Karting is a very small sport, so it isn’t really ‘surviving’ really in terms of pure numbers. It just turns over a large amount of money for a few amount of competitors. So the dynamics are very different compared to over sports which are very much a big numbers game. We can sustain an industry with fewer.
The Healthnews (I can’t vouch for its credibility) stated key takeaways as being junior sport being too competitive effectively. For a moment take this as fact I think karting, especially for kids is very competitive due to its relationship with F1 and future career success, and this is the #1 problem out sport faces and I’ve written about it elsewhere. I think this all has knock on effects because karting above the age of 14 suddenly becomes realms of the ‘failed race driver’. Advertising karting to adults now is much harder than 30 years ago. Motorsport UK are trying to licence indoor karting now to fulfill commitments to diversity and increased participation, but it’s not really a reflection of what’s happening in the owner driver scene, and the same errors of focusing on ‘finding talent’ are at the core.
There is a weight limit for senior… if anything it would be a disadvantage because on tracks where kurb hitting is necessary (i.e. Homestead) then the kart will be more likely to bounce off the kerb and not be as good due to all the extra weight coming from lead and not the driver. I personally think the FIA age is fine, but if someone is good enough for senior they should be able to appeal to get in the class. As Eric_Gunderson1 pointed out, there are many drivers who’ve just moved up to junior and immediately dominate and/or do well (Examples such as Ernesto Rivera, Dmitri Matveev, Tiziano Monza) that could be given a chance at senior.
But those are the guys that have been doing it for years: Norberg, Turney, Albanese, Pavan. But we can also look at people such as Dmitri Matveev, Oleksandr Bondarev, Tiziano Monza, and Salim Hannah. <—— All these examples have been picked by top factories such as Prema/Kart Republic (Bondarev and Hanna), OTK (Monza) and Kart Republic (Matveev). ( Unrelated, but I got to meet all the Tony Kart guys when I went to Franciacorta for the ACI Italian Championship to race for them. Nice guys)
The weight limit is the same (which is VERY low and extremely hard to reach if your an adult male), but adults carry more muscles mass/weight etc… and this advantages lighter weight people physically. You also can move the weight about the kart a bit more if your lighter and are less restricted by components. There’s numerous advantages to being much smaller. This is why Senior age limit should not be 14. This is an adjacent argument in gymnastics right now for women Olympian Lisa Mason calls for gymnastics to increase minimum age requirements for female participants
What we have is very very wealthy people getting a year of ‘senior’ racing before a move to cars.
Correct me if I am wrong but I’m pretty sure a couple things here are invalid:
Taller people have the advantage with moving their body around—hear me out first. What is the goal of moving your body around? To place weight on certain parts of the kart to make it perform. In the rain this might be slightly towards the front in order to allow the kart to turn better. You might want to lean to the side to give the kart more side bite and allow it to hold better. A lot of teams put pads at the bottom of seats in the rain to allow drivers to do this.
I feel that the weight limit is pretty reachable—I haven’t met anyone who has had a problem with being over weight limit too much. It’s not like all the top drivers aren’t running any lead.
And also this is just a general question: what does muscle mass/weight have to do with it? (again, genuine question I’m actually curious)
I do agree that people do a senior year before moving to cars, but the standard now is to do the senior OK year, the KZ+OK year and then cars. You can see this with all the top drivers like Nakamura-Berta, Powell, Slater, etc. The goal is to build the foundation needed in karts before stepping into cars.
Alan is referring to ballast and static weight distribution. You have more granularity of weight adjustment if you can move ballast around. It can be a nuance, but it’s an option in some cases.
That’s an interesting characterization. Often there’s more than one “correct” answer to a given question in karting so it’s not really a characterization that we tend to use as a community.
Tall people might have a slight advantage on slicks in the rain, but really it ends there. Generally speaking you’d always want a short light driver.
I can assure you getting to the weight limit for a grown man is not easy. Also it’s not about making the weight either. You ideally would prefer to have a driver that can achieve 5 to 10kg under the weight limit.
