I wrote a new article that can be read here - The Adult Driver Exodus from Karting
I think America is in a different place, but thought I’d let you know what’s happening over here.
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Does this matter? Absolutely. Ayrton Senna once called karting the most spectacular motorsport, and he was right. The decline in karting participation and visibility is a tragedy. Despite the lack of current licence data, the struggles of many clubs to stay afloat are evident. More people should experience karting, and young drivers should not feel embarrassed for continuing past 16 simply because they didn’t “make it.” Karting, done right, remains the purest form of motorsport, deserving of greater recognition and revival.
Well said sir
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I know its nigh on impossible to measure, but what is the state of non-license racing in the UK?
Most karting in the states is like IKR, each club does its own thing, some join together, some follow a ruleset, but its in their purview. No licenses, limited requirements for homologated equipment (often just helmets).
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Tricky. UKC has now gone MSUK, but I suspect a fair chunk of their competitors were already licenced. NKC is popular, but a National series. Rye House has now gone back to MSUK but under a Super-KX permit which I believe means drivers only need an KX licence, which I think is the indoor one. It’s hard to understand. Lydd has gone back to IKR.
it’s very convoluted and messy to try and understand it from an analysis perspective.
I guess the best data is timing results from Apex, alpha etc. would take some processing but it’s about as good as you can get.
… and that takes a level of interest I am not quite in possession of. 
So you mean scrape all the race data from results on Race Hero and similar and figure out a way to convert that into useful data?
Lemme page @nikspeeds resident cyber scary guy who does this sort of thing for fun and a job. Is something like that doable? It must since he did similar to Clubspeed data feed.
Basically. Totally doable… just a bit tedious.
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Getting the data from those systems is fine, they’re all publicly exposed, but it might be impossible to reshape it to get the insight you’re looking for, at least to any point of reasonable accuracy.
“class” is gonna be the best proxy for “age”, but it’s not a great one, and would (like James said) be tedious to normalize - not just across platforms, but even within different series on the same platform.
Then there’s no reliable concept of a driver or team ID, to not be double counting everyone. So more headaches to work around that.
Just to end up with results that are not really accurate anyway 
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As always your wisdom and insight is appreciated!
Interesting article! I think it is quite a bit different in the UK than the US in regards to the perspective that karting is first and foremost, a “make or break” path to being a professional driver. While that sentiment can certainly be found here (nearly every kid driver says they want to race in F1 someday), the vast majority of kart racers I interact with are there just to have fun. Our club is largely people ages ~30+ who race as a hobby. This “grassroots” / hobby sentiment is quite prevalent in other forms of local racing too from what I’ve seen in the US. Hardly anyone is there racing because there might be scouts in the stands lmao.
I like that. It feels pure and consistent with the early days of racing. Just a group of people who like to see who is the fastest because…well, why do we need a logical reason? Because it is fun!
IMO, from my experience taking up karting as a 30 year old from scratch, what I think would help bring more hobby people to the track is:
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More positional racing leagues at rental tracks, especially outdoor tracks! This was my first experience racing for positions and really ignited my love for karting and set me on the path to getting my own kart.
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Better online visibility / marketing / information / websites for tracks and clubs. The vast majority of club websites are pretty bad. So much vital communication and info in karting is fractured and spread across Facebook, email chains and word of mouth, which is annoying.
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More karting content creators to boost visibility into the sport. Additionally, more coverage of large races on Youtube / streaming / TV. More people I talk to know that professional arm wrestling is a thing than know there is a local competitive karting series…
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Better consistency when it comes to rules and regs from track to track and club to club. There is a real barrier to entry when every track uses different brands of tires and/or has slightly different rules which are hard to piece together and understand.
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Longer lasting or cheaper tires for entry-level classes. Spending $200-250 nearly each race on top of race fees is a tough pill to swallow for someone new who also has to spend $$$ on tools and transportation.
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More prevalent and/or less expensive “for hire” options (even club-sponsored) for someone who wants to try owner-karting before they buy their own. Perhaps even a model where you bring your own kart and gear and then you get trackside assistance for everything else. That would have been amazing for me just starting out.
