Also wanted to say I was MEGA bummed that there wasn’t enough shifters. I’d love to come back and bang gears again…
First post on here, but I think the biggest issue with street racing is the new style of ‘Race Etiquette’. I think a lot of these younger guys come in and tear a whole bunch of $*&@ up due to their race craft and lack there of. Then they go back and tell their friends how costly street racing can be.
I grew up street racing going to the Clyde GP and Commercial Point GP every year (Both in Ohio). It was a developed skill that I learned over the course of 7+ years. I don’t think that the younger generation has the patients to learn the courses the correct way and get overly aggressive on passes and that’s why street racing has gotten a bad rep.
1 Like
TJ i think you hit a great point here seems like we get lots of new drivers at rock island every year but we cant retain them for the next 2-3-5 years.
1 Like
welcome Carson my man! feel free to tell us about your Clyde GP experience when you go or recap what you thought of the rock last weekend! I unfortunately wont be able to make the trip out to the race due to a wedding 
1 Like
I’ve been seeing a lot of replies on this thread and various social media posts with the usual hypotheses as to why RIGP numbers have been dying.
Marketing. National Event conflicts. Purse money. Teams. Championships. Etc.
I honestly think that all of those combined are significantly outweighed by an entirely different reason. Mind you, I’m 26, so I’m speaking for my age group and the drivers probably within 10-15 years my younger. So take that for what you will, but I think that’s the main demographic the event is missing.
The layout is just too easy. Even this year’s change.
Let me explain.
The evolution that karting has seen in the states in the last 15 years has been massive. Yes, it’s gone from more privateer-driven to team-driven, but more importantly, the competition level has gone up astronomically. More drivers testing. Engine builders innovating. The emergence of an economy of mechanics and driver coaches.
The draw for people nowadays to travel to races is for the challenge of it. To see if they’re good enough. On a 15, 17, 20 corner racetrack, can they match the pace of (insert top driver in their class here), and if the answer is yes, can they out-chess match them in a battle on this mix of corners?
The RIGP is 1 off direction corner from an oval race. And that’s fine and fun – basically inducing a pack race – but the ‘fun’ factor isn’t the draw for Shifters, for KA100 Seniors, for X30 Seniors, Juniros, etc. The fun factor draws 206 drivers and Ignite drivers.
- Purse money helps draw in top drivers, which helps draw in the rest of the field to race against them, so that’s certainly a factor.
- I don’t think people care that much about championships. Usually, championships only come into people’s minds in this modern era when they are debating whether or not to finish a series out or not. And they base their decision as to whether or not they have a shot at the series’s championship.
- As for teams not wanting to go because they can’t make money on testing days; teams are ultimately at the mercy of their customers. If enough customers wanted to go and race RIGP, the teams would find a way to make it work for them financially. Not all, but some would for sure.
But back to my original point, Rock Island never really interested me as a kid in the early 2010s, to a young adult in the late 2010s, and to my limited schedule now in the 2020s. A track layout of 90 degree corners and long straightaways seems too simple. I know someone is going to counter with the argument of ‘big balls’ required to race on city streets, and yeah, I get it – the danger factor is there.
But I wanted to race on difficult tracks, against difficult fields. I never even fully finished a series championship – club regional or national – until 2019 when I was 20 years old. I just picked races at cool tracks that had big grids and extreme depths of talent through the grid.
Not for historic reasons, not to win a specific trophy, not because the marketing was cool, and not for the purse money.
If I went to race, it’d be to have an excuse to be on-site and enjoy the partying and festivities at night. But again, I can also do that in Vegas at SuperNats, and plenty of other events.
6 Likes
Recently there was an endurance race in a street circuit last month with KT100 and some Rotax engines with the objective to start karting again in that city. It was mostly adults with some young people who were novices for the most part.
There was a lot of crashes and spins specially amongst the novices, and because a part of the circuit is thin there was traffic when a spin happened. This wouldn’t have happened if they had done it in a parking lot like they planned initially but the land owner wanted more money that they expected.
In some months the drivers and organizers are gonna do a meeting and discuss wether it’s possible to invest in a proper track
xander i think you have some great points and im not going to counter you with big balls and all that. I’m going to counter with South Park in Quincy which is a challenging track layout and probably is about as epic of race track as ive been on. its only got 12 corners i suppose not 20 but still. I’m 27 and i feel i ttoatll agree with you on depth and numbers. I thought about racing grands for comptiton reason only. 60 karts into one corner are you kidding me? so fun! but i cant justify Daytona in December cuz well to go race a 20 kart field ill stay here in the Midwest. As Rob Howden and others say Numbers breed numbers.
I completely understand the view, but I cant think of anything more boring than Trackhouse or New Castle where every corner is flat and everyone has seen each corner 10,000 times.
