Nice race! That looks like a ton of fun. I d say you were very considerate and gave the others room when battling, which wasn’t necessarily the case for some for some of the other competitors. You never moved anyone and took the turns clean.
I do like how your awareness of flag dropping gave you a nice jump. Well done.
Driving looks good… it seems to me you are occasionally ending up a tad wide as you push too hard into a turn, which affects your next sector run. Not dramatic, but a thought.
Seems hard to not push in that it’s a train of karts and you can’t let up. But, prioritize exit.
For the NYC area gang… a hot take on the newly refurbished RPM from one of my rental racing buddies. Not good.
So some time late last year, I checked out RPM, you know me coming back from a 4 year retirement. Yes rpm has a new cool multilevel track an the new OTL, now the OTL normally are Fast an very quick…
… I did 2 races, first one was weird the kart kept slowing down. So I asked the dude if I was on speed 4 an he said yes. An asked what’s going on with the kart a what he said made me puke… Apparently RPM tuned the karts to automatically slow down in every single corner including corners that you can take flat out… it’s smart but stupid at the same time, cause let’s be real guys, 90% of the customers that go there can’t drive an with there new track those karts at full active in the hands of the untrained mind can definitely give rpm a lawsuit for crashing off track into the shadow realm.
The paddle shifters don’t work there for looks an the boost button doesn’t work, they also stopped doing leagues, basically in short term words your driving a kart that has the highest assist settings turned on. Yeah that’s right
I asked the dude if there’s a way to turn that off an he said “NO” 100% of the race your going full throttle. It’s terrible, if you look at there reviews 60% of them talk about the new karts. Save your money guys don’t spend 30 bucks to be controlled. The new supercharged is there to throw them out of business.
TLDR: New RPM has made karts slow as molasses so people don’t crash.
I get it from a biz perspective but it seems shortsighted. The business will rely exclusively on non-repeat business and parties/events as the experience will be dull for those who achieve some level of competence.
He also reports that the new Supercharged is DOPE but crowded as heck.
I was looking for a pic and found my first race, ever. It was a lot of fun to re-watch. I can just imagine me and Nick on the drive home, stoked out of our minds and exhausted. My driving was not good and I had no idea how to pass, but man it looked like fun.
Oof, that start. You can tell I am like “this is scary, go ahead and I’ll catch up later”.
Here’s a few laps from my first practice day in the new beast. I’m pretty new to gearbox karts so feedback is welcome. Here are a couple of the notes I’ve already made for myself:
There’s plenty of places I can tell that I’m driving it too much like a single speed kart, I think this is most clear in the last turn. I probably need to take a more shallow line into the slower turns with a much more gradual and earlier turn in.
Lots of sliding, wheel inputs are often too aggressive, also just general lack of consistency. I’m thinking a lot of this should come with familiarity and seat time.
There were also a couple of things we changed on the kart after this run that I think would’ve helped - never had to set brake bias on a kart before, some folks at the track helped us figure out it was much to rearward so we moved it forward quite a bit after this. We also addressed a little bit of a sticky throttle which caused some shifts to be a little later then they should’ve been. We also had pressures too high which likely contributed to some of the excessive sliding. The reason you’re seeing this run and not the one after we made all of these fixes is that my neck gave up immediately after this so I wasn’t able to string together another full session after this one - also adding “neck exercises” to my list of improvements to make
Definitely make sure to fine tune the brake bias. Getting sideways in heavy braking zones into lower speed corners probably means you have too much rear. In faster corners you’ll want to be careful not to carry the brake too far into the corner, as this could cause too much weight transfer to the nose, resulting in instability entry/mid. Definitely some opportunities for you to enter shallower and slow your hands down especially. The most important phase in the shifter is power delivery, which is highly dependent on mid-corner stability; I would focus on one cleaner moment of rotation closer to apex as opposed to sliding the kart and waiting for traction to come back by the time you need to power down.
I assume you’re running a 30mm CompKart? Basically the same thing as the BirelArt, which likes the seat pretty far back.
Thanks! Pretty happy with how it went considering it was just day 1, looking forward to getting more practice with it this year. Also appreciate the feedback, seems like I’ve got some single-speed habits (and other just bad habits) to break.
Yep its a KZ, TM R1 but the frame is 32mm actually. I think it was one of the last new 2022 ones they had in stock, but it also sounded like the J3 folks have been preferring the stiffer tubes over the 30mm ones lately anyways. I might have some opportunities to go back-to-back with a 30mm BirelArt at some point this year, so it’ll be interesting to see how they compare once I get the driving down a little better.
I’ve got a fair amount of experience with both models, and provided they haven’t made significant updates to the 32mm, it behaves wildly different than the 30mm. We tuned that kart almost exclusively with front end adjustments (bar stiffness and caster) since it is so sensitive and front-positive. For this reason it’s going to exaggerate any quick hand movements. My experience with that model was mostly in low grip scenarios, but I think it would well-suited to grippy conditions (might be why J3 likes it).
Come out and race that thing in the Stars series! We should have a very solid KZ Masters field this year.
I’m hoping to hit up at least the last couple of Stars events this year. GoPro is for sure out because of other family commitments that weekend, and our first kid is due right around the time of the New Castle race, so that one is almost certainly out too. Would love to head back up to Pittsburgh and to try out MCC with it though!
Does the UK have a tradition of absurd engineering of race vehicles as well? I could imagine a group of enthusiast s racing hot rodded British taxis or something.
You never moved anyone and took the turns clean.
, a short view 
