This is it in a nutshell.
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I thought Iād bring this back a little bit. One of my plans for this year is to get my kart out to Road America for the IndyCar and IMSA SportsCar weekends. My friends and I built a slot car track in the layout of RA so we bring it every year and let people race on it. I was going to put the kart next to it and see who gets interested with it. Maybe I can bring a few kids into the racing that way
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I was thinking about our discussion yesterday after the Formula Mazda practices, Aaron. You had suggested a Kartpulse Banner at some events. Although that might not be super practical, would you be interested in purchasing some Kartpulse shirts and basically being a āmobile bannerā for events like that? -
You could get in contact with @KartingIsLife to help out with that if you wanted.
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I wouldnāt mind it for sure but itād just depend on pricing. Even just us having the kart should help and I can throw a KP sticker on somewhere probably if I canāt do the shirts.
Believe it or not thereās a banner at GoPro somewhere. Or at least there used to be. When are these events? Stickers for KartPulse nation and a couple of banners are overdue.
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The IndyCar race is in June and IMSA is August, I hope to be at both of them. I do think a couple banners at some tracks could go a long way
Does the US have a universities karting or schools karting series?
Iām guessing because of the size of the country its probably more likely to be state or regional.
The UK has an excellent university series and offshoot school series which brings a lot of people into karting (not necessarily owner driver but they are karting).
The US does not, but there are some āTeam USA Scholarshipā programs and things through racing schools like Skip Barberā¦they donāt really work at all in the same way however, and cater to people that frankly would probably have success into formula cars or karting regardless (Oliver Askew, Sage Karam, Joel Miller to name a few). With that said, a few standouts have risen above their financial means to take advantage of these programs.
The closest thing to what you mentioned would have to be the Formula SAE programs many colleges have through their schools of engineering. OSUās is quite well known for consistently turning out internationally-competitive cars.
Road America Kart club has a kart race the same weekend as the SCCA June sprints. Its a hoot to troll the pits and invite folks to watch the karting. Making that a more formal type of task for the weekend could go a long way.
Maybe we can get a crew of karting evangelists to wear some shirtsā¦
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I wanted to bring this thread up from two years ago (Jeezus, weāve been around for two yearsā¦), to reignite this conversations about what approaches have you seen to get a few new people into a race kart.
This topic comes back to mind, because in my area, we have a regional conference thatās happening this weekend. Weāll spend a ton of time talking about tires, engines, but not really talking about the core issue that I think is affecting everyone across the country.
Itās tough to get a new person into a go-kart. So I wanted to get people thinking about this again, and maybe provide more tactical suggestions that āputting karting on TVā. (Honestly, if that was the easy answer, someone would have already done it, I think)
Anyway, putting it back out here again.
Well speaking of tvā¦ the Brits and euros seem to have their act together in terms of that. The big series like Skusa do a good job of filming and presenting their races, but thatās basically it that I can think of.
I do think SuperOne putting a lot of their races on YouTube is a big help for them. Iād really like to see SKUSA or USPKS do something similar.
Other than that, itās hard to get people that would commit to the sport. Weve tried bringing karts to car shows but the crowds there just arenāt who would get into karting. Iād like to see some more community involvement stuff but really I think the best would be going to tracks and promoting the kart tracks there
I think most of you know how I feel about exposure for Karting. Itās a poor excuse that justifies inaction.
If you think of Karting it as a product/service, itās horribly broken as a whole. Worse still, itās not a fixable problem. Getting exposure for a broken product is a waste of time and energy at best.
Now having said that, itās not all doom and gloom by any means.
First and foremost. The mindset of racers and business employees etc. that are in conversation with people looking to get started needs to change. Itās not a time to go on a little ego trip about how awesome you think you are, or how badass you think your class is. Itās a about the person whoās interested in starting off.
Information overload and bombardment needs to stop. All conversations start with listening to them, understanding what they need, what will work best for them and presenting that to them. Keep it simple.
(On that note, I want to give kudos to everybody here in the forums that has done this when a newcomer comes here looking for help). I feel bad for people looking to start off in Karting and post to certain Facebook groups.
On the note of keeping it simple. To get people into racing, they need to experience the āahaā moment as soon as possible. The moment they get into the seat of a racing kart.
That needs to be as easy for them as possible.
I firmly believe the basis of growing the sport is a good ātry a racing kart dayā combined with a little marketing and a simple website. Where they have been put in place, they work very well.
I talked with Joey Guyon a while ago about their program in Canada. Their club offers a try a kart day.
$100
45min howto class
3x 10 lap sessions
2 of these are lead/follow.
15% of the people that attended these ended up buying a kart and going racing. For the ones that didnāt, well thatās $100 per head for the club that they wouldnāt have otherwise.
@KartingConcepts also has a similar program in Cali.
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Test drives are the kind of thing we used to get people to the track when our kids were racing Quarter Midgets. The club provided the car (usually someoneās extra car) and safety equipment for a nominal fee. We used cars with Honda 120 motors and a restrictor plate (these were kids 5-15) on the club track. Thatās how we got drawn in (that, and the track was a mile from our house) with both kids, a boy and a girl. The other thing we did was make a float with one of our cars and enter it in one of the local festival parades. The kids handed out flyers advertising the test drive that was a few weeks later. We would get 15-20 kids to come to the test drive just from the parade exposure. If we got one or two families to join the club, we were happy. It seems something like that might work for karts depending on track location.
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So I used to fly out to Jim Hall in Oxnard before I started racing fseries. Why the heck did I go repeatedly to California from New Jersey multiple times a year to kart? Because something is broken with karting as a business. Itās not normal that my net had to be cast that wide to get a satisfactory result to try ārealā karting. Yes, I eventually figured out that it could be done locally but, the fact that my search didnāt yield fruit locally speaks volumes as to the problems with karting as a sport.
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