The SuperLeague at Supercharged Edison

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Laptimes for Race 1, Heat 2

I hand timed this heat as well, out of curiosity.
That’s a lot of traffic laps!

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Race 2 fastest lap: 45.213s - Dom Callan P3

I have found that hand timing like this seems accurate to the tenth. What’s interesting is somehow, they dropped my best lap from the comp results. From the spreadsheet, they show 45.40 as my best lap of this session, which corresponds to lap 11, here. My fastest lap appears to actually be 13. I did the timing a few times, and it is consistent. Timestamp frame to frame shows 45.213.

Laps 11-13, I get cooking. I bet with less wasted laps, I could have improved a bit more. You can see the times fall over the course of the (clean) laps as I start learning the track.

Unfortunately, we don’t get our laptimes. What we receive is this:

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Drive with Dom
I’ll post narrated versions of each race:

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Drive with Dom: 9/13/23 Race 1, Heat 1 narrated

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Drive with Dom: 9/13/23 Race 1, Heat 2 narrated

No race 3 footage

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: 9/20/23 Drive with Dom: Race 2, Heat 2 narrated

[blahn (Blane Erwin)]

Oh hey, I can contribute to this!

I’ve run two league sessions at the Supercharged Entertainment location in Wrentham, MA. This one has been doing leagues for a while now, it’s interesting that the NJ location has just started them.

Format is the same between both places except when I did it earlier this year we were getting three heats per night (though we only got 8-9 laps - so I think total laps worked out to be similar). They would then drop your slowest time and average out between the two to give you your final best time for the night. We are also allowed to bring our kart in and swap it in a pit stop if we want.

This set of rules allows you to bypass the problem with a lot of indoor karting places: unbalanced karts! Across three sessions with pit stops allowed, you are likely going to have ample time in a vehicle that is satisfactory to you. I think part of the skill is also quickly adapting to how a given kart wants to drive and handle.

Here’s a bad photo I took of the MA location. There’s a nice observation/seating area on the second floor. We also have two tracks and run one of them in reverse for a total of three circuit layouts.

At the end of our league sessions, they have an awards night where they have pizza, let us run the supertrack (both tracks combined), and give out trophies to the top three finishers in each division. It’s a really nice touch that made the whole thing feel a lot more special.

One downside - no drop weeks! This second place trophy would have been first if not for a work trip that had me miss a points race…

This was more or less my first introduction to “competitive” karting. While it’s not wheel-to-wheel, you are competing! I had run outdoor rentals at places like Road America in WI and Concept Haulers in IL but never got a chance to do even a rental league. I moved to Boston in 2020 and was gutted when I learned X1 was closing for good. I was hoping to do leagues with them when they reopened!

I wound up running a few seasons of autocross before finding Supercharged and giving them a try. I am glad I did, I found Supercharged to be more enjoyable than autocross. You get more seat time, aren’t putting any wear on your car, and you don’t have to chase cones.

If I didn’t have the budget to start club racing this year, I would have been running every league session that Supercharged does. I will keep doing leagues with them during the off-season too.

These leagues are really well run and very affordable (for racing anyways). I highly recommend them to anyone who wants to try motorsports!

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

@blahn

Oh hey, I can contribute to this!

Woot! Thanks for piping up and sharing your experience in Wrentham. One of the fellas I race TKC with, Ben, has been doing their league and had nice things to say about it. I had texted him and he had assured me that despite there was no wheel to-wheel racing, that it was a lot of fun and sufficiently challenging. In short, he said, do it! I am glad I listened to him!

I am in total agreement about the convenience/price. It’s a really compelling value and a perfect way for rental folks to get into racing without the learning curve associated with figuring out “how to get started”.

It’s an organic extension of the mass market side of the biz that seems to be more or less a win for them financially as well as a convenient value for us.

If my numbers are correct it’s 475 for the whole shebang.

It’s 86 bucks for a 3-pak retail. That’s 21 laps.

475/6 is 79 bucks per night. A night is 26 laps.

But, the rental league is 2-sessions. So, takes less time to complete, I bet, than 3 retail sessions. So I assume the revenue is very similar. This appears to be a league that is as profitable as running bumper car sessions!

@blahn

If I didn’t have the budget to start club racing this year, I would have been running every league session that Supercharged does.

I think I’ll do this as much as possible as well. For the primary reason of convenience. It’s well attended so there’s good competition, it’s a quick evening, it’s cheap. What’s not to love?

