This is my point, we get busy as we get older and less self centred.
If I back to back weekends, my speed improves to match the front guys.
Man, some of those heart rates are high!!. I have monitored mine and it averages around 138-140, but only after I learnt how to race relaxed. That took a few years, and also that’s when my speed came.
That’s the big thing that most of the younger drivers haven’t experienced yet. As you get older, your life responsibilities increase, which causes you to have to diversify your time more.
I’m probably in the kart 10-20 weekends a year, and that might be overestimating, where I know kids now who take every weekend off to go karting.
Agree with @David91 and @Peter_Zambos regarding the adult responsibilities that are to blame for lack of seat time and in turn, decrease in pace. They hit me hard this year, so that I only had time to get in the kart for three races and one test day. It’s hard staying sharp with just four weekends of driving total for a whole year!
I think i’m on the other end of the spectrum compared to all you golden oldies 
I’m 20 and racing KZ and yes it’s physical on the body sometimes but for sure manageable for somebody with my age and fitness level.
I’d say TJs chart applies fairly well to me though as yes i have that young factor but i’m still at least 2 seconds per lap on a 42 second lap (record) down compared to the likes of vice world champion Daniel Bray and Matthew Kinsman who are both 30ish and are extremely knowledgeable about setup and have all the smarts and skills to maximize the performance.
Sure a little bit will come down to spending being KZ is so expensive to run at the front (brand new chassis and engine $17Kish NZD vs my 4 year old chassis and engine $4Kish NZD) but i’m sure that even with the age of the equipment there is far more potential to maximize from the nut behind the wheel than the equipment being used
Hi Shawn, thanks for adding the perspective of a younger adult.
So in your case, the well funded older guy with deep experience trumps the young fast guy. As it should be! This gives me comfort. (Just kidding.).
However the racers you mentioned are 30 so basically pretty close to you… physicality wise, assuming they are fit racers. I wonder at what age you narrow the gap as you get faster and faster and they start having old guy stuff.
Edit: TJ already told us that at 29-30 his coaching, painting, marrying etc has lowered his game somewhat. Just life, basically.
I think the other part about getting older is how much planning you’re willing/able to do in order to get to events.
My wife and I are going through that now where we’re discussing budgets and practice planning for next season now.
We found in a number of races little niggles that if I had been testing more would have held up fewer races, but we have to plan for the test days now.
Not like when I was younger and had nothing else going on.
And you are on it from a marketing perspective. You are the most comprehensively sponsored regional guy I can think of. That’s isn’t like a Doty driver or something, regular adult.
I think you need to be testing on bigger tracks and get away from PSGKA (I don’t have anything against the track, its just not representative of other tracks).
And you can get a lot more laps testing then you can racing for the same $$$. It’s just a case of doing good testing, rather than just pounding out laps.
Thanks for this. Perfect description. Conditioned Reflexes.
Waaaaaay ahead of you there.
Karina and I already talked about returning to the testing through the region again like I used to
One of the reasons that Doug/HRE has been storing our gear has been because of…
Moving
Convenience/Apartment Living (So no free space to work on the kart)
Getting married (So no free bachelor space to work on the kart. Wife wanted a dining room table, rather than a kart stand sitting there.)
Testing Availability because of my 9-5
Adulting, who knew?
So you know, as we get our grown up life settled again, we’ll be able to get back to running other tracks again and doing more test days. So at least I get more seat time now that if I tried to run solo.
So there is a method behind the madness. Plus you’ve never really seen our test days, but we have log books, pre run checklists for the kart, setup/practice goals for the day, debrief over ice cream afterward.
It’s just limited time being an adult and building the sponsor budget to cover surprise expenses (like my loving wife dropping my helmet on accident. 
)
Largely, I just need a broader test day schedule to test other tracks and logistics that don’t require me to drive 50 miles to get my kart first.
I’m already on the chat with folks to help for 2020 to make that easier.
So I’m largely testing on the same track out of logistical convenience, not because I really want to.
At 41 I feel as though I’m as fast or faster than I’ve ever been. I’m in the best shape of my life, I’m a student of the sport and continually reading books on driving theory, race theory and the mentality behind being strong at all of it. I’m regularly doing exercises at the gym for balance, focus, and quick hand / eye coordination…things I never did earlier in life.
