This place looks AMAZING. Look at those elevation changes and 5th/6th gear corners.
Props to Ozark’s social media for talking about the event leading up to it, most road courses don’t seem to bother which is a bummer. Anyway, here’s one of their posts. Hopefully this will be a habit for them.
To get an idea of how exactly fast they can go at this road course, here’s another video on FB from Chase Pflughaupt showing one lap at Ozarks with the speed data embedded.
The 125 shifters were flirting with 2 and-a-half minute lap times on the almost 4-mile road course. Many cars wouldn’t be able to break the 3-minute barrier there. And I’m not sure there was even a single 250 Superkart in attendance that weekend.
Earlier in the year, there was concern about the track and the proximity of some barriers. I’ll admit, 100+ mph on a sweeping left corner with a solid concrete pit wall on the other side looks pretty scary. But so far, karters’ opinion from those who just raced there are almost unaminous in saying this is the one of the best, if not the greatest, road course they’ve been able to drive on.
This can’t be stressed enough. Road Race karters are still able to race at some nice road courses in the U.S. But the vibe I get at one or two places is that the tracks have no interest in the karters, and just seem to tolerate them. With so many new car, track day, and other race series organizations out there now, demand for race dates at road courses is high. It’s tragic how many different road courses the enduro karters used to race at in the past 15 years, and no longer do.
So it’s a nice surpise to hear from the karters who were there, how helpful and accommodating the Ozarks Intl’ Raceway personnel were. It was as if they were grateful for the CES to be racing there, and that karting may actually have a long-term future with the race track. Promoting the event on FB to the non-karting public helps too.
