I’ve been reading this forum for a few months now, and have finally decided that I have an idea interesting enough to post, however I’ll start with a brief personal introduction.
I’m getting into my first year of club racing this year as a 16 year old in Northern Virginia. It’s always been my dream just to be able to kart, but with tracks being a little more scarce in my area and the scheduling burden it is to get out to the track on Sundays, I’ve only started now. In the past I was fortunate enough to attend Jim Hall’s 100cc and 125cc classes, with additional lapping sessions while on vacation in southern California, and am now having a blast renting a PRD TaG kart for club racing.
As ambitious as it sounds, given my very limited experience, I’m currently planning to form a group of high school students to buy and run our own TaG kart. While our school is unable to provide funding for our motorsport related endeavors (due to county policy), we plan on finding sponsorship from local tech companies. Our group will function as a club with the goals of educating newer members about the sport and science of karting (we do go to a Science and Tech school) and to of course race the kart. The idea is to try to involve the members as much as possible with the education, maintenance, chassis tuning, and data analysis aspects of working on a kart. We’ll start with one kart, but hopefully as time progresses we can find the resources to grow the club and run 2 karts with 2 drivers.
If anyone has any advice or guidance for us as we plan and seek funding for our project I’d really appreciate it! It’s crazy to me that this is even a possibility to accomplish at a high school.
I love, Love, LOVE this idea! When I ran BeaveRun I floated ideas like this a few times with both high school and college level programs. The closest we got was a rental league with teams from a few of the local colleges but we never had the time, resources or support from ownership to real do what it took to make it a reality.
UNC Charlotte and IUPUI both have University based teams that drag and oval race cars.
This program was based on more of a vocational education program but the teacher that ran it is still active in karting and might be worth sending a note to. Mark is a great guy: http://www.bergfeltracing.com/carrickkartclub.html
Before you’ll be able to get any business to sign on, they’ll be asking about liability coverage, etc. Michael Davis is a great resource with years of experience: http://www.mldavisinsurance.com/
While you guys don’t have many sprint tracks close by, you do have a long track record of drivers who have come out of the Northern Virginia area courtesy of the former AllSports Grand Prix indoor karting facility near Reston. If you can tap in to that network at all you may be able to find some families/businesses with a soft spot for the sport.
If you ever need a resource for getting in touch with suppliers, manufacturers, coaches, series, etc - always feel free to shoot me a note either here or back channel - [email protected]