I wanna be a racing driver! I've spent the last year at Jim Russell racing school at Infineon Raceway and this is my second year in karts, I'm 19 years old. Next year I plan on doing Skip Barber's Mazdaspeed Challenge in the MX-5 Cup cars. After that, I don't know. I plan on doing Koni Challenge at some point, and I want to make it to ALMS/LMS, FIA GT or Rolex Grand Am.
Right now I'm on track to win the karting championship and get seat time in a Formula 3 car.
Such a shame u have to drive a Rotax or what I call 'misery machine'
its a Rotax so your not missing much! bbaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh cough cough fart baaahhhh lol
to the OP - good luck and all that though at least your out there having a go.
As for 3G ????? eerrm.... i am not too sure about that? You look be running in a rented series and the karts aren't runnign any data. 2.5G MAX I reckon. That championship needs more competitors too who are decent so you get better preparation for cars.
Jim Russell runs the Rotax because it's hard to drive. Yeah, the jets can be a pain, but it teaches wonderful throttle discipline.
3G was confirmed via accelerometer. We have GPS track data and such.
There are plenty of decent drivers to push me. For instance this year we have an F3 driver (guy in red), that's American F3, not British. Last year we had the Western Formula Mazda champion. There are also plenty of drivers who are not so qualified yet are just as fast. Me, for instance, and my rival in the championship. Yeah, the entry list is way down (last year we had 40 drivers, this year we have about 16). I keep trying to tell them to merge the groups but they won't do now since we've been running the two championships separately.
The main thing I want from this series is coaching. We have three top notch coaches that work with us, Jared Thompson (drifter), Jeff Sakowicz (former dirt track USAC driver), and Gary Carlton (CRG factory driver). You can't buy that kind of private coaching for 6 grand a year... which is how much this series costs. Plus the top 3 guys in each championship gets track time in Russell's F3 cars.
Jim Russell chooses Rotax not because they are hard to drive (they are not tbh) he chooses them because they are relatively reliable and cost effective for his business. Other karts do need more attention in regard to reliability. I dislike the Rotax MAX FR125 IMMENSELY ... it is bar none the worst kart engine I have ever driven... but it will just bat around all day without too many troubles unlike other 2 stroke motors.
WHat do you mean by throttle control btw?? Rotax coming out of tight corners is dead as a dodo.
i must admit it sounds liek a VERY good deal though
The way our carb works (don't ask me how), we need to roll on the throttle over a period of about 2 or 3 seconds otherwise the engine floods and we bog down. The Parillas we used to run were basically just flat from apex to track out.
Yh thats rotax for ya. I am not sure if that's throttle control rather than carb control, something you don't have to do in cars. If I was going to do cars I would either train on 100cc low grip tyres, or a ICC (aka Kz2) Gearbox kart. WIth an ICC u actually break traction at low speeds unliek a rotax which does nowt.
We can power-on drift every corner, even the slowest. If you can't make a Rotax's wheels spin then that tells me you just mat the gas.
The whole set-up of the kart is intended to make it hard to drive. We run the stiffest chassis, the most temperamental tires, the most unforgiving engine, and a very touchy brake system. This is a school series, remember, and the goal is to teach you to drive. Do Marine recruits get the best optics and rifles in boot camp? Hell no. As a result of learning to live with worse equipment, you learn to utilize the best equipment better.
No, you can't do that in cars, but this is simply to train our muscles to be delicate. A new driver with a loose car won't learn to control his throttle as fast as a new driver with an understeering or flooding car.
Rotax's are very easy to drive. I am not a very good driver and I can handle a Rotax pretty well... until I fall asleep that it
It teaches very ODD habits as well. It doesn't teach drivers to feel tyre slip out of low speed corners, and WORSE of all you go faster by lifting ur foot off the throttle when ur at full pelt.
I know my karts and all a Rotax teaches, as like MOST other karts is vehicle balance and not to scrub tyres too much through cornering.
The tyres are probably a hard compound to save money, and its the same with the chassis. A stiff chassis doesn't BEND so easily. As it is a school series I imagine a lot of incidents may happen and Jinm Russell doesn't want to fork out for new chassis every week. Jim has to make money u know
What you DO NOT learn in school series however is this - The sheer brutality of car racing.
That's what karting is all about as a learning tool. Teaching drivers how to have a relationship with a team, and provide valuable feedback to that team to develop the kart and engine package. You only really get that in top flight karting.
However I do NOT wanna put you down. Your out there doing what YOU CAN... that has to be respected!
What I have noticed with young kart drivers who graduate to cars is that they think they can just throw the car sideways with a flick of the wheel into a corner, not so. You cant be so violent with the controls of a car than with a kart.
T'was fun to watch all the kartor kids swap ends and slip and burn their clutches.
Then you haven't been watching many good kart drivers then. In fact I would go as far as to say you've been ignorant. A lot of 'average' karters leave before ever reaching the pinnacle of the sport where hardcore accuracy is required to compete. Thus they jump in karts all cocky and yes fail to drive correctly.
However top flight Karting for the last 10-15 years has been all about minimum input. I mean mind-boggling minimum input. MUCH MUCH less than you see in car driving.
Some of the earlier laps are rough because in a kart you need to warm the tyres up. Notice the absolute MINIMAL slide, and MINIMAL steering input MUCH less than say current F1 WDC Lewis Hamilton - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v ... 4NTiE&feature=related
If you don't feel tire slip then you're obviously just matting the gas and bogging the engine down, because slip angle coming off the corner is very important to our instructors. Did you watch my hands at all in my videos? For optimum grunt you're not even full throttle at the track out.
If you're speeding up by lifting then you need to use different jets.
Yes the tires are hard. The chassis are stiff because then a slide will become devastating. They didn't used to run it like that, they used to use chassis so bendy you could turn the thing almost by flexing your glutes. They found that by switching to the stiff chassis the drivers learned consistency better.
Quite obviously, you are. You think you know better than me and more about what my program is, and you haven't even seen it.
Car tires take much longer to warm up than kart tires. Lewis Hamilton's F1 car has more steering movement lock to lock because his car is quite a lot faster than yours or mine, and he needs more precision. Also, Mr. Hamilton has a differential, and we do not, therefore it's a lot harder for him to get his car into slip angle than it is for us. His car also requires much less slip angle than ours do; a kart is more like 10 or more degrees of slip whereas an F1 car is more like 1 or 2 degrees.
Sorry, I don't think spending 70ks on karting per year is a wise investment. Brutality is for ignoramuses. Racing is about intelligence and smart tactics, not being brutal.
meh I am not gonna reply coz you won't listen, which is a shame because thats the number 1 skill a driver needs. It's not like I have spent 20 years in the sport speaking and working with people from all levels of the sport. What would I have to say?!
If you think I am being patronising then that's a symptom of where your head is not mine. I am sure if you paid me $2000 and I told you the same thing you wouldn't think it was so 'patronising'.
I am just being frank and giving you free practical advice about how to improve and where faults lie in thinking Rotax is going to teach you the skills your need for car racing.
As much as I respect your instructors - Carlton is very good - my advice is free and I don't have to tell you the chassis are stiff to 'increase skill levels' and the rotax is the 'best engines to learn on' when in fact it's cost savings which are the real intent for those decisions... how do I know? Well... i would do exactly the same They are running a business and if they ran soft chassis, with soft tyres, and powerful (but low life) engines then they wouldn't make any money!
But not for one moment do I believe the BEST way to teach throttle control (for cars) is to show drivers that less throttle = more power!
That's brilliant, seriously. 
lol
