Amid all of the concern, Dallas County Texas has mandated the closure of all restaurants, bars, theaters etc. in our area with the exception of take-out or delivery for food. Basically limiting gatherings to 10 or less people. My neighbor manages a retail store in a mall. Her company closed its doors yesterday along with many of the other stores in her mall. The car Dealership I work at has significantly cut back its hours of operation to allow the building to remain empty and hopefully render the virus dead between work days. Our local club, NTK just cancelled our upcoming race this Saturday with no word yet on the next two weekend races scheduled to follow.
They have not closed the track to member practice at this time, so maybe I can do testing/practice to get dialed in. I really need to up my game!! lol!!!
I’ll be racing there later this year for the Texas Sprint Racing Series and I am looking forward to it. After putting some time in on Kartkraft I’m exited to finally drive it!
I am jelly. Let me know how laying into the banks at full chuff, trying to squeeze every last bit of speed out of them feels like. When you get comfy there, lmk how it is to drive. Good luck and enjoy!
There’s really 2 tricky areas in the track. The first is turns 8-9, you really need to give up 8 and stay way to the right to get a good run through 9 and onto the straight. The second is the chicane, you literally have to drive halfway over each curb. In real life, they place cones on the each side about 2 feet in that if you hit them, it’s a penalty.
In sim I can use the rubber to hook up turns that might not be possible IRL. The absolute fastest line through 8 and 9 (afaik) involves cutting the tip off 8, 2 in the grass. It’s not a straight line, but you do have to be narrow 8 to exit 9 most quickly and powerfully. This may be a KZ thing, since these karts are very rotate-able.
There is a wide 8 line that rubber surfs a sort of S shape. Its very hooked up and powerful too. In sim, the rubber can get sticky and, on this line, it dizzyingly zips you through an increasingly fast S that shoots you onto straight. I’ve only done it accidentally a few times, however.
I hope the kart shops, kart tracks and kart racers can survive. It is possible on the other side of this event, there might not be any kart racing for a while. With all of the mandated shutdowns, not sure what will happen to the economy. But if there is kart racing after the CV-19, while this seems petty, it would indicate that the economy survived.
Yesterday, CA invoked the shelter at home mandate.
Last time I checked Willow Springs Track was open but that was before the mandate.
this will last for at least 6 months and that’s optimistic to the extreme in terms of lock downs and social distancing. UK government is even talking around the 18 months period. It appears we’re being the most realistic about it. A number of factors could change by then and of course we hope the virus mutates into something less deadlier that it currently appears. Maybe far more people are infected than we realise and that encourage a faster paced herd immunity than expected (purely speculative).
I suspect we’re all putting our karts away for quite some time. I am not sure you guys are really aware of what’s about to hit your health systems.
Also speculating, but if we are all trying to flatten the curve, we are extending the outbreak deliberately so that the health care systems can handle it.
China locked down quite severely, but maybe a couple of weeks late and managed to flatten the curve, Italy did not. If we believe the news coming out of China, they are seeing no more new cases. So from full blown outbreak in early January to no new case is about 3 months.
But China have the “political environment” to do a full lock down. We have had Chinese students live with us, who we have stayed in contact with. They were in the next province over from Wuhan (not even the strictest lock down) and they were strictly forbidden from leaving there homes except to pick up the food left by the military in the square in front of their building.
Here’s an interesting “infection trajectory” which shows China arresting the spread. I really really worry for the rest of us, especially North America where testing hasn’t been widespread and even without widespread testing the USA’s trajectory is accelerating. Plus (i’m trying to stay out of being political) millions don’t have insurance (i know tests are supposed to be free but treatment isn’t) and millions are undocumented.
Wuhan will still be on effective lockdown for another two weeks as well. Then when you brelease measures there’ll be new outbreaks unless MANY more people in Wuhan got it than official was released or counted. It’s likely that the number is far higher either way
Look at Japan, as a counter argument. No question of Japanese authorities hiding data, they are transparent. Also, they are unlike China in that it isn’t a totalitarian govt. It is possible to be effective without requiring a military/police state already in place.
