Yeah man. A lot of us, even some of the faster guys are giving up on racing as its getting so fast and scary. We run intro2speed nights and all the new people we’re supposed to be building up the sport with get scared off by the speeds we’re doing. It seems so out of reach for them.
And frankly as long as what I’m racing is safe and predictable I don’t care how fast it is if everyone else is on the same board. The fun part is extracting every last bit of grip and performance from it and seeing how you stack up against others.
My interest in building a race board to compete with today’s race scene is growing less and less. By the time we develop a super advanced race machine, the races will have 3 people left riding gokarts with swivel decks bolted to them because that’s legal, and the rest will have quit from injury or be watching from the sidelines because they aren’t comfortable doing 100kph to keep up.
Yeah but it’s lucky people organize these events at all. Do you volunteer to start the FIA and create and enforce the sporting regulations?
What happens if someone runs in to the back of you and you come off? What about if they don’t leave enough space and run you into a wall without actually touching you? What if their board is 1 meter wide to prevent overtaking? Or 950mm wide? Where’s the limit and who decides? Who enforces the limit? How do they know who ran into who if nobody saw it and its word against word?
My idea is that through more affordable and less dangerous stock class racing, we can grow the numbers and that’s what’s needed to be able to start doing things more properly instead of events that are run for fun.
Right?? Why don’t we have more dirt racing?
You know what this summer (Australia being opposite season) I’ll start looking for some places we could do dirt racing down here. I actually enjoy the Mach One on dirt even more than on asphalt
We don’t have to buy the same board. As long as the battery, ESC, motors and wheels/tires are the same, that should work. Buy off the shelf or make a DIY. If this grows, it may not be too hard to get a company or two to make a less expensive board with these specs.
If things are not extremely high power, then weight classes are absolutely necessary, or you might as well skip the race and just weigh everyone and give gold to the lightest person. Even 20 lbs will make a pretty giant difference if people are giving things full throttle much. I see that as the biggest problem with the idea of standardized boards. You’re going to need at least a handful of weight classes, which means you need way more people for the same size field in each weight class.
I’m not sure what the solution to making racing safer is, but while I really liked riding on a track, I pretty much don’t want to actually race again. Right now, I’d prefer time trials to actually racing. Racing felt like I couldn’t actually push myself at all without it just being insanely dangerous.
I like some of your ideas and really think, how we race here in Europe is a good starting point to get more people into it. David and the crew of XERACE evolved this series year after year and tried to make the experience better for everybody. From beginners to pros.
We are racing here on narrow and technical tracks, check. So the pure power is not so important. Lower speeds in total reduces the risk of bad crashes and injuries.
We are racing in time attack mode. David upgraded the way of time measuring year after year and almost everybody gets the chance to see progress for themselves live at an event. Also it is so accurate and precise, so it gives you a feeling of professional racing. Another plus is, you are always around people with a similar pace in a group of max 8 riders. It gives you a feeling of safety, especially for beginners. Also the risk of crashing into each other while racing is minimised dramatically.
I love to see the crazy ideas and builds of people like @tuckjohn and @Dinnye, because it is so awesome to see what is possible.
But, I would love to see a few regulations even in the Open Category here in Europe.
My top choices would be:
— Maximum up to 200mm wheels
— it is forbidden to use closed footstraps like snowboard bindings(don’t know the exact name😂)
I am not really a big fan of the idea of „stock racing“. I remember my first approaches of doing clocked times around a track on a stock board with my best friend on the same board and tires. Difference was the weight. I am carrying around 20kg more with me and I am 15cm taller. I couldn’t get close to him, no chance. And adding weight classes to it, would make it so much more complicated to get a full grid. So less people, less fun and learning for everybody. Especially for the beginners.
The idea from last year of XERACE with the category „Open 2WD“ in combination with short/mid length racetracks is probably the best starting point and the most easy one to implement into existing events. As a beginner with a stock board or an advanced/pro rider, who doesn’t want to go fully mayhem with 4WD etc., gets the perfect combination of both worlds. Still the possibility of DIY, but also racing slightly modified prebuilt or totally stock boards, because of the layout of these technical tracks. In this category you could easily compete with something like the MachOne of Radium or the MLR. @Tony_Stark
And the cherry on top is the newest implement of David. One challenge race for the fastest 8-10 riders of every category. So you get the chance at the end of an event to race wheel to wheel. But you don’t have to and probably have still won something or got on the podium.
It is always nice to chat with @davidpilny about new ways to get more people attracted to racing and how to get the events better for everybody. He is a legend and really passionated for all the riders.
I actually think here in Europe we don’t really have this problem of racing being too intimidating. What we need though is regular i2s sessions in big cities, because as is, many esk8ers I feel like aren’t even aware that racing is a thing. Frequent i2s and some trackers for borrowing to beginners are what’s really needed here in Europe, not restrictions.