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Less restrictive access to tracks for practice. My track only allows practice on weekdays and Saturdays on race weekends. Which, as a working professional, means I never get to practice unless I’m racing Sunday.
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Track-side storage options for people without a garage in there living situation or who don’t own a truck.
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Last but most importantly: a healthy economy which allows young adults to have enough “fun money” and free time to invest into a hobby like karting if they are interested in it. I’ve made a handful of friends through a local rental kart league and they have all said they really want to get into club karting but everything involved is far too expensive for them to be able to do it.
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You had me until this crazy talk. 
(I kid and also agree).
When I was a kid in Paris living in working/middle class Paris, every neighborhood had an athletic facility that served as a community center for young and old. Soccer, tennis, ping pong, gymnastics etc. other stuff too. Free basically. Also we got sent to the alps twice a year for state paid ski camp. Not at like suburban USA where you are paying for all that, mostly, unless near a Y or something similar I guess.
It’s money, free time, infrastructure and nowadays we lack on all 3 departments and I don’t see this ever coming back, sadly. By infrastructure I don’t mean just racetracks, but the whole connective tissue of local clubs, friendly small shops that would just do a crank for you, all the ancillary stuff you rely on as a “privateer”. I think we are one generation away from total extinction of that model
Nailed it.
My brother (@Bokeno_Racing ) and I run the social media and website for our club. Our goal is to just have great communication to our members and have an online presence.
Additionally, (@Bokeno_Racing ) put together a “How to get started” guide for people inquiring about joining. As we all know, getting started is confusing and can be financially straining. Nurturing and teaching new people is vital for the “hobby” club demographic.
Our club has a contract with Hoosier. This year, we moved to a harder compound tire (R70). While it’s not the grippiest compound, it last at least 5 full race days in KA without fall off. The perfect club tire IMO. The downside is that everyone in our region uses MG…
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This is interesting data, and for sure we’re dealing with different circumstances in America, though there’s probably some commonalities:
At the “Nationals” level, America still seems to have healthy Cadet (7-10), Sportsman (8-12), and Junior (11-15) participation, while the Masters (30+) classes have tapered off. For example, several Nationals series only run Masters when they can get enough entries, and USPKS just announced a rules change to decrease tire set allowance for Masters (because they hated buying so many sets for a weekend).
But at the Club level in our region, we seem to have the opposite situation: our Seniors (15+), Masters (30+), and Legends (50+) classes all pull great numbers, while the Kid Kart, Sportsman and Juniors don’t do as well. There seem to be PLENTY of “Journeyman” drivers in the ~26+ age bracket who just want to come out and have fun, while at the Sportsman-ish level it seems that there are fewer “weekend racers” and more “ALL-IN, run multiple-classes, use top-level equipment” racers.
I’m not sure culturally what’s driving these changes (for instance, the “Legends” type classes for 50+ are a new phenomenon that do quite well) but certainly economics plays a part. As @Ethan_Bokeno said, we went to harder tires this year which have seen at least a doubling in competitive weekends of running, and in America the Briggs 206 4-cycle engine has been an incredible boost toward keeping karting affordable for many, with a sub-$1000 buy in and extremely low running costs its become the go-to for entry level karting. The 2-cycle stuff still does well, but only up to KA100. Water-cooled engines seem economically unfeasible for long-term, well attended classes at the club level for most clubs.
The other issue I see is many clubs treating Kid Karts (5-8) as an afterthought, and only running them at the lunch-break… these families deserve more running and the seat time they get at that age pays dividends towards heads-up racing when they move up, which is why we treat them as a full competitive class at OVKA. If you attract families from that age, they tend to stick around for longer.
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I Australia, we went through a membership crisis throughout the 2010s. I think we have pushed through it but there have been casualties along the way.
The largest state (by numbers) went through a schism, breaking away from the national governing body. This has seen them put the focus back onto club level karting rather than the national championship events. They have reintroduced retro classes to allow people to get old engines out of the attic and get back to having fun. At the same time carefully making class changes to combine classes into larger fields without needing people to retire engines. And almost all but a few classes run on the same hard wearing rubber keeping it at a sensible price.
There is not a big rental race market in Australia. People typically own their equipment. Maybe the rental scene is white anting your club level competition.
