Supercharged 2024 League 1

I guess he wouldn’t accept that such tinkering fell under “maintenance” then…

Would be interesting to see how more air pressure would change things on cold tires, but it shall remain a mystery, alas.

In any case, the kart itself was an unfair advantage :grin:

Those were some really consistent laps! It makes it easy to see the tale of the tires. I know you’re having fun doing the indoor stuff for now, but do see the day when you try to get back to the outdoor tracks again? (e.g., with your own kart)

Not really. TBH I really like rental arrive and drive.

I find that the time/money involved in owner karts is a PITA.

I’d rather be able to do a lot of rental stuff with a bunch of team enduros as the main events.

The thing is tho, power is seductive. I really do miss the feeling of being at 16k EOS, all that noise and fury. Feels good.

I have a dream that maybe someday I can go run USPKS masters 100 with Montopoli et Co. It’s a bit of a pipe dream, though.

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Yeah, that’s a fair analysis of owning your own kart. It is a PITA, as much as I love it. It’s cool that you have facilities where you even feel like it’s an option to choose the rental route (especially love the enduro idea). There’s really not anything like that around here, so for me it would pretty much be a) stay home, b) own my own kart, or c) go to K1, which - no thanks, it feels more like a Chuck E Cheese than a proper karting facility.

Yeah the rental racing can be pretty crap but it’s also good, depends.

Round here we have a good series started by local guys (TKC) so that’s a lot of fun and the drivers range from so-so to excellent. Always a good battle to be had.

@EnduranceKarting Chris runs a traveling endurance race series that travels up and down the Eastern coast. That’s my “big ticket” racing that involves rounding up the scum, travel, hotel, etc.

I think rental stuff is really dependent on your local scene/crew. If you have active folks, competition can be good.

Rental karting walkins are typically a nightmare. But leagues are usually quite good.

K1 has a very cool thing going on where they are doing national series with each location having a winner that goes to the new track for the finals. That’s a cool brass ring, imho.

It could be worse, you could be @E13 and live in NH and have no karting to speak of.

FYI: VT has nothing, bupkiss, zero.

Where are you located, Caleb?

Another thought: you get used to the total lack of fear/sensation of speed in low hp stuff and it becomes more “playful”? When you have total confidence in the kart and your abilities. It’s kind of fun having that level of control with wraparounds to move slowpokes out of the way.

@Artis_Daugins
Can we pick your mind not specifically BSR but ekart in general?

I had a “hot” kart last night that felt like it was basically on a higher speed level.

What accounts for that? Assuming the karts are all mapped the same way (the league runs them all at speed 4), what would account for me being .75 faster than p2 and several seconds from last?

We all are at 100 state of charge for league. I assume it’s all software controlled and the power curves are the same.

How does the kart get more ooomph (current?) accidentally as compared to fleet? Mechanically kart was normal. Assume same tires pressures and components all identical and in state of good repair.

@nikspeeds add away since you are big brained when it comes to this.

I live in the Sacramento area and I think part of the lack of big time indoor karting around here, is that there are actually a lot of outdoor tracks around. I live within 1.5hrs of 4 outdoor tracks, and within 20 mins of one of them. Fortunately for myself, I have the bandwidth for keeping up with my karts, but it does boggle the mind how much time and energy they absorb, lol.

I could see that having wraparounds is a nice thing. I honestly wouldn’t mind having light-weight wraparounds on my own kart (more to protect against wheel to wheel contact than to protect the kart parts themselves, basically like sidepod material all the way around). This idea however seems to be one of the more unpopular ideas I’ve ever brought up around karting folk, hehe.

Ahh the Sacto Bowl! I used to go there back in my thrasher days. Chris Senn (pro skater from that area) used to tear that place up.

I did not do karting my 20s despite working indirectly for track magic. I missed out on that world, alas.

