New Father & Son Intro :: Just Did Our First Race

Getting Started in Karting
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Hi KP Community! :wave:t4:

Been learning a lot from this forum over the past few months, so thank you for all the great content and discussion.

Got my son a kid kart 3 years ago (really old TopKart chassis, C50). I grew up dirtbiking, but my wife and I agreed that we wanted to get our boys into karting instead. He got a lot of practice at empty parking lots for the past few years, before we joined our local club this year (SMKA, here on the Central Coast of California). I’ve always been into motorsport and have tracked my E36 once, but soon realized how much more seat time and fun I’d get by getting into karting, alongside my boys. Also, we’re about 30min away from our local kart track vs. 2+hrs away from the closest car track. In the search for an LO206 to start, I befriended a club member who was getting rid of a ~2013 Italkart Elite with a KT on it. Definitely more finicky and a higher learning curve, but a ton of fun.

We’ve put in a handful of track days since May, and had our first club race yesterday. Overall, we had a blast and can’t wait for next season, as yesterday was the last race of the season. Had a couple of setbacks that ultimately ended our day early. First, we missed kid kart quali due to me just coming in from open practice and not hearing the announcement. Then, we had carb issues on his heat 1 that ended up stalling him out. He started in the back on heat 2 and picked up a few positions to get him to P4 at the end of the heat. Then, unfortunately, a youngster who wasn’t paying attention ran into my son while he was standing aside his kart, coming off of the track to the scales. Going maybe a few mph, so not super fast, but enough to cause my son to fall back on his kart and tweak/sprain his wrist. As for me, I had been hanging around mid-pack out of 7 drivers, and got P4 in heat 1, before we decided to call it a day and head home. Even though we didn’t finish the day, we had a blast, and my son learned a ton about dealing with setbacks. He fought through the tears of missing out, had grace with the kid who took him out, and we’re both excited to race again soon.

In the off-season, we’re going to work on kart setup for both of us, more seat time and work on racecraft, as well as be on the lookout for a cadet setup. My son is 8 and he’s just about growing out of kid kart, so his kart will be handed down to my middle son. I’ve got three boys, so anything we buy will keep getting passed down :ok_hand:t4: Oh, and I’m going to buy a Bengio, because my ribs are killing me after hopping a curb through the esses. Should have bought one before :man_facepalming:t4:

Great experience yesterday and looking forward to bonding with my sons, gaining more experience, and being able to contribute back to the forum.

  • Shadi

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I can empathize with missing quali. It’s really hard to hear the announcements amidst the hubbub of race day. Sounds like you are off to a good start, despite the setbacks.

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Thanks Dom. Yeah, we run Sr. Yamaha as the last class and obviously Kid Kart first, so we were definitely on our toes more for the rest of the day.

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Yeah it’s especially hard hard to keep track of your heats as well as your son’s. And, to make matters worse, kid karts are usually right before or after masters (was for me) which makes it extra hectic.

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Great job Shadi. The most important thing is having fun out there despite any setbacks. Being able to do that with your sons is a bonus. I commend you for great fathering and sharing a sport you can all partake in :clap:

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Thanks Alex! We’re enjoying it. No crazy expectations, just having fun and progressing.

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@akmanraa
Enjoyed your write-up and am glad you had fun out there, although cut short.

We’ll host more general test and tune days through fall and winter before any formal return to club racing, and with all the learnings from this year getting racing back up and running, there are a number of changes to make, perhaps a Discord server or mass text system to push announcements and “get to grid” notifications.

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Thanks @Andrace ! Thanks for putting on a great race.

Appreciated your support throughout the whole raceday and looking forward to off-season stuff with the club.

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Welcome to karting.

The KT has a bit of a learning curve, especially with a pipe. Not sure if Bob’s 4-cycle forum is still running but there was a lot of info there for that motor.

I had a similar issue when my son was younger of having back to back classes for him and me, perhaps an appeal to whoever sets the order to ask if it would it be possible to change the order so your not going crazy.

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Thanks Robert!

Thankfully, we’ve got a pretty healthy KT class at our club, so I’ve got a lot of resources when it comes to tuning. I’ve definitely read up on the KT a lot on Bob’s 4-cycle.

And the back-to-back classes weren’t too bad. I have my father-in-law out there with us, so we were able to manage.

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Discord seems ideal for this. OVRP has a discord server that is used officially and it seems effective.

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Largely agree, with what I gathered and what others are saying.

It’s also a demographic hurdle, our club has the full gamut of age ranges and computer skills, with an occasional flip phone sighting to back it up.
Not all will be inclined to use discord, which is why a text messenger system would be most widely applicable.

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Absolutely 100 million percent, there’s no substitute for seat time !

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This is especially true if the seat time is integrated with strategies for extracting and applying the lessons hidden within the experience that seat time provides… otherwise it can just become rote lapping. :wink:

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