The overall seat time argument rings true with me. I didn’t race as a child. I started performance driving with auto-x first as a teenager and then doing track days on motorcycles in my early 20’s. I progressed into continued track driving with cars as well as instructing at track days into my 30’s and continued to get quicker all the while. I set a short lived track record in time trials just before my 40th birthday and felt like it was the best driving of my life. That’s about the same time we started racing karts and this hobby really took off.
I feel like every week in the kart I get quicker. I’m having delusions of losing 20 more lbs (already lost 35 this year to get to min weight for masters) and jumping into the senior classes to really see how I match up against youth and enthusiasm vs. age and wisdom!
Ooh Andy I wish we were neighbors so we could race. You might be a little more experienced but you sound like I feel.
Andy,
Your life and mine is similar, driving wise. Brings me hope!
Will be 68 YO, next racing season. I’ve been racing sprint karts for 20 years, Yamaha, Rotax, Shifters, X-30 and now KA-100. I sure I’m a bit slower and it seems that I can’t just show up and go fast but I think with enough practice, I can run up front in KA-100 Masters (30 something plus). The one thing I noticed is that I couldn’t enjoy shifters and to some lesser degree X30 with high grip tires because I would be so exhausted after a 18 or 20 lap main, I even work out 5 days a week at Crossfit to stay in shape. The KA100 is run with lower grip tires, so now the driving is fun and not exhausting. Driving skill and fitness makes less of a difference in the slower classes, so it’s easier to run up front.
I think the biggest difference in loss of race performance, is due to maximum sustainable heart rate, which comes down dramatically with age. I’ve seen videos of drivers in a KZ with heart rates sustained at 180 bps, that’s way above what a person my age can sustain.
I think you may be right on the heart rate. It really does seem that 125cc TAG Finals race is basically is the equivalent of running two or three 7:30-8:00 miles.
When I look at the guys I raced with in their 40s-60s we were all pretty damn fit, actually. So, there’s something to TAG as a form of
“extreme” adult exercise.
But it’s sort of silly. To your point, 100cc is a less demanding, physically. 125cc TAG basically requires a body “redo” for most 40+ folks who got a bit soft. Which, is a silly barrier to entry, imho.
I don’t think you can correlate the HR in that way personally. So many other factors. Not being able to attain that HR isn’t a sign of performance. I’d be more impressed if it was lower.
I recorded a peak HR at 196 one time, I think I was 33 y/o at the time. That’s not good, damn near close to death 
Funny you bring this up.
I have been doing some exercises classes and have had my heart rate up to 192-195 a few times per my apple watch and thought I was dying.
I have been wearing it while I race for the last few months and I am normally in the 160-170 range when out on track during race. I think if I get out of the 206 and into a 2 stroke it would pick up quite a bit.
I guess what I meant to say isn’t really dependent on a certain HR. It’s about what is reasonable for a larger group.
I happen to have resting HR in 40s and 160-165 is my typical sustainable indefinitely kind of thing (Good pace mile). 180 is all out sprint.
Karting pegs your HR from what I observed with my garmin. Probably a combination of effort and mental (excited/alert). HR goes to near max and stays there, from my experience.
So if an adult who is predisposed to endurance sports found that the fitness required to effectively race TAG was a challenge to achieve, it does beg the question, “why?”, given the available choices.
Anecdotally, the rental karts I have been running basically have Zero physical effort required. That’s too little imho. I’d like to feel some burn.
I think you’d find that you’d do 160-170 in TAG as well after an adjustment period. Probably about 1-2 months additional cardio effort. Since you have set a baseline already in LO, I bet the transition is much much easier for you than it was for me.
I think the hard part with this conversation too, is that everyone’s baseline fitness is different. Some of the adults that I know who have a hard time in TAG, don’t do any other fitness activities ever.
So since it’s not part of their lifestyle, they’ll always struggle.
Having just gotten past my 30s, I’ve started noticing some of the very very basic signs of that (that I know are going to get worse as I get older), but the wife and I have been working on filling our lives with more general physical fitness activity. (Me for racing, and her for fitness.)