We just dropped our only kid off to college and are empty nesters now. I could, theoretically, resume the 2-stroke quest to become the 2nd fastest old man after Bonanno (fat chance) in the small confines of our regional series (now called the NEKC).

But, this is waaaay cheaper, easier, less “serious” but still plenty serious if I want it to be. It also won’t piss off my spouse because this will keep me happily engaged karting midweek, leaving weekends open. I can then focus on a few big travel endurance races for my long track fun!

Enjoy the club racing! It’s great fun and if you want, it prepares you for the regional stuff. What engine package did you end up in?

Thanks for sharing and contributing your experience to the thread. Much appreciated!

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

So I showed my spouse some of the supercharged footage and she said “oh, that’s not what I expected!”. She thought it was surprisingly different from the normal outdoor pavement stuff. “Is it safe?”. Yes, yes it is.

Come to think of it, this kind of feels different. The indoor roller coaster track presents very differently than our normal sprint races.

It kinda looks futuristic on the crazy indoor tracks that bank and swoop in the darkness.

The kart grips differently on plywood, too. Grip seems to be very high.

Anyone else get that feeling? That it feels sorta different.

I am gonna throw it out there that these e-karts are “better” than gx290 on rental indoor tracks. The powerband is way, way more suited with e-karts to these uppy/downy circuits. The gx290 bottom end would bog and there’s not enough straights to ever get up into the top end. The e-kart, with its chainsaw torque, is ideal.

I suspect that the rimo sinus ion would be less interesting to race on NJMP outdoors. You get to the limiter fast and you’d be running in the top end a lot, I bet. Maybe they can reprogram the power delivery curve.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Actually, I can ask someone who knows… @Artis_Daugins

Artis, I have noticed in my electric rental league that the e-Kart works beautifully on the indoor tracks that feature lots of elevation changes, banking, tight turns, and little in the way if straights.

I was thinking that the same e-kart at a normal outdoor facility would be less interesting in that the power would come in too quick and we’d be riding limiter alot.

How does this work? Rather than changing gearing… what is done to make these fun on normal tracks? Is it done via software somehow?

Do you find that your company is getting interest from mainly indoor facilities or is it across the board?

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Manana is race day. Butterflies! I wonder what we’ll do? I presume we go back to track 1.

If so, I’ll be working on turn 3 which is a fast left hard 180 right. It comes after the uphill corkscrew. The exit of 3 sends you wide left, which you then have to hustle back to right edge to setup 4.

There are these blue lines on the track where you get pushed wide. This time around I’d like to not go much past mid or 3/4 track.

Last time around I was clipping the apex at entry of 4 a lot. This, I’d like to clean up.

Also, gonna play with braking into final turn.

Also, we may get some non-race speed 4 practice opportunities:

Alas, I have deleted Facebook. It appears karters use Instagram more now. A discord would be even better.

Another note, we may have found a rental series that will get eyes on the vids. Here’s the 28 day rise in views as I have started posting the supercharged league. It appears to be starting to disseminate and I’m picking up views and subs. I am curious to see how much interest the vids get. This may be successful. I suspect that once the new races are posted we will see more new views.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

A thought for tomorrow:

I noticed watching my footage that the entry to the uphill corkscrew was dramatically different h1 v h2.

The track appears to have gripped up dramatically over the course of the two heats. This doesn’t make a ton of sense to me given the constant traffic but that’s what it was like. Grip “evolved” and as laps progress, you see the entry narrow and mid-corner tighten.

Another racer I was having a convo with said that he had heard other guys in d1 complaining about the track being “cold” for heat 1.

That makes more sense to me than rubber build up. I suppose tracks that twist around in the air must cool rapidly. If the track had been shut down for a few hours before the race, perhaps that’s long enough to cool it down. Since d1 is first group, cold track maybe.

I’m not sure if this is correct but, it does make me want to be more conservative lap 1 of heat 1. It’s kind of funny, my very first full speed attempt on lap 1 blew right through the rubber and I ran super wide. Lesson learned.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

@GregF

Edit: p.p.s. Some of the sections of corners you treated like straights and although electric, It sounded like you hit max rpm a few times.

Yeah I’m trying to figure the e-kart out.

