North of 49 Karting Championships

Kart Race Reports, Driver Diaries and Schedules
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The Calgary Kart Racing Club is busy planning a summer spectacular event and everyone is invited to take part in this new tradition!

From July 23 to 25, the CKRC will host their first annual North of 49 Karting Championship at Strathmore Motorsports Park presented by T&T Disposal Solutions, featuring three unique days of racing action to determine the overall winners of the mini-championship.

The plan comes from the board of directors at the CKRC and the aspirations of John Kwong, a long time racer and member of the Calgary karting community.

Speaking to CKN, Kwong outlines his inspiration for the event.

“The goal of the CKRC for this event is to give kart racers an annual racing event that is something different than your usual big prizes, which only benefit a few racers. Our focus is on a total event experience that the whole family will enjoy and will plan to come to for years to come. We want to have realistic goals for our first year that will build a foundation that we can improve on in the years to come.”

“At this event, racers will have an unparalleled amount of actual racing laps, challenging grid position scenarios, as well as other event experiences that we are still ironing out the details on.”

It’s all part of the program at the CKRC, to cater to all of their members and continue to entice new racers to the sport and the club.

The CKRC has experienced great success with their ‘Try-a-Kart’ program, inviting potential racers to jump into the seat of a real race kart from one of the CKRC’s fleet of karts. These events run throughout the summer months and have helped grow the club with many new members.

The North of 49 race will not have any club racing points implications as no points will be awarded, thus allowing all racers from any region to enjoy the event without the fear of interrupting the club championship. It also helps fill a small gap in the summer schedule.

In addition to the North of 49 race, the CKRC is also a part of the Alberta Shootout, a two-race program that pits the best racers from the province against each other. CKRC will host round one on June 19/20, while the EDKRA hosts round two in Warburg on Sept 11/12.

To learn more about the Calgary Kart Racing Club, visit their website, http://ckrc.com and be sure to ‘like’ their page on Facebook, https://www.facebook.com/calgarykart.racingclub/.

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https://ckrc.com/northof49/

Since our initial announcement of the North of 49 event, the buzz has been building and racers have been inquiring. In my 40 years of karting, I have been to many races and never in Western Canadian karting history has there been an event like this.

We are very excited to be hosting a very unique karting event on July 22-25 that will introduce the series within a weekend concept. The motto we came up with for this was, “It ain’t over til it’s over.” Drivers will need to be fast, consistent and will have to stay out of trouble to find success at this event. Another aspect of the challenge will be Pea-picked grid positions for the Friday night heats. Even if some drivers falter with a poor result in any of the races on the weekend, with the right circumstances there could still be a mathematical chance of winning the weekend. You won’t find a karting event anywhere that will provide the amount of actual racing laps that you will be enjoying at the North of 49 Karting Championships.

The North of 49 Karting Championships will be running the usual classes that CKRC runs which are:

  • Briggs Cadet

  • Briggs Junior

  • Briggs Senior

  • Briggs Masters

  • VLR Senior

  • VLR Masters

  • Rotax Junior

  • Rotax Senior

  • Rotax Masters

  • Shifter and as a bonus, we will be offering the DD2 and DD2 Masters* class

  • DD2 and DD2 Masters will be run on Friday Night. We currently do not have any DD2 karts racing in our club but we wanted to create a space for the EDKRA Wednesday night racers to come and do a similar format that they do at Warburg. We are working on creating an after race meal for these racers to finish off their night.

Tires:
All Briggs classes will be on either Mojo D2 or Vega MaxOne Green tires
All Rotax classes will be on Mojo tires
All VLR classes will be on LeCont Levanto tires
Shifter tires are open brand Medium compound tires

  • Everyone will declare 6 tires per class for the event. They can be new or used but will be registered and marked for the event.

Entry Fees:

$250/class and includes Thursday and Friday practice
DD2/DD2 Masters $150 and includes Thursday and Friday practice
All funds in Canadian Dollars

Race Weekend Format:

Thursday: Practice (starting time to be finalized until 9pm)
Friday: Practice 9am until 3pm
Friday 3:30pm: 3 Race 6 lap heats/class DD2/DD2 Masters will complete Qualifying-5min -> PreFinal-(12 lap) – Final-(15 lap)
Saturday: Rok race format with Warm-up, 6 lap Heat, 8 lap Pre-Final and 10 lap Final
Sunday: Warm-up, Race 1-12 laps and Final 20 laps

All race results will count toward the overall winner for each class.

Stay tuned for further details in the coming months.

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After a successful race event last year with 119 entries, we have scheduled the 2022 North of 49 Karting Championships for July 21-24, 2022. We will be continuing many of the aspects of the event that participants raved about such as: the beer gardens for spectators, Gourmet Saturday night meal, 40x60 entertainment tent, multirace format, spectacular prizes and draw prizes, drone pilot footage, Live race commentating and CKRC live webcam race coverage. Check out our FB page: North of 49 Karting Championships and North of 49 Karting Championships – Calgary Kart Racing Club (CKRC).
This event is put on by the North of 49 committee which is comprised of members of the CKRC for the benefit of the CKRC.

Entry fees will be $275 Canadian and we do not charge for separate insurance passes or pit spaces.

John K

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