I think the issue was that most of the karters that were at the first Ignite race were more of the converted concession karters. Not that they were a bad group of karters, just not as experienced in a race setting.
The KA-LO Cup that P1 Promotions ran at COTA over faather’s day weekend was a very good event. Very well ran and something that will be held each year. From my experience in that event, I can agree that the management was not the issue.
My understanding from the people I have spoken to, was that there simply was not anywhere near enough Margay kart sales or participation numbers to warrant their involvement. It sounded like COTA had really overestimated how many karts they were going to sell initially.
COTA’s scheduling and communication was also pretty poor. The initial release said that COTA was going to host 10 races this year. So far, they have only had 1… They are having trouble getting people to show up.
Well that’s a bummer. Generally kart sales are a long-term thing, even with the most affluent of customers there’s a lot of fears/rejections that need to be addressed first.
They are not doing very well in communicating their upcoming races. And then registration could be better and easier. Right now it’s either emailing them or calling to register. The one race I went to before KALO Cup, and after the Margay, there were 5 KAs, and 3 jr 206 and 4 sr 206. I think they had an event last weekend, but don’t know how many showed up.
They say they are learning and trying to improve. I told them to let me know if they need any feedback from me. Right now, their schedule has not done them any favors.
Have they hired a consultant of some sort? I’m surprised they are starting from zero given the visibility and stature of the facility.
I honestly don’t know, but my guess would be no. I believe they initially teamed up with Margay for them to help them and consult them. COTA did say that their initial schedule was dictated to them, which they have since changed.
IMHO, the COTA Karting crew is good at running a rental program (most of them came from K1 Speed). However, they are learning how to do marketing and run a race program. In my experience, it is a steep learning curve when you don’t have any outside help.
From my experience, the biggest issue has been the poor communication. Me and a couple friends came over to COTA Karting when they first opened so we have been there right from the very beginning. We were first in line to order Ignite K3 karts when they partnered up with Margay and right from the very beginning the communication was fairly poor.
From the point when we picked up the karts to the first Margay race weekend I felt like I always heard news from other people who had happened to be at the track and talked directly to an employee. I have also been very disappointed with this recent split from Margay. When they first released the partnership there were huge plans to start a full fledged race team and big national races and then it just seemed like every plan of that just stopped. And of course I can not blame them for split, but even though it has been a few months we still have had no formal email or anything from COTA explaining the situation to the people who spend thousands on a new Margay kart for these upcoming plans with the track. It seems almost as though they are just putting all of there resources into the concession karts and the user owned karts were just an after thought,
Hopefully this gets better over time as they grow their experience but right now it has been quite frustrating.
Yeah, it’s gotta be an even tougher pill to swallow if you ponied up for a Margay.
I think COTA really shot themselves in the foot by trying to only allow Margays initially. I understand why they did it… but they took the most popular club level class in Texas and alienated 95% of the racers. Almost every single kart racer I talked to said the exact same thing; that it was cool that COTA was doing an Ignite series, but that they weren’t interested in buying a new kart just to race it.
The majority of the people who bought into the series were new to karting… which is great. It’s awesome that this attracted them to the sport in the first place, but it is incredibly difficult to build a race program around all new racers. Karting isn’t cheap. The money, time, and logistics involved to make the jump from rental karting to real karting is pretty substantial. Without tapping into the current pool of karters in Texas, this was pretty much doomed to fail.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why they didn’t just run a normal open-chassis 206 class AND an Ignite class. Then, as the Margay series grows, the other 206 guys might think about joining in. And you have a win-win.
That all makes a lot of sense. And right after COTA Karting opened they had pretty big plans of partnering up with Sodi not Margay but again, those plans just seemed to fizzle out.
And it was like you said, the majority of the people who actually purchased karts from COTA (which I believe was never very many. Less than 10 karts) were new to Karting and wanted to get into it. And it now puts me in a weird situation because I like my Margay but the nearest Margay Ignite races are more than 12 hours across the country.
James, I think you hit the biggest nail on the head for the lack of participation, requiring the Margay chassis AND Hoosier tires, which aren’t ran anywhere around Texas. The KA-LO Cup had pretty good participation, and if the first Margay race at COTA was similar to that (allowing non-Margay chassis in a different class like other races), then I think there would be a lot more participation. The communication hasn’t been good that they have gone away from the Margay/Hoosier requirement.
Gage, at least there is another track not too far from you that you can run at. It would really be horrible if you spent the money and COTA was the only place to race and no one did.