In Europe the average wight of a 14 year old boy is 55kg, and for 18 is 70kg. This is a base level 15kg advantage. For females it’s 53/63 for referenced ages. Lowering the age limit to 14 gives a demonstrable advantage to children, and the FIA should know this.
Bare in mind F1 has a minimum weight limit for 80kg for driver, with prescribed placement for any ballast required to reach that weight if required. This is a clear admission they want to off-set the disadvantages faced by slightly chunkier drivers. The FIA doesn’t do this in karting, presumably because they want to degrade karting to be Formula 5 from where it used to be in the good ol days.
Force = Mass X Acceleration. More mass = more force to deal with over a given race distance. This may factor into fatigue. This isn’t exact as people have different strength/endurance, but I’d rather be a <60kg 14 year old than a 25 year old dieting down to 72/75kg… assuming both are in enough shape in the first place.
And obviously you have the added benefit of less static weight with a lighter driver, as James alluded to.
You also have to bare in mind the higher age lit for seniors is as much about child protection. I don’t think a sport where accidents and things can happen should have adults racing children. It has also destroyed the professional and heritage of the senior categorises. We will never see multiple world championship winners again like Mike Wilson. it’s stripped the single gear categories of their identity
This is a good discussion. I enjoy reading this to pass time on the clock here at work haha
I think a solution, or options for solutions, would be more “visible” if there was a larger karting population, at least at the local level. Regional or National levels (I’m only speculating since I’ve never seen or competed in an event outside of a club race, but I’m wanting to change that this year) I feel like would be more difficult because you’re always going to have the kids who are wicked fast and are trying to make a career out of racing.
From a “seat-time maturity” perspective, someone who’s been racing competitively since they’ve been in kid karts will definitely have the pace to race with adults by the time they get to their mid-teens. Especially if they have their parents investing and pushing them.
But then that leaves a void between the minimum age/weight of senior and your masters classes, where senior becomes kind of a catch-all type of class for all “types” of racers. You have young kids that weigh nothing trying to make careers out of racing, you have 20-somethings like myself who are just getting started, you have the older folks who are just trying to have a good time, and everyone in-between.
If there was a larger population of teen->adult karters then we’d at least have the option to divide senior into different groups, but we dont. And who wants to race in a group of 5-10 when you can race in a group of 10-20 or more?
Me personally, like i mentioned earlier in the thread i enjoy the pace and chaos of racing with the younger crowd, but im sure that feeling will change next time i make contact, break another bone, and still have to go to work Monday morning.
Looking back at our OVKA class lists from the late 90s, senior age was 18 in 1997/98, it only moved down around 99… But then again, if.you moved it back, the difference between a 13 year old and an 18 year old is also a pretty large maturity gap as well.
This and what @Ronald_Swift are saying are absolutely true, and it also dovetails into the other thread about OK-N adoption… Stuff is expensive. The runaway success of 206 is due to its affordability and ease-of-maintenance.
We can’t split every 4 year age gap into it’s own class because there’s not enough karters, and we can’t build class sizes if the average race fan is priced out of the sport.
OVKA is trialling a 206 Legends class this year because we actually have a crop of competitive racers over 50 who race 206, and we’ve seen Legends classes at CKNA draw numbers as well. We certainly can’t do that with 100cc class numbers.
To me the issue with age is less about ability but point of view and I guess maturity. In my experience, kids and even some adults prioritize winning at all costs over self-preservation. I have to go to work Monday morning and provide for my family and pay to fix something when it breaks. Racers under 18 don’t have most of those concerns and they typically race differently because of it.
Yes, I know there is a class for us old folks and get off my lawn!
Also, the Legend/Grand Masters drivers may stay in the sport longer than the 14 YO. I consider myself in the Legends category (not by accomplishment but by age) and I raced karts for 22 years from 50 to 72. I do agree that the 206 fits the 50-75 YO fitness level better than a 100cc TaG and resulting in longer retention. I think the age limit should be 55 YO, lines up with AARP!
Granted. Did not know much of that information. Thanks for enlightening me.
However, to me it seems that older drivers do just as well as the younger ones in Europe and the US. Turney does well in Europe, as does Pavan, Rillaerts, and others. Younger people also do well however, and I personally think the quality of racing is great. In the US we already know that Norberg does very well along with drivers such as Garrison, Ramos, and Morgatto.
