Karting NSW has announced a number of changes – many around restrictor sizes – to consolidate classes and create bigger fields in 2023.
The organisation’s press release on how that will happen, is below.
New Initiatives for 2023
The Board of KNSW has been considering ways to build larger classes and improve the quality of racing for our competitors. Changes have been made to the calendar and class structures to further improve the quality of racing for competitors by promoting less classes and bigger fields.
Initiatives such as promoting less race meetings with larger numbers have been explored and implemented in the recently released 2023 calendar which is available on the KNSW web site.
Another initiative has been to review the construction and combination of some of the classes. In the Tag Restricted classes there have been trials conducted to
- Allow heavier karters to run competitively with lighter karters.
- Incorporate the Iame Reedjet100 into Tag Restricted
Using a larger restrictor in heavier weight divisions has been trialed and found to allow the heavier karters to run competitively with a lighter weight division. As an example, a Tag Restricted Heavy kart can run in Tag Restricted Light class. This allows the club to offer larger classes to more karters, rather than running a single or few karts in a heavier class. This has been incorporated in the 2023 rule book for Tag Restricted where at a club event only each club has the option to allow heavier drivers to use a larger restrictor and run in a lighter class.
Similarly for club events where the fields for Senior Performance may not be so big drivers with Iame Reedjet 100s can change their weight and run in the Tag Restricted class.
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These trials have been successful and have been incorporated into the 2023 KNSW Rule Book for those clubs that wish to use them.
In the Junior classes it has been decided to consolidate the 3 existing classes into two. This will be achieved with an increase in the size of the restrictor in the Iame 100 Reedjet from 19mm to 22mm and forming two classes Junior Light and Junior Heavy.
This will:
- Provide a slightly faster engine for juniors
- Improve the tunability of the Iame Reedjet100 engine
- Improve the parity between engines (an ongoing issue with the 19mm restrictor)
- Improve the numbers in each class by reducing from 3 to 2 junior classes (So far in 2022 Junior Performance has run at 60% of club meetings and averaged 5 entries per meeting, with often a single entry)
- Remove the need for clubs to run a separate event for a small number of Junior Performance competitors as this class is difficult to combine with other Junior classes. Thus reducing the time pressure of running a race meeting and offering the potential for more racing laps for all classes.
- Allow juniors to race in a class more suited to their weight as they grow rather than having to put a lot of weight on a kart for a smaller driver to reach the Junior Performance weight.
- Improve the competition in Junior Heavy with older more experienced juniors racing in this class.
- Allow the two Junior classes to be run separately at more race meetings with bigger numbers.
- Allow consistency for competitors who wish to compete in other states.
Due to the relatively late notice and feedback from some clubs this will be implemented in 2 stages.
- 2023 will see the introduction of the 22mm restrictor in Junior Light and Junior Heavy
- The Junior Performance class will be phased out in 2024 thus giving competitors 12 months to prepare for the change.
The new 22mm Restrictor will be available from kart shops from mid-December and karters can practice on KNSW circuits with the new restrictor from 13/11/22.
Officials are also being supported with structured training / mentoring sessions to be run at selected events in 2023.
The above initiatives are aimed at improving the quality of racing at KNSW events and will come into effect from 1 January 2023. For full details refer to the upcoming KNSW 2023 Rule Book.
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