated the t1 fiasco, and momentarily being in the lead pack, I spun suddenly, while trying to trail into t3. Oooops! It was great fun watching the pack flow around me mid corner! Props to all for not t-boning me all the way to Trenton!

I gathered myself and my wounded pride and banged out the remaining 19 minutes of the main, ultimately getting lapped by p1-2, whom I let by when the time had come to do so.

So, a typical day of rental racing, with its ups and downs! But still good fun and always better than not racing at all.

I will miss week three as I am going to do Matt Hass’s 3hr indoor enduro at Xtreme Zone on Sunday. This is probably a good thing as it looks like we are in for cold and wet weather this week. I shall report back!