Thanks for the great feedback all. I will watch the video.
Physical, ugh. Oh well. I will carry TJ around on my shoulders at NCMP and Road America to build strength and conditioning. What do you think @tjkoyen?
Just watched it. Looks very nice and definitely a big boy/girl track but a little bumpy in the wrong places.
Looks like the Ohio Turnpike will be getting more money from me than they already are… Toledo to Lorain, Quaker City, Thompson, visiting my daughter in Kent… 
Very flowing track. Are there many passing spots? A bit hard to see from the video. Also and I know it’s new but it needs ripple strips to highlight the corners. Again, probably be completely different when you’re on track.
I’d love to drive there!
We ran some laps at Quaker yesterday, thought I’d share my impressions.
I appreciate being able to sign-up and register online, and I’m hoping that this was just an off day but we drove over 2.5 hours to the facility, knew our time there was going to be limited and we’d need to be out early, and there was nobody there working at all when we showed up. It was nearly 12:20 and we had our karts sitting on the grid before anyone showed up to kick off the day. Thankfully the gates were open and we were able to park and setup but poor form on not having the facility ready to go.
I thought the track layout was awesome, you guys were right about not being able to see the elevation on video, the uphill and falling away downhill stuff makes for some interesting challenges in the layout. Challenging to learn and visualize but fast and flowing an technical and …what else can you ask for. It’s going to be a rear tire killer for sure, I’m almost worried about how to manage rear tires over Saturday / Sunday to make sure we have rubber left for a final it seems that hard on rubber.
Physical and bumpy. It could have been my frustration with trying to push and learn a new track but the surface is very bumpy making steering inputs and kart placement that much more critical not in just being fast but learning the facility. If you make one bad placement and hit a bump wrong you are going off. I had a run of 3 stints in a row where I made no more than 3 laps in a row without going off in one fashion or another. Alot of that was just bouncing wide of the groove and being out on an extremely dirty track and not having traction vs. boucing off the track, but it still lead to a frustrating experience trying to learn the surface. On top of everything I managed to lose my elbow pad and lap after lap was hammering my elbow on the engine even when trying to prevent it which didn’t equate to an ideal situation. I will say I’ve been having problems with my ribs again this year and the ribs feel fine this morning, it’s just my elbow and neck that are talking to me today.
They’re going to have to invest in a blower if they don’t already have one, the track was QUITE dirty from just a handfull of karts running this weekend, when stars gets there it’s going to be a mess. When you leave the surface it’s like driving through a rock quarry with huge rocks in the dirt everywhere that do a number on the chassis…again self inflicted but some of those huge rocks made their way onto the surface and got flung up by other karts and could present a problem if you’re not ready for them.
We parked right off the asphalt in the grass / dirt not knowing where to park and not wanting to be in the middle of everything and there was a MASSIVE insect problem where we parked. 90+ degrees and sweaty and constantly fixing bent sprockets / chains from being an idiot driver is one thing…but being swarmed by bugs the whole time added a level of frustration I wasn’t ready for.
Hoping to get back there to support their club and do one of the races this weekend but we’ll see how repairs go this week first 
@ChrisHoran and I were there on the 21st for a Magik kart team practice, and I agree with your assessment. Kart placement is very important both for where the grip is and where the rubber is. The gearing was definitely interested with a pretty wide spread of gears that seemed to work.
Here’s a lap for those interested: https://youtu.be/3oL2NiES85c
That’s a nice looking layout. From the video it looks reasonably smooth and clean.
Looks are deceiving - it is NOT reasonably smooth 
got some serious bruises but it was a good time!
This was a pain when G&J was repaved. A few of us walked around the track multiple times picking up big rocks along the edges.
I watched a few on-boards and it looks rough as hell. I am sure that the Stars race there will be brutal once we get rubber down on the track.
As one of the most “senior” guys in the Masters class, “ugh” on the bumpy stuff. How to you make a bumpy new track?
The real shame is that the roughness of the track takes away from what is a really interesting and challenging layout. If the track were smooth I think most of the discussions about it would talk about how technical it is, but instead the first thing out of everyone’s mouth is “damn it’s rough”
I’ve not been there yet, but I can say I’m a little disappointed to hear how bumpy the track is. Like @Paul_Montopoli said, how do you build a bumpy new track? The rock quarry thing is to be expected I guess with the new track build though. G&J was the same way for a little while.. just don’t go off 
Watching the onboards, especially the few I can find of shifters, it looks like a super fun techical layout, but I haven’t see the track clean in any video yet. It’ll be interesting to see how many people complain about the bumps during STARS.
In fairness, I do think you get used to the bumpiness pretty quickly and it does add to the complexity of the track in an interesting way! Getting some bruises is par for the course, at least for me in karting
I won’t be at STARS but I’m excited to watch all the racing on Kartchaser.
I’ve driven on some rough tracks before so I’ll reserve judgement until I get there. Pre-re-pave, Badger was getting pretty bouncy.
MCC is getting bumpy again too. Like Mr. Goldman said…we’re going to get into the middle of racing and forget bout the surface and it will be a distant memory vs. just getting the job done…as long as you’ve got your elbow pads on.
David’s video makes it look really very smooth, there’s a helmet cam video on the Quaker discord that makes it look miserably bumpy, it’s somewhere in the middle. My own frustration was mainly self-inflicted by pushing too hard too early combined with most of the really treacherous stuff being right at apex or late phase in the long sweepers so if you’re slightly offline when you hit those bumps you jump out into the dirty stuff and have bad things happen.
The concrete cutouts were always exciting depending on the frost level, not to mention the tree roots comin up in no mans!
It definitely had character!
Please save the spot right behind on the grid for me. I want to learn from your earlier mistakes. I got keep my orange chassis looking good.
A post was merged into an existing topic: KA Masters at Stars Earthquake - Who is Going?
I get what you’re saying. Having ran Wilmington, old G&J, and several autocross sites in the midwest where bumps are super prevalent, I am no stranger to getting bruises after a track day or weekend. I guess where I’m hung up is Why is it so bumpy being brand new?
Absolutely no idea 
