I should have been more specific in my last reply, as I am in full support of adding a 80cc senior Shifter class in the Road Racing lineup, and 80 senior shifter racing in general, for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Also, what James said:
It would be awesome to see this class grow. Both in road racing and sprint racing. Im verh excited to see what @CrocIndy can do with this package and see how popular itll be on the sprint racing side.
Im all for this class as it puts more people in shifters banging gears. I cant wait to see how much it can potentially grow with proper promotion in the sprint racing community. Hopefully itll make its way to road racing.
Xtream Rock Island Grand Prix has added SIRA’s 80cc program for 2025. This makes sense from so many perspectives. I’m not a racer but I can’t tell you how many people have told me they won’t go from 100cc to shifters because of the physicality, learning to steer one handed, braking, etc. (OK, and engine rebuild costs). Yet lots of racers want to shift. This offers an option either as a step up with cost controls or just another level of racing at a lesser cost than antipnal shifter races. If you want to try it out, welcome to Rock Island (or any of the other tracks listed)
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just out of curiosity, why isn’t there a 100cc shifter engine? it would seem to be the perfect middle point between TAG and 125cc shifters.
the 116 Supermini moto engine would be more logical, imo, as it’s what the MX market gravitated to. But it’s too close to the 125 market and a good bump in power above an 85… For historical reasons, I’m very glad the 80 was chosen. It’s a perfect conversion level class.
Never attempt to apply logical thought to karting org class decisions. 
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Any updated photos and or videos? Final pricing and what’s included?
80cc shifters came up in with a group chat with some people I used to race with. Naturally the KZ80 came to mind along with Yamaha’s moto based engine.
I was actually with Motori USA recently, and got to test the KZ80. Once I squeezed into the children’s karts it was quite nice to drive. The paddle shift mechanism is quite nice and easy to use…I never had any issues changing gears, though neutral is a bit tougher to feel vs the traditional shift linkage.
We fiddled with some carburetion and it responded nicely. One engine (which had quite a lot of time on it) was starting to stutter and cut out towards the end of one of my runs. It felt like an ignition related issue, and we found the plug boot was starting to develop some excess play. Changed the boot and the spark plug and that fixed it right up, and the engine ran very smoothly after that.
Driving with rear brakes only felt weird for me, only because I was literally hopping out of my KZ and into the 80. It was easy to get used to, as that amount of braking power seems well suited to the KZ80. I probably weigh 40 pounds more than the kid whose kart I was driving, so I would imagine it would feel pretty fast to a junior driver, but not overboard. Hopping back into the KZ felt like I was on a trip to the moon 
I hope to service one of their engines soon so I can inspect the engine in more detail.
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Just to restir this a bit… at Rock Island we want to support SIRA and help grow this class by offering it in 2025. The question came up about also including Factory Kart FZ85 in case any are interested. Thoughts? Could it run at same weight etc. with Motori 7?
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