The time attack is much less intimidating to beginners as there’s no wheel to wheel racing for them and they are surrounded by similarly skilled riders, their focus being just improving heat times. This only works because of all the work David put into having the timing data so easily and nicely available for everyone, and of course because of the reliable timing system. Also the short to medium track nature - for example at Pitland or Waldshut, even on the straight on a powerful board you just can’t hit full throttle. I probably don’t really go past half throttle on those tracks, they are a great “power equalizer”. Even though I have a board that works great for everywhere, even I much rather race short-medium tracks, my rule of thumb being if the straight is longer than 90-100m then I don’t want to race.
I’m against stock class racing, I think part of the fun is figuring out what works well for you, plus with stock class weight just matters way too much and getting enough riders to separate by weight is also impossible at the current time. Not to mention people who are just dipping their toes into racing would immediately need to buy “the” race setup. Not being able to start on their current board would in my opinion be an even bigger turnoff for most people who aren’t yet into racing than having faster boards racing against them in an open class.
@Esk8Cave regarding the restrictions. My worst falls are falls where one foot slips out of the binding but the other stays. I run the heelstraps not for extra control but because it’s much safer to use them than to use only toestraps. If heelstraps were banned I probably would consider quitting racing top category. My ankle still hurts sometimes from my fall two years ago where one foot got stuck but the other escaped, I am not ready to repeat that fall.
And the tires, I agree that kart tires are probably bigger than ideal for esk8 racing, that said I am not happy enough with any other current tire choice for racing that I tried so far. 150mm tires don’t allow me the freedom to setup my trucks the way I like them to feel, about 200mm would be needed for how I want my trucks to behave. But it doesn’t exist in good race ready compounds. Also I think BRPs are just not it. A set costs 400€ to get here, whereas kart tires cost 200€ brand new for the best sets of fronts, which have seen wayyyy more R&D budget. Not to mention BRPs are prone to failure when they get too hot.
I think open class should stay open for the foreseeable future. What I would like to see eventually though, is an esk8 tailored tire made by a reputable kart racing tire manufacturer in a size that doesn’t restrict truck setup and a stock tire class around that. And have the tires reasonably priced, so no 400€ tire sets.
I feel like 8x3.00-4 is the ideal size IMO. Mine measure at something like 208 mm. I don’t think it would be impossible to get CST or Kenda to do their 8x3.00-4 in a different compound as a group buy, but there would almost certainly be a minimum order quantity that might make it difficult. I’ve thought about contacting them and seeing what that would look like. I kind of want to try all of the already available options first, though. I quite liked the Kendas I had, but those were quite old when I got them. I’ve got some Air-Locs now. I’d kind of like to just get all the 8x3.00-4s at once and do some tests on them, but it’s a bit of money. Still not much more than 1 set of BRPs to test the four main brands, though I guess.
Those companies already have slicks of that size and also make go-kart tires that I think use stickier compounds. Maybe there would be more to it, but the request would pretty much be to just use a compound they already have for go-kart tires for the slicks that size. For example, the Kendas I used were K404LG, and their go-kart tires are K404GX. I think those use different compounds, but are the same otherwise. They’re offered in different sizes with some overlap, but the 8x3.00-4 is only offered as K404LG.
Also, to be clear, Kenda and CST are pretty cheap/crappy go-kart tires AFAIK. Even if they do have a stickier go-kart compound, it might still not be great, though even the lawn and garden Kendas feel good on most surfaces to me. It would be nice to have tires from a better brand, but I think that would be quite a bit more involved, as I’m not aware of any better go-kart tire makers having anything in 8x3.00-4.
Along these lines, and because I’m seeing some criticism for big esk8s which I partly agree with, what about a max total width+length+height or width+length+2x height?
I’ve tried a couple and nothing comes close enough unfortunately. Some of them overheat at hard compounds already and none had great grip by today’s race tire standards. The best I found was the 9x3.5 CST C190 (which is more like 8.3"), that in a softer compound could be half decent but don’t think the width is enough for the compounds we want to be running for racing. I think the front kart tire width (4.5") is needed for the proper soft compounds. I think about 200x110mm or 210x110 (where 110mm is actual CP) would be the perfect size on a 5x5" rim.
For reference my current set of medium compound tires from 2019 is already about equivalent to BRP’s performance, which have about 1.5x the grip of the CST slicks. In some conditions the difference was even bigger.
Also CST and Kenda aren’t really manufacturers that I’d ideally have a race tire from. I was thinking about brands like LeCont, Vega, MG. What I want is pretty much just a LeCont SVC around that 200mm diameter mark.
Kart racing tire manufacturers are actually used to smaller orders of off homologation performance tires, but modifying the size is probably much much more expensive than asking for customized compounds or carcasses, and I don’t think any of the top of the line manufacturers have molds around 200mm. Plus for reasonable price I reckon we would still need a quite large order quantity.
