So...I went go cart racing today

[EagleKeeper]

For my B-day my mom got me a gift certificate for Just for fun.

Their website doesn't really have a pic that does the place justice but here is one.



I like this track alot because it's concrete and it has a smooth finish, also the owner has a secret recipe he calls "goose poop" that he sprays on it to make it even slicker.

I've been going to this place for probably a decade, when I first started going there I wasn't very good but there was a guy named Dave that also went there mostly the same day I showed up. This guy...for the longest time I couldn't do anything with him. He'd come up to put a lap on me and I would let him pass, then I would get back up on the wheel and try to learn what made him so fast. He was just so smooth, the rearend of his cart never seemed to step out and on corner exit he was digging.

That's where he was making me pay.

Dave actually went on to wrench a race car, I don't know for sure what series...maybe ARCA.

After a while I got to know the owner of Just for Fun, he actually owned a go-kart back in the day and campaigned it so he was the next guy that I followed around the track trying to keep up with.

This track is really pretty cool, It's slick...very slick, sometimes too slick for other paying customers to even make one lap without laying on the inside wall. What that does is force you to learn to be ahead of the game on your steering...you have to focus on getting into the corner under braking, roll thru and then coming off the corner in a fashion that puts you beside the cart that you are trying to overtake. You don't pass on corner entry, you pass on corner exit.

This track has just a bit of banking, just enough to make it possible to pass on the outside if the cart ahead of you is a little slow and hogging the bottom. It's tough to pass on the outside, you have to get your cart completely out of shape (loose) entering but if you do it right your driving straight out of the corner on exit.

I did Track Attack once...this is the best pic I could find of the type of cars that we used.



Basiclay a kart frame with a can-am type fiberglass body, a Volvo 4 cylinder engine and a 4 speed manual tranny. It was on a flat road course. The biggest thing I learned was to not carry my brakes into the corner.


Edit: I've done this place quite a few times, it has a keyhole turn that will get you up on your left side tires and then beat the peepee out of you.

http://whitelandraceway.com/

One time I was there and a guy was demonstrating a cart he was trying to sell. I think it ran on alcohol, anyway he would come out of the keyhole and on to the front stretch lifting the left side front tire off the ground under acceleration.

[BEG]

How fun!  There is go kart track by my husbands work. When my son gets back in town, he and my husband are going to go. They both use to have go karts that they raced.

[EagleKeeper]

Oh, I forgot to mention, on the west side of Indianapolis there used to be an indoor cart track.

It was really fun but I wasn't very good at it, too many corners.

I was always about  .010 behind on my steering.

Every corner I was late so I was sideways as much as I was straight.

Those karts burned methenol so straightaway speed was good but the corners...ugh.

The guys that ran the place were constantly ragging on the drivers for being on the gas and the brakes at the same time.

[Lacarnut]

Cart racing sounds like a lot of fun. I used to autocross my Toyota MR2 & Nissan 350Z in Pensacola Fl. My last event was at the  Texas World Speedway road course. What a blast.

[EagleKeeper]

Cart racing sounds like a lot of fun. I used to autocross my Toyota MR2 & Nissan 350Z in Pensacola Fl. My last event was at the  Texas World Speedway road course. What a blast.

I love Texas, I don't know if it's true but I heard when the track first opened Indycar tested.

The track was so fast and there was so much grip that the drivers were passing out.

[Lacarnut]

I love Texas, I don't know if it's true but I heard when the track first opened Indycar tested.

The track was so fast and there was so much grip that the drivers were passing out.

The front straightaway is used for the road course but not the curves at both ends nor the backstraightway. The banking on just the straight part is severe. I can not imagine what it would be like on the curves. I got up to 120mph on the straight part. The Corvettes and Ferrari's passed me like I was standing still. They must have topped over 150.

I forget the name of the company that sponsors them but they have a bunch of road racing events in Texas including Dallas and Houston. You can not beat the price (3 or 4 hundred bucks for 2 days of racing). Any car can run as long as it has been inspected. Quite a few Miata's run.

  

[RobJohnson]

Looks like a blast if it didn't beat up my body too bad. 

We have a pretty neat course close to me...they have go carts to vettes....

Spring Mtn Motorsports

[obumazombie]

I love Texas, I don't know if it's true but I heard when the track first opened Indycar tested.

The track was so fast and there was so much grip that the drivers were passing out.

I would have to re acquaint myself with my trigonometry, but spitballing I am thinking a 60 degree bank would produce 2 "G"s. It would take 75 degrees of banking to produce 4 "G"s. That would be enough for the uninitiated or those without a built up "G" tolerance to gray out or possibly even pass out.

[EagleKeeper]

I would have to re acquaint myself with my trigonometry, but spitballing I am thinking a 60 degree bank would produce 2 "G"s. It would take 75 degrees of banking to produce 4 "G"s. That would be enough for the uninitiated or those without a built up "G" tolerance to gray out or possibly even pass out.

Heh...Champ cars not Indy.

Postponement
 
Olvey contacted Dr. Richard Jennings, a former flight director at NASA and professor of aviation medicine at the University of Texas. They discussed the known levels of human tolerance of vertical g-loads. Jennings replied that the human body could not tolerate sustained loads of more than 4-4.5 Gs.[22] CART determined that the race could not be run at more than 225 mph (362 km/h) without raising safety concerns over G-force induced Loss Of Consciousness.[29]
 
The night before the race, CART officials attempted to make last-ditch efforts to curtail speeds by having the teams take downforce out of the car, and reduce horsepower.[4] However, by Sunday morning, time was running out to make changes necessary to hold the race safely. The morning warm-up session was canceled. Two hours before the scheduled start, the race was postponed. Over 60,000 fans were sent home. The move came after CART president Joe Heitzler and chief steward Chris Kniefel had a series of meetings with drivers, owners and sponsors. All parties agreed that it didn't make sense to hold the race under the circumstances.[22]
 
At a press conference, Heitzler did not blame the track. Rather, he stressed that officials could not in good conscience allow a race with such serious concerns about the safety of the drivers. Olvey added that the vertigo symptoms might have been exaggerated since the temperature was an unseasonably warm 80 degrees. There was fear of the possibility that drivers could suffer "grey-outs" or lose consciousness from G-LOC. It is also likely that the high g-loads would have been outside the design limits for the HANS device, which was required for all CART races at oval tracks.
 
Gossage was harshly critical of CART's decision. He argued that CART assured him it could run the race even though it had not conducted more extensive tests at the track. Russell argued that there was no time due to scheduling conflicts. Michael Andretti added that there was no real way to simulate ≈26 or more cars in a race.[4] ESPN's Robin Miller later said that CART should have known there was a problem the minute the first driver clocked 230 mph (370 km/h) on Friday--which would have been plenty of time to slow down the cars and race safely.[4]
 
CART officials held out the possibility of rescheduling the race, but there was no room in the schedule and it was ultimately canceled.
 
The Firehawk 600 marked the first time a CART race had been canceled outright due to driver safety issues. The 1985 Michigan 500 was postponed six days due to concerns about Goodyear's new radial tire. After three major crashes, drivers refused to participate, and the race was run the following weekend with the old bias-ply tires.[28] A decade later, the 2011 IZOD IndyCar World Championship was cancelled after 11 laps following the fatal crash of Dan Wheldon. Drivers safety was cited as one of the reasons to formally abandon the race.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_Firehawk_600

[JohnnyReb]

60 degree banking or 60 percent banking?