Couple of things that are different about this one… It’s a company that’s been in the auto racing data hardware/software space for about 20 years. Albeit not karting, but nonetheless, that’s something. Also, it’s actually in production from what I can tell.
I personally don’t see using a phone as a major minus or plus by itself, it really depends on the implementation. I don’t see cost as a huge factor as you can pickup used phones so cheap, not to mention that a lot of us have older, but suitable devices laying around. I think I have three 
Consumer electronics can be ruggedized, so that’s not a major issue. As an anecdote, I haven’t been on a track without a phone in my pocket since 2011, including wet weather.
For something like this to stand up and get traction, first and foremost it needs to be able to help racers improve their performance in some sort of real way that it’s contemporaries can’t. Ideally it needs to be able to accomplish that without live telemetry which will raise eyebrows all over.
The next questions is how well the “cloud” portion has been designed. Can it deliver a platform that’s optimized in a way for tuners, coaches and so on to collaborate remotely and get results for the driver.? Is the end result better than uploading a .drk file to dropbox?
Telemetry part is cool, but it’s problematic with orgs not to mention questionable cell coverage at many tracks.