Maybe the main argument here isn’t the age of the driver—more the skill. I don’t think anyone would discredit someone like Oleksandr Bondarev, Enzo Tarnvanichkul, Alex Powell, or Kean Nakamura-Berta’s ability as Senior OK and KZ drivers, despite being very young (Bondarev just moved up so he’s 14, Tarnvanichkul should also be around 14-15, Nakamura-Berta just moved from karts to cars, along with Powell)
The problem here is these drivers are backed by F1 teams. This has changed the landscape immensely. This is not entirely new to karting, but F1 has flooded the sport, and incentivised the teams to make sure these drivers are served fully. This is partly what has driven the explosion in costs to the detriment to everyone else. The professionals that used to frequent the single gear classes are not longer present in the numbers they once were. 2007, the first year of KF saw this top 10
Ardigo, Catt, Abbasse, Fore, Parrot etc… these are all well known long term adult karters. Professionals. We don’t see that now. The professionals, who used to be present in the single-gear classes have now almost all migrated to KZ. This is a monumental shift. This was partially due to KF being a disaster as it progressed, but also more recently the lowering of the age limit and increased ‘F1’ focus that has captured the sport. This has combined to basically make the senior direct drive classes at FIA level into Formula 5. And also worth noting we had two senior classes as well - KF2 and KF which helped. But that’s all collapsed
OK is separate to what is happening int he states partially because of the aggressively low weight limit found in the class. Turney does very well, because he is talented, but I can’t imagine the lifestyle he must lead to stay on weight. David Coulthard noted he had an eating disorder when he was young.
Also are you saying that the pro-pros (Fore/Lammers/adults) are all KZ because the single gear is basically overrun by rich kids overspending to be pro but for some reason they aren’t doing KZ?
I don’t know Turney’s weight or height, but it’ll have to be very low to be competitive in OK for someone of his age,
With regard to OK and Pros moving into KZ. It’s complex. Top flight single-gear karting was once divided into three separate 100cc classes - ICA/FA/FSA. Each with minor, but not insignificant technical difference. but basically the same. Either way by the time KF rolled around we had two separate classes - KF2 and KF1 (names and slight technical matters change, but it pretty much was that). KF was a disaster and eventually with the arrival of OK all this got amalgamated into one single-grid. This is why you can’t really trust ‘record breaking’ entries for FIA events, because it conveniently ignores that we had three separate senior divisions at one point.
So now, by default, all the young rich kids are straight into the single elite class - OK. This is where the money is for the teams, and thus will be prioritized for the most part. There’s very little requirement for professional drivers (bar a couple of exceptions) in this class for the manufacturers because it’s a niché class with very little further reach.
The honest truth regarding class weight is that you will lose more entries with a lower weight that makes people overweight than you will with a higher weight that requires most people to add lead.
Its really 2 different challenges. Karts are so weight sensitive and children grow so much mentally and physically between 12 and 16 that it sometimes makes sense to move up due to skill and/or size. Unfortunately with weights as low as 310-320 for JR racing there is no possible way for adult sized kids to make weight. So this forces some up early, like my son. Then you have kids with legitimate racing IQ that are ready to step up. This leaves clubs and promoters trying to discern when a kid is truly deserving to ready to step up. And lets be real, most don’t want the headache of pissed off parents or want the $$ and aren’t willing to hold ground.
Weights need to go up and organizers have to hold ground…that is the only way to change the pattern of premature bump ups.
185 and 390 isnt bad. Almost ideal really, i know a few people 120@390 but then there is a large number crossing the scale 392, low on gas and zero weight. I agree with Burpo on weight, I also agree sometimes boys mature physically pretty early. They can be well over JR weight at 15 even with incredibly low body fat and great physical discipline.
I dont have a problem racing with younger racers, honestly I think they race exactly the same as older racers 95% of the time. The biggest issue is on track confrontation but honestly that shouldnt happen regardless… (A smart racer just waits till your in the pits finds thier equipment. Then you pile drive it into the ground. While telling the parents they are next if they keep telling the kid to drive like that. )