Event numbers and membership in NSW are now stronger than ever. I think the rest of the nation has benefited.
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Spencer absolutely nails what needs to be done better, or at least more frequently and consistently. Those of us that have been in the biz for quite awhile need to look at the specific experiences and suggestions from people that have recently made the plunge. What are the obstacles? What would make it easier to convert people to owners or dedicated A&D customers and be a part of the sport.
The karting content creators was an angle
I never really thought about.
The For Hire services and trackside storage options are two things we’ve really made an investment in the last few years as our new racer customer base has shifted towards bringing established indoor racers to owner karting.
I’m going to use this post in my next meeting with the track actually (if you don’t mind Spencer) to emphasize a few points we’ve been trying to make with them to continue our growth trend.
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Making karting specific content is expensive with very little financial incentive. I used to be doable, but now you’re at the whims of the YouTube algorithm. Also the content that ‘works’ isn’t always the type of content that ‘sells’. Superkarts can get enormous numbers, but that doesn’t translate into entries. There’s about 60 regular competitors left in the UK for long circuit stuff, yet Superkart videos can generate millions of views. They’ve probably generated a total of 1 or 2 entries, if that.
There’s lot of complexity here too. It’s a struggle to ask the right questions and even define karting. What exactly is our shared culture? 40/50 years ago I could open a magazine and within 5 minutes be like “yep, this is karting”. Now? It’s very very very difficult to answer the same question. That’s fundamental the issue really my side of the pond. What is karting and why is it worth promoting?
I guess because I’m in the UK we have really exhausted every angle, and everything is as developed as an ‘idea’ as it could possibly be. We probably have more indoor and recreational venues than anywhere int he world per square mile. We probably have the most circuits per square mile. We also have the most competitive teams per square mile too. So it very much depends where you are on the curve.
I’ve recently come to understand what the current licence figures might be in the UK. It’s not good.
Great insights Spencer.
This is 100% true. But also, what I’ve found is that most clubs are just too resource constrained (and or rely on volunteers with very variable time available) to be able to keep up… Initially I thought the platform was the problem when it came to website, and built something easy to use for all clubs in the form of pages and a directory that was search engine indexable.
The challenge is getting the folks to use it and keep it up to date… or find clubs that see the value in it and pay a nominal fee to take care of things.
If anyone out there is willing to help manage such a thing and reach out to clubs etc, I’m more than happy to rebuild the platform.
[quote=“Spencer Giles, post:11, topic:12440, username:Spenny”]
More karting content creators to boost visibility into the sport. [/quote]
Yes but no (IMO). I know some people get annoyed when I put my marketing hat on because “ThAT won’T wORK FOR KarTING”, but I think rather than relying on (somewhat) random content of varying quality with little to no call to action or info that will help people take the next step a content\web strategy needs a planned approach.
I think the sport would do better with a well thought out video campaign that is structured in such a way to walk people along a funnel. Awareness > Interest > Consideration > Intent > Evaluation > “Purchase”. Such a thing could be made available to clubs for a fee or some other arrangement.
Again, I can help if someone is willing to commit to such a thing. It’s a heavy lift, but I can help with messaging and ad targeting. An agreement would need to be made on what what the “product for purchase” is going to be. It needs to be a consistent, not confusing process for the people that are interested.
The days of random content working in any kind of way have been gone for over a decade. As I’ve said before, usually as drivers or tuners we’ll start a day at the track with a hypostasis of what’s going to work… then we iterate from there based on observations and data.
Growing the sport (or anything really) is the same.
So why am I not doing these things? Fair question. One thing I’ve learned is doing these things by yourself is practically impossible and I’m grateful to folks like @DavinRS, @Eric_Gunderson1 and @XanderClements who have committed to various projects with me in the past. Fast forward to now, between trying to open a track and everything else going on I’m tapped out. But I’m always happy to hop on a call share my insights, give direction and support in any way that I can.
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IMO the inmates are running the prison at multiple levels in karting, but I also think there are external factors to really consider. A couple years ago and the sport was growing like crazy….
So, there is potentially a component of the sport right sizing. That said there are a lot of things about the sport that frustrate me. I do hope we can retain adult drivers with considerable numbers.
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