The engine braking is very strong and initially I have played with that. I am thinking that traditional braking will be important. But I’m rolling corners using the engine braking by coming off throttle a bit and back on. As this goes along I’ll figure out where to brake to shorten that up.

The karts are likely on some sort of electronic limiter. The karts do make engine noises and I think that’s what you hear as limiter kicking in, which is likely accurate. I found that the engine noises corresponded with bogging etc., accurately.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Week 3 and director Will shows us how it’s done!

Another lovely night of racing came and went at Supercharged Edison. We held our weds night heats as usual and this time in our final divisions!

Guess who joined us in D1? Race director and GM Will. I kinda suspected he could drive but now we know! He did a fabulous job and almost beat our fastest driver currently, Brandon. I would love to hear more of Will’s driving story/background because I bet it’s interesting. Anyways, congrats to Will on P2 in h1 and h2!

It was good night for meeting people. A gentleman also in my split introduced himself, Marc Coltelli, and he’s a UK racer who might be in his 30s or early 40s. He has what appears to be considerable experience in racing, both euro karting tour type stuff and car racing. If I understood correctly he is involved currently in Electric formula racing in some capacity. It was nice to meet you, Marc Coltelli! I shall be asking for pointers, no doubt.

He’s not our only UK racer, however. The gentleman you will see me battling with in the Pink helmet is also a UK transplant IIRC and I will report back with more info.

The racing was GREAT! Since we were in our final splits, we had a much tighter field and we could battle (which isn’t productive in TT but a hell of a lot of fun which is 70% of why we do this anyways).

I personally had a lot of fun seeing if there was any benefit to bump drafting folks in electrics. I was hoping to bonk Richard (250lbs) up the hill a bit and see if we could get better time but we kept getting flagged: so, Richard and I traded back and forth for a bit, amusing ourselves, and no doubt confusing the flaggers.

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Rental session with Brandon before Races

Unfortunately, my Gopro once again bricked itself on the grid, so there is no heat 1 footage. Which, is fine by me since I was struggling a bit with the cold track and a kart that decided to make zero noise. You may think the canned engine sounds are silly, but one does miss the feedback the engine noises give.

Heat 1

But, since our starting time was so late, Brandon and I did a rental general session. It was really fun to go out on the much slower karts and mess around. This session was filmed and actually, seems to be drawing more eyeballs than the fast karts, lol.

I did manage to get the recalcitrant Gopro to do its job for heat 2. And, here it is:

Race 6 (heat 2)

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Round 3, Heat 2 (race 6), Group 1 - Dom Callan

It was an excellent first night out in D1. I managed to post a respectable time and the leaderboard was tightly spaced. It appears that places 6-11 were all 44.5x! Me and Icaro came really close, with Icaro pipping me by a mere 1/1000. Nice drive, Icaro!

Icaro beats man in crooked glasses

My pal Alex was very pleased having set his new personal best for track 1 with a fast 44.376, and I came in 11 with a 44.587. It seems that everyone had a pretty good night in heat 2, after the track warmed and gripped up a bit.

Heat 2

And so, we are off. It looks like it will be a hard fought battle for tenths!

If anyone else has footage and stories, feel free to jump in and share!

[Spenny (Spencer Giles)]

Okay I’ll be honest, I never watched the previous videos because I have had less than exciting experiences with indoor electric karting. But, on a whim I just watched that heat video and wow! That looks like a ton of fun haha.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Aha! My evil plan is working!

Secretly, I am working for Big Electric and I’m softening you up for the electric revolution.

I’ll try to describe. The karts have bottom end that is very direct and torquey. The power feels very linear. The way the kart accelerates and rises is unlike gas karts, although the chainsaw power and torque is more 2 strokey than 4.

What the kart misses is breadth of power. It’s all available, quickly, and you don’t get the feeling of taking a tag up to 16k, howling like a banshee. That being said, the electric experience has its own thing going on and feels good, too. Linear instant power is pretty special.

In terms of driving, it’s all right foot. The linearity makes it so.

Should one of these pop up in your neck of the country, given that you and your spouse seem to enjoy the indoor stuff, this is an obvious fit for you guys. Also, if your spouse has only had seat time in laconic low end gx270 type karts, this would be a fabulous learning experience. It forces folks to pay attention to how power gets put down when it’s all there up front.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Drive with Dom

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Round 3, Heat 2 (race 6), Group 1 - Dom Callan

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Drive with Dom (and Brandon): 9/27/23 General Session narrated

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged Track 1: Race 6 fastest lap: 44.588s - Dom Callan

Post your laps if so inclined!

