What were the things David Sera liked and disliked at this year’s SKUSA SuperNationals in Las Vegas? The world-renowned driver coach posted the following soon after the event:
by David Sera, Kart Class
Another year is in the book for the SKUSA SuperNats, and this year’s 28th edition was action packed with wet weather creating havoc across the weekend.
Over 500 drivers filled the categories from 28 different countries, and the PRO categories (X30 & KZ) didn’t disappoint on Super Sunday!
I was fortunate enough to be helping the Californian based Formula Works team who compete with the GFC (Gary Carlton) karts.
We had some huge results culminating in a Pole Position in Pro X30 (Jake Drew) topping the times by nearly a tenth of a second against 90 of the best drivers in the World.
After a heat 3 win, and a P6 start for the main, the final was crazy with karts moving up and down the order like a yo-yo. Unfortunately, we were on the wrong end of a few incidents so couldn’t showcase our full potential.
In KA Senior, Jake was able to win a heat race and start the main event from Pole Position. After getting out to a decent lead for the first 3rd of the race, the chasing pack worked together to catch us and make it a scrap. Finishing 6th at the line didn’t do us justice with the potential we had in that package across the weekend.
Keagan Kaminski a young teenager catapulted from mid pack to take home 9th overall a great result backing up Drew’s performance.
It was a great opportunity for me to work with a new team on a new chassis to me and get the results we did. I didn’t come in to reinvent the wheel for these drivers, it was more about managing races with them, having a plan on where to attack and defend certain drivers (that I could see from watching or from their footage) an mapping out future heat results (knowing what position we needed in heat 3 to start pole) whilst doing the data & video for the guys.
Now let’s look at what I liked and disliked from the week:
LIKED
- The Kart Chaser Broadcast
These guys are absolutely killing the live coverage for karting in the USA and around the World. With nearly 190,000 viewers across the week, Xander Clements and his team do an astounding job to give first class interviews, highlights packages and race recaps to keep audiences and families at home up to date.
A new benchmark when it comes to broadcasting karting events that keeps audiences engaged.
- The Racing
First of all, I wasn’t a fan of the track layout. It seemed this year was quite basic compared to previous years with minimal technical sections and a bigger focus around horsepower.
But what a less technical circuit does is provide pack racing (similar to Moto 3) and that then translates into not knowing who’s going to win when overtaking is happening on most turns.
Watching kart racing is generally boring. The fastest kart typically starts on the front, drives away, whilst the chasing karts are scrapping over the minor positions. But what this layout did was keep trains of up to 10 karts all in close proximity and that showed on the broadcast making it overly entertaining for viewers.
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- Postponing Saturday Afternoon Races
I was one of the first to think it wasn’t necessary to stop racing when the heavens opened up. I also wasn’t going to be driving in those conditions!
But when Pro X30 took the green flag and headed into Turn 2 with 40+ karts on the grid with no vision, it resulted in a large rollover and that driver who was pinned underneath her kart got hit by another driver trying to escape the mess.
After a lengthy delay to treat the driver the decision was made to postpone the heat 3 races and LCQ’s to Super Sunday which typically doesn’t happen. It was the right decision and even though the Sunday ran longer than usual, it was a wise call for the safety of the drivers.
DISLIKES
1. The Scheduling
I get the benefits between splitting sessions into morning and afternoon. This gives families a chance to explore and not get stuck at the race track all day. It does have merit!
But the drama is you only get about 1:10 between sessions, and with many pit areas being a 10-minute walk away from the grid, plus the weigh in of 40 drivers, some mechanics simply didn’t have enough time to adjust anything. Let alone if you crashed in the session!
The next thing is the Saturday only entails a warmup & heat 3 (unless you’re in the LCQ). For the KA Junior category they had their warmup and race completed by 9:20am. Like what a waste of a day to get up and go to the kart track and be finished by 920am. Give drivers an extra race and cut the warmups as drivers are paying big big dollars to compete, not practice.
2. The Location
It is fun seeing F18’s and other US Army planes fly overhead all day, but having experienced the RIO Casino & the Las Vegas convention centre, the speedway simply doesn’t have that ‘IT’ Factor.
It just doesn’t feel like you’re racing in Vegas. It gets dark, and there’s nothing else to see bar the karting circuit.
Also having to drive 25-30 mins to and from isn’t ideal adding to an already long day. For families who would be present at the RIO events, they could be indoors and come out when the races were on for their kids, but now they’re either stuck all day at the Speedway or don’t bother coming out.
There’s also a lot less interest from anyone not in karting, as it’s just not visible to people outside of the karting world.
The SuperNats somehow needs to be back at the Rio or a location close to the strip to build the excitement for racers who are spending 10’s of thousands to attend.
That’s it for my 12th time at the SuperNats, always a favourite of mine to attend.
Next year hopefully we can continue our drivers success and take home some silverware!
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