Track Magic still has a loyal following around here that’s for sure. There’s an owner’s group that usually meets up at least once a year to do their thing. By happenstance I ended up at one of those with my kart and had a great time. Gary Carlton was there and unveiled his new Gen Track Magic. The skate/karting connection there is pretty cool. I did all my skating when I was in my teens - I realized early that I was way too much of a wuss to keep it up. (and I tell anyone who will listen that skating is the toughest/most-painful thing I’ve ever done on a per-outing-basis, and this is after cracking it real good in several motorcycle accidents, haha)

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I’m kind of a wimp and the slams in skating can be brutal. Also San Francisco had these little square holes in the sidewalk that would sometimes be missing their metal cover, nothing like having a wheel come to a dead stop while your body keeps going forwards.

My first day Jake had me drop in on the Widowmaker in his warehouse in Oakland. The widowmaker had a ton of vert so it was pretty terrifying. Also, I had never dropped in on a vert ramp, ever. (He invited like 50 guys including local rippers like the late Ruben Orkin and a ton of his pro buddies that day, sheesh!)

Was pretty hilarious, Cardiel, Andy Roy, Burnquist, Jake, etc all whanging away at the coping yelling “do it”".

I did. Face plant. Did again, less face plant, third time, made it down the transition.

That was so epic and so Phelps. As the new guy I was like, you ain’t gonna intimidate me. Some of that crew were extremely gnar-gnar though. Dropping in was a must-do.

I never got to meet Gary. Memo was the track magic pro while I was there, nice guy!

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That sounds like a crazy and epic skate scene to be part of. And it seems like you became a much better skater than I ever did. :laughing:

Gnar gnar doesn’t even begin to describe what some of those guys choose to do with their bodies. I think people who haven’t been around it a lot or watched a lot of it really have no idea. I know it’s a karting forum, but this Thrasher vid is my all time, “This is what people who really care about achieving a goal are willing to do and sacrifice”. (fair warning, much cursing ensues)

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I’m just as curious. The karts have a “boost” mode that’s disabled for League. I wonder what kind of glitch it would take for that to be accidentally stuck in boost mode full time.

Will this happen again on that kart after it’s restarted? There are some karts that always underperform, but are there some that always overperform?

I feel like the “Bad” karts are more easily explained by failing components and such, but what explains a kart that is suddenly faster? :man_shrugging:

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360 with Text comments

Lol, sadly not. I was pretty hopeless but I did like bowls and could Ollie/slides/smol grinds. I also used to love hill riding out in the sunset districts.

Yeh. That being said it was a kinda unique experience and I have some stories. Remind me to tell you about when Phil Shao drove me to the emergency room with my left foot pointing backwards and flopping.

In skater terms, my karting ambition is to be like Pete “The Ox” Colpitts (mind boggling pool skater).

Photos by BK (was the photo editor back in my day, before Luke Ogden took the reins).

Did you keep skating after that?

Skating doesn’t work in suburban NJ. My relationship with skating was from spending my Summers in La Jolla, CA in the 70’s and 80s.

I briefly got back into skating in my 20s, largely as an excuse to do photography and one thing led to another… thus Thrasher.

It was my self taught publishing skills, along with my photography/journalism skills that sort of made a wierd stew that landed me there. (That and some bad life choices).

But nah, I don’t street skate at all anymore, although if there were bowls and I didn’t kart, maybe.

The longboard era was fun and I kept one of the cruisers for a while. But I have no desire to dodge traffic. I race, after all, and hate the idea of being vulnerable like that. I don’t like gambling with traffic. (Jake did, tho, iirc he hit a bus, hillbombing).

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Yeah I didn’t realize there was another person behind you at first, that was the start of me letting the whole world by, and when I heard Yosef coming I wanted to stay out of the way and continue letting everyone by but was more focused on that and hit the wall :joy:

On letting everyone by:

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I let you pass into 1.
I push you as we go across SF and 1. You then get immediately flagged as we look at 2.

However, I went outside wide to let you go up so then the guy behind then gaps up as you flag behind me. Then we are 3 wide into kink lol.

Just a comedy of errors. I think you just kinda wanted to drop back but Yosef created a whole new element you hadn’t foreseen.

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