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

There appears to be pretty good interest in the league, or at least, Supercharged.

Interestingly, the most views go to non-race footage. The short iphone movie from the observation deck has gotten 2x the race views.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Just sayin’

Space Mountain Lights On Ride Through - Walt Disney World

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Speed 4 Practice Night

Will sent out an email that he was opening Track 2 up for practice at speed 4, Monday night. I hopped in car and got 4 heats in on a cold track. It was good fun. We had some moments as one fella didn’t want to let anyone pass but overall it was a productive session.

Warm track

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged Track 2: Practice Heat 4

A lot of hindered laps but otherwise the track was feeling pretty good!

Getting there

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged Track 2: Practice Heat 3

Good session with many clean laps.

Warmer

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged Track 2: Practice Heat 2

Track improves a bit.

Cold

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged Track 2: Practice Heat 1

Lead/follow in pack with a pal on cold track.

Managed to land 48.7 final session, which I am content with. One of the drivers, Michael Polasek, is really quick and managed a .0 which was impressive.

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Week 4: Races 7 and 8

Some of the gang from Weds. night

Another quick night where D1-4 ran starting at 6, which meant we were done by 8. Next week, we will be the later group.

A good session, imho. It went off smoothly and laptimes looked pretty good all around. The faster/younger fellas weren’t too happy that in Heat 2 they sent the fast guys out last. Not sure if intentional but it appears to have been an effective character building exercise for them. The session went great for me since I managed to be funneled out 2nd and then had all clear laps!

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Round 4, Heat 1 (race 7), Group 1 - Dom Callan

I discussed some of the turns with Marc Coltelli (whom I would love to introduce to @tankyx ). He’s a British racer who has more experience than me and is also, faster. He’s up front with the lightest guys, despite racing a middle aged chassis.

SuperLeague Edison Supercharged: Round 4, Heat 2 (race 8), Group 1 - Dom Callan

We talked about the uphill ramp. I’ve been using a narrow entry. Most have been doing the opposite. Marc and I think it’s somewhere in between. We shall see!

Marc and I were talking and he mentioned he liked doing endurance races back in the UK. This is, of course, music to my ears!

So, I may have found a new member for Rebel Scum Racing. Marc is gonna try to join me, @AndreLafond and @E13 at AMP in November for @EnduranceKarting race. A big welcome from Rebel Scum. I shall have to update our marketing materials!

Update Inc.

Also, I played a bit with the downhill spiral bit. I tried to hold the left edge coming out of the tight left entry, and then taking a very big arc, full zap, down to late apex.

Personally I did fine and continue to make improvements. I am content. I am pleased for our pal James Harris who managed to win his d2 heat! Way to go!

Nick Trenchi is another racer and also a YouTube enthusiast, like me. We’ve been chatting and he told me he managed to figure out how to extract the data from their servers. Here’s what it looks like. Click away and see it all!

https://scedison.clubspeedtiming.com/sp_center/RacerHistory.aspx?CustID=MzI3NzUxMw==

I Wanna Go Fast

Thank you Nick! Awesome work. Also, if I am not mistaken, you did well in your heats so congrats to you.

T2, Track 2, Edison

Results:

]

[nikspeeds (Nik T)]

@Bimodal_Rocket

My one gripe is lighting. The track is black. The room is black. The track barrier periphery is black. The whole thing is a light sink and has many dark spots.

I’d like to see better lighting also, but mostly bc it helps with the camera’s stabilization videos could look a lot better

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Tru That! I have it set to 1600 and that seems ok. I would prefer better lighting as well, but I’ve gotten used to it. The bits where you go under the elevated track at end of both laps is too dark.

There are a few blind corners, as well!

Welcome to Kartpulse, Nik!

[Bimodal_Rocket (Dom Callan)]

Ok I’m borrowing an idea from Norberg

KARTING DRIVER POV (GoPro Hero 12 SUPERVIEW) **BUSY TRACK** Trackhouse Motorplex

This will look absolutely nuts at supercharged in the e-karts.

I must go buy a 360 cam and chin mount today. I think this is how Ryan filmed it. I did ask on his video so we shall see what he uses but that’s my guess.

GoPro: Creator Series - MAX Mounting Tips with Abe Kislevitz