SKUSA SuperNats 25 Official Thread

In KA @ Stars they measured T by removing the cap of the muffler and using a very small tape measure and positioning it through all the cones / baffles and out the header pipe. with no hard surfaces to really rest the measure up against I’m also not sure how it’s done with any consistency, but that’s how it was done when my KA pipe was measured at a previous event this year.

2 Likes

I can’t say I believe the story either, but I can see it being a realistic. There’s a reason I prefaced the information with “this is what people from Rolison have been saying.”

Again, to be fair to them if their story is true, if I go and have a clutch delivered to the track from IAME, I would expect that clutch to be legal for the IAME ruleset and not think I needed to check it.

If it was a modified pipe, perhaps that wasn’t supposed to go on Norberg’s kart, that’s a big mistake for the team/mechanics to make. Time will tell what actually happens with this, but waiting isn’t as fun as pretending to play detective

1 Like

The cool thing about this story is that it is believable either way. I’d certainly assume a part that came from IAME would be compliant but this is RPG and you’d also assume they are so experienced that they’d know better, maybe.

Why would they be carrying modified exhausts in the first place?

image

You never know. Lol.

Testing purposes :smile: of course.

I am too of the opinion that if these are the facts, the builders should not be crucified or labeled as cheaters, as they are all walking a fine edge, and nobody in their right mind would spend tens of thousands of dollars in research, logistics etc,knowing they will have to go through tech and still take their chances as they can be easily caught…mistakes happen, they got DQd, end of story. I don’t see any sophisticated attempt here.

What I find most interesting though is who bears responsibility, in theory, assuming no alteration was done. Does anybody know? Of course if I’m buying 50 pipes, I’m searching for the tolerances that stack up together to give me what I’m looking for, so I can tune accordingly for the top guys. Cool, that’s what we pay tuners to do, all legit. But that research on tolerances is made on spec pipes from an official importer (and the factory, prior to that), so it’s reasonable to assume that they are all legal to begin with. If one is out of spec, granted it warrants DQ anyways, is it then the factory,importer, tuner or driver/team responsibility for the consequences of an out of spec part?

1 Like

off-set crank pin on the Rotax iirc Whatever he did was very neat and well done.

https://www.tal-ko.com/latest-news/TAL-KO-COMPLETE-INVESTIGATION-ON-ILLEGAL-TKM-ENGINE-TUNING/

etc…

Some of the stuff I’ve learnt over the years is astonishing. I am not saying that is what happened here, but sophisticated attempts aren’t exactly rare.

I think this is a reasonable point of view. What it does do however is place responsibility on said importer to clarify as reputational damage to competitors is an issue.

I think it’s unrealistic to expect competitors to inspect every component for legality if those components are spec parts, though rules are rules. Thus any problem with the supply of parts should be publicly acknowledged as soon as reasonably possible.

2 Likes

This is definitely why there are so many illegal parts in my toolbox :wink:

This 100% (20 characters).

The difference with this one is it was behind the seal and he would never have got found out if someone hadn’t rented an engine from him, given it to another engine builder who then told the chief scrutineer (head tech) what to look for.

His kids still a professional racing driver though so all worked out well for him…

For whats its worth, I’ve worked with both Mike (Roli) and Alex (AVP) and neither gave me the impression that they’d even consider cheating.

The story about the 50 pipes seems more plausible to me. The squish, it can happen, but I’d he interested to know if the Aspen fuel increased carbon deposits.

What was going on with the tires? It seemed like many were absolutely destroyed by the end of the main event. You’d see drivers come forward then suddenly drop off. They shouldn’t be lasting only 20laps.

Also, there was a lot of just pushing people out of the way which was very obvious on the live stream but no one seemed to get penalised.

1 Like

Screenshots from Chris Wehrheim’s IG after the final :flushed:


1 Like

Rotax hasn’t been immune to exhaust controversies either. My point being that dodgy goings on is not unfamiliar in karting, far from it, and thus we can’t make assume people aren’t capable of it in karting.

We’ll know soon anyway. If SKUSA’s exclusion is based upon a modified exhaust then there will have to be further sanctions beyond a DSQ. If it’s a manufacturing error, that’s as big a story.

That’s wild stuff. The tires seemed like a real issue. Cooper was on an absolute tear in the Masters final, looked like the guy who could come through, and then he hit a cliff and within 2 laps his progress was halted. Then Grice just saved his stuff the whole race, and the leaders consistently got slower and slower, to the point Grice was 0.5-0.7 faster per lap than Power and David as the race wound down.

I heard a lot of tire dramas. I can’t remember the details but I remember there were some tire issues when the Evinco first came out too. SKUSA kept saying they were the same as the MGs, but lots of drivers could feel the difference, myself included. Different process used in the manufacture or something.

We use aspen here in Sweden for this year. It doesn’t leave deposits at all. Here is my piston after 4h of use in my TM KZ10C with aspen + and motul 2t oil 4% mix

2 Likes

That looks like it hasn’t even been used lol.

I saw the same thing. Certain Cooper was going to win it and he just stalled when he caught Barrios. Then Grice came out of no where.

What i dont understand was why it wasn’t happening in the heats, unless it was but not to the front runners as much. I assume its a batch issue. I had it happen with the le conts and typically the drivers who arent ultimately as fast and are smooth come through in the finals with the fastest drivers having destroyed theirs.

Talking to Kopp he said that after the final pretty much everyone in Masters had tires that looked almost as bad as Wehrheim’s.

Scott said the rears shredded like that last year, but this year the fronts as well.

Is this down to a manufacturing issue, or just being over worked?