Keep us up to date on how they address them?
Over 80 posts and nearly a year old, this thread is still on point.
In regards to improving online resources,
I’ve helped out a few teams and tracks with their social media outlets. Either updating or introducing new platforms to open up their marketing. Most often I find folks a bit stubborn when I offer to help. I’m talking FREE help as well. So it becomes not only frustrating but sad to see a place with potential just continue to stumble and fall short. I’m always eagered to help improve folks if possible.
In regards to weekend costs,
my average weekend race within a 5hr one-way drive is $578. That’s fuel/oil, transponder, entry, tires, meals ($15per), hotel and travel. NOT including a pit pass for a friend or for my kid or miscellaneous parts needed. I can’t expect prices to come down because I get the business of the sport. Yet being realistic with myself is equally frustrating when I believe if I was blessed with a cash tree in the backyard, and the additional time to spend practicing, I could manage better finishes. So to the average budget racer who wants to be competitive, I hear ya. It sucks. But that’s where we have to truly decide what we want from karting. If it’s competition at a national level, then get used to ramen. If it’s being able to slice and dice, and have fun with your friends or kids, then forgo the new set of tires and share the ramen lol
I think a lot can be gained by sharing knowledge on the kart set up and technical driving skills at the local club level. If you can create a community at your local track where it’s a bit more open kimono, and each person is racing on the dollar, then you’ll have a competitive race at a local level without breaking too much the budget. Albeit that’s all wishful thinking cuz there will be that one person that has to have a $15 dollar trophy…
I’ve seen it done at an outdoor rental kart level. Summit Point Kart’s Pro Competition Races has had a very open group of folks that could discuss everything and anything. It fostered to even very long lasting friendships off the track as well. Meanwhile, the competition was still a strong as any national event I’ve been too. Imo it was the perfect model of what karting culture should be like at the track.
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Solid points. I feel exactly the way you do and nice to hear the effort you’re putting into helping the cause. Kudos man!
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As someone who recently ran into karting due to a Ross Bentley podcast explaining the benefits for people who race cars, I’d like to voice some of the stuff I have found particularly annoying.
- It seems very hard to find out what qualifies you to race a kart. I actually still haven’t found it yet, and the fact that it’s not a google search away could be bothersome for many people.
- It also seems hard to find venues to race. It just doesn’t seem out there, or maybe there just aren’t many places.
- There should be more arrive/drive options (and good ones, not just the cheapest people can find). Not everyone has the interest/commitment/ability to store and maintain a kart. I live in an apartment complex right now so it’s not exactly the easiest thing.
- It would be nice if information was more centralized. NASA, SCCA have websites that make it easy to learn everything.
- Racing class structure is seemingly random and very specific. Also, there doesn’t seem to be a clear ladder for racing.
I found information by posting on these forums (which I found via the podcast, but never would have thought to come here otherwise) and by talking to many people rather than finding it easily on the internet. These days, google is king, so it would be nice if someone or some people could compile all of this information somewhere. Hope people here aren’t bothered by whatever I said in this post, but that’s how I feel as a newcomer who had to put in a lot more effort to find out information about karting, which is not what many of my low attention span generation would do these days.
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So I’d say that, on the whole, I’d say that I agree with you. For example, I’d love to see IKF/WKA/TAG USA modernize to have more up to date platforms for information. One of kartings biggest gaps, is that our lack of digital presence, use of modern tools to make getting into the sport easy for people to understand and navigate.
When we first started Kartpulse, @KartingIsLife had a ton of ideas to create a more robust platform for the sport, but those efforts do take time and money, and need to be developed well to be useful. We’ve got more than enough crappy karting websites on the internet, that we didn’t want to just add another one. (The term ‘Death Star’ has been thrown about, as having too much scope creep when working on projects like that 
)
We’ve got tools like the Kartpulse Track Directory that we’ve used to gather information on different kart tracks all around the country.
The largest challenge is that developing all of these tools, even just aggragation, take time and money. With karting being such a low-margin sport, as it is, it’s challenging to find someone or a group of people who are willing to reach into their pockets, in order to create better tools for the sport.
Also, it’s hard to find people who are also willing to volunteer their time at the levels needed to make something useful.
Know someone who would love to volunteer to move the needle? Send them to the KP Forums, we’d love to collaborate to make things better. 
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Oddly enough, I haven’t even started karting yet and I’ve already been promoting this forum and the sport of karting because it SEEMS like it will help my fellow club racers. (I’ve read stories of people of all ages who were great karters seemingly crush their competition in club racing)
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Ryan it’s also a local thing. I experienced the same as you in NJ until I got hooked up with folks. For whatever reason, no one advertises or markets their services.
Give me a holler and I can chat. I’ll pm you cell if interested.
For whatever reason, no one advertises or markets their service, outside of word of mouth/using modern technology well. - Fixed it for you. 
That’s largely because we have a systemic problem of having the right people who know how to use the right tools to market, be social, provide value online well to make karting services easily to find.
I think a lot of people in general these days don’t know how to market/advertise their services/products in the modern days of the internet/social media. Getting familar with social media would be very useful for a lot of people.
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Personally, I think it’s more about better understanding marketing approaches and how to add value for customers, more than just “be on social media.”
There are a lot of karting channels that just show race reports, or self promote, and that doesn’t always help customers know where to go, or new karters know where to start.
Yes, agree completely with what you are saying. In fact, what you said is exactly what I meant by my post (in that being on social media is useless if you don’t have a planned marketing approach)
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