Well, that didn’t go as expected!
Last week’s reader poll “Will You do More Karting This Year?” indicates a whopping 60% of karters plan to do less racing in 2018 than what they did last year.
The sport has an historical churn rate of around 30%, so this response does not take into account the new karters entering the sport during the year, but still, it’s mighty alarming.
I was thinking (hoping?) the sport of asphalt sprint kart racing might show signs of recovery in 2018. My reasoning?
- The pain for existing karters to switch over to the new engines has now long gone
- There’s a growing supply of secondhand equipment
- ‘Pathway engined’ juniors are now feeding into the senior classes
- KA’s Junior Sprockets and Bring a Mate programs should be adding numbers
Additionally, the decline of competitor numbers at my local club seemed to have flattened out during the year and even started to pick up at the last couple of events.
It will be interesting to see if Karting Australia reveal any official participation figures for 2017 and 2018. I’m curious to know if the reader poll turns out to be accurate or not.
Anyway, since most of the respondents last week said they’ll be doing less racing, I want to know WHY you’ll be doing less racing!
I realise this survey is flawed as I cannot restrict the respondents to just those who participated last week. However, if you plan to race less this year, I encourage you to have a good think about the reason(s) and let us know. You can choose multiple items and add other reasons if required.
The day they brought tag in was the day they killed a poor mans motor sport. Yamaha simple push start engine no fancy bolt ons. Now you need 10000$ to get in or you buy second hand flogged out crap etc. good luck
How many Clubman engines did you have Rudy at one time ???
Too expensive to stay current. Rules and tech regs constantly changing. Tyres that don’t last long enough.
Your 4 dot points are flawed. The Junior Sprockets and Bring a Mate are only bringing in a trickle because people looking at joining our sport today see the inflated costs and don’t join up. The juniors are not flowing thru, the pathway engines are not what they want to race as they actually go slower at senior weight. They want to go faster so dad must buy them a 125 setup and that big changeover cost stops their karting career. The pain of the cost of the new style engines is not gone, it’s too costly for newcomers to get excited about joining and the promised improved parity that the increased cost was to bring is not to the level expected. And the ever rising cost of the new generation of engines with all their variations and improvements gives possible newcomers the idea that a much cheaper off-road buggy or motorbike might just be as much fun but at a fraction of the cost, and at a fraction of the hassle.
The junior numbers are very poor due to the cost of buying/running the present junior engines/tires. So there are very few new cadets/juniors starting. Until this is addressed, numbers will be poor.
Other – I refuse to donate any more $$$ to KA.