If nothing else, I have learned from this thread that there is no 1 thing that is going to “fix” street racing. You just gotta find more people that like it or want to try it.
What if we dug potholes in the middle of the road at New Castle or Trackhouse? New Castle is basically mostly 90° turns too.
2 Likes
now you talking can we add a mario cannon too lol. Some people just like a different flavor of racing like those road racing 206 drivers out there. i cant imagine hitting the chip for an entire lap but hey to each there own.
Quincy is a solid counter if it had better passing zones. It is a challenging layout to lap on but it’s not overly racey. What makes the tracks that the national series hit nice is that they have anywhere from 4-8 major braking zones that offer driver development in defending, passing, attacking when a driver is defending by going to the outside or crossing over on exit, etc.
Ask any driver who has run those tracks a ton, especially drivers for whom it’s their home track, and they’ll tell you they’re tired of it and hate it too.
But then, go to the people who have never ran there, or have raced there 1-2 times a year at most, and they’ll rave about these places.
My KC crew feels the same as the drivers who run all the national events too – they’re just as tired of going to the same facilities over and over again.
I bet it’s probably the same if you were to ask Italians about racing at South Garda. Or Brits about PFI. Sure, amazing facility, amazing track, but do it enough and you’re burnt out on it. But considering karting is a high turnover sport, the newness doesn’t wear off quick enough for the average total turnout to fade.
2 Likes
great points this convo is giving me some food for thought so far!
A. Stop making people buy Hoosier tires. 
B. Stop making people buy new tires period.
C. Use the semi-open compound list like SIRA and BKS.
D. Less classes, MORE competition track time per class.
E. Make it more affordable. I shouldn’t be $700 deep to run a street race in a couple classes.
F. Shifters like tracks. There’s no way around it. Your event (and ours) need to just embrace that 206 is your demographic and most 2 cycle drivers have no balls. Yea, I said it. Prove me wrong and run the big 3 next year.
G. Big teams don’t make your event successful. Little guys do, see “A-E”
H. Juniors and below culture has changed to every race needs to be national prep. They ain’t coming. Even if it’s free. (We tried.)
I. Prestige on these events is gone and overshadowed entirely by the big travel series.
J. There’s too much racing in our area overall, see previous on the effect of that.
I can keep going, we fight mostly the same battles. 
2 Likes
Forgot to add this too.
Little guys, privateers, independents, whatever you wanna call them. Those racers are loyal. Teams aren’t, because it’s ultimately not their money that’s being spent.
Focus enough on the little guys and eventually the teams will show up because their model is based around little guys who want to spend a bit more $$$$ for an edge up on the competition.
Case Study: Stars Championship Series
3 Likes
To me, this has a lot of potential. Again, I am not in the trenches with it all. But street races offer so much more potential for just everything. Think Vevey, Monaco… so much karting history is steeped in street racing. It’s where it gets its biggest crowds. Then again, we don’t race there any more…
I think there’s some great points here as well, a lot of reasons why people won’t do it, and the direction of the market. Just for me, street racing is so much more dynamic. But we’ve lost a lot of street events over the years, so really the fact Rock Island GP is still around is a big positive.
3 Likes
The initial PFI layout was pretty standard geometry, and many would comment that Fulbeck, next door, was more challenging and interesting. PFi was still the dominant player, naturally given the facilities and money behind it. I think layout is one factor, but I am not sure it’s ‘the’ factor. The best circuits, in terms of layout, in the UK have been struggling for grids. Rowrah is brilliant and can barely get a club meeting together. The big factor is location. Shenington has to have rules whereby people aren’t allowed to ‘defend’. I like the place, but it’s not the most loved circuit in terms of layout. It’ll be rammed every month. The UK is really dominated by location as the sort has declines the grids centralised.
But then I go back to marketing. If you can’t change the layout and you’re correct, which I admit is a factor, you know more than me on this specifics of the American market, then it has to be flipped as a plus, not a minus. How one would do that? I’d need to gestate on it. But there’s lots of things. My favorite quote recently is the opposite of a good idea, might be another good idea.
1 Like
Man… came here to argue karting and left with a great quote about life. @Bimodal_Rocket add it to the quote list.
4 Likes
Thank Rory Sutherland. You’ve probably seen him on the podcast circuit recently. Smart guy, worked for Ogilvy. Fun fact. Their main competitors, Saatchi and Saatchi, was headed by Charles Saatchi who got into karting big time in the 90s. My engine builder John Welstead was his.
Another good quote this time from David Ogilvy that is somewhat pertinent in these kind of discussions “The trouble with market research is that people don’t think what they feel, they don’t say what they think and they don’t do what they say.”
The lesson is basically just try stuff. Conventional wisdom can be wrong, a lot.
2 Likes
The RIGP are good at this… although the have some constraints with the layout in the city.