THSCC Kart Enduro - Saturday, April 5th

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Sat Dec 07, 2013 1:15 am

The inaugural THSCC Kart Enduro is on the books! Sign up early to ensure your team's spot. Same weekend as the VIR-North HPDE event, so you can hop off track and head over and do some karting on Saturday evening.

The format will be similar (but hopefully better) to the NASA kart enduros some of us have done before. If we get a good turnout, I am open to have more of the events throughout the year. They really are great fun and the team dynamic makes for some very interesting racing.

http://msreg.com/THSCC2014APRILKARTENDURO

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Sat Dec 07, 2013 10:59 am

Cost? Minimum # of drivers? Weight-based classing?

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 11:29 am

Steven Carter wrote:

Cost? Minimum # of drivers? Weight-based classing?

Cost is $150 per team for the 2 hour Enduro. No minimum number of drivers, the only requirement will be pit stops. If stopping and not changing drivers, the driver will be required to stop, get out of the kart, and get back in.

As for weight, since they are arrive-and-drive rental karts I'm not really sure how we could do that other than strapping weights to the skinny folk, and I think that would be overcomplicating things a bit.

Since this program is new, it is certainly open for discussion, though.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:15 pm

Without weight compensation there's no sense for a large guy to get involved. That's not a race it's a donation.

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 4:17 pm

Bernie Baake wrote:

Without weight compensation there's no sense for a large guy to get involved. That's not a race it's a donation.

I'm open to feasible suggestions on how to make weight discrepancies more even.

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:10 pm

Zach Hill wrote:

Bernie Baake wrote:

Without weight compensation there's no sense for a large guy to get involved. That's not a race it's a donation.

I'm open to feasible suggestions on how to make weight discrepancies more even.

If you're a big guy, be sure NOT to (a) run solo, or (b) partner up with another big guy.
If you're a big guy, be sure to team up with lightweight drivers.

Other than that, I suspect this first outing should be considered a *fun* event to see what works, what doesn't, etc. in order to have another venue for motorsport competition. I suspect it will fill up completely with a waiting list, and I hope it grows to being a regular part of this club's scene.

(As an aside....for future events it may prove to be worthwhile knowing the delta between lightish sub- 160# and heavyish 200#-plus drivers, (setting aside differences in driver skill) since the karts are out of our control. That way we could possibly consider an aggregate "team weight" and assign extra laps if we were to consider a lap penalty for lightweight vs heavyweight teams.)

I suspect one cannot add ballast to those karts (or can you?)

:thumbsup:

Great job getting this on the books. Hope I can make it!

(edit: thread merge, maybe?)

Aaron Buckley · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:12 pm

Do it such that there are two divisions: lightweight and heavyweight. Heavyweight is 200# or heavier for the team average. Lightweight is everything 199# or less. Two technical winners but still an overall winner. Bathroom scale without full gear on determines the weight prior to the start. - AB

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:19 pm

What Bernie said. It would be pointless to go up against the likes of Noah, Zach and Ram. I've got a good 50lb on you guys.... The only way I could see this working is to have 1 "big guy" on each team, or weigh everyone on a team and then put weights on the cart for the light team =)

JamesMilko · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:36 pm

I'm entertaining offers to drive for your team.

Zach Hill · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 5:39 pm

RodneyWright wrote:

What Bernie said. It would be pointless to go up against the likes of Noah, Zach and Ram. I've got a good 50lb on you guys.... The only way I could see this working is to have 1 "big guy" on each team, or weigh everyone on a team and then put weights on the cart for the light team =)

To be clear, I have almost 50 lbs on Noah. :-D

Adding weights on the kart I don't think will be feasible due to kart swapping. If your kart fails mid-race, you have to come in and get a new kart and I doubt anyone wants to spend time moving weights over.

Weight classing is probably the best bet. So if we do that, what is it based on, average driver weight? Sum of drivers' weights? Then we would need to implement minimum driver stints to prevent someone from having André the Giant on their team to get their average weight up and then they only do one lap. That means someone has to be sitting with a stopwatch timing all 12 teams' stints. It can get complicated very fast as we add rules. I'm not opposed, but I want to make sure this is feasible.

And before someone suggests calculating and applying penalty laps based on weight... that just sounds too much like Pax, and we all know about that... :stick:

Hopefully we can find a way to balance fairness and simplicity.

Bernie Baake · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 8:52 pm

The weight penalty goes up as the hp decreases, so with a go-kart if you don't equalize the weight the larger guys will be "paxed out". So make yourself a series that favors small people and the heavy weights will go elsewhere (club racing, NASA etc) Imho .

JamesShort · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 10:14 pm

We're going to do MMX style weight classes: Avg weight 199 and below and Avg weight 200+.

Steven Carter · **Posted:** Wed Dec 11, 2013 10:47 pm

JamesMilko wrote:

I'm entertaining offers to drive for your team.

I just weighed in at 154, but my weight advantage is offset by the fact that I am slow. :stick:

JamesShort · **Posted:** Thu Dec 12, 2013 10:31 am

Bernie, Rodney, other big guys, let's be honest the more competitive class is going to be the 200+ class because it gives you the opportunity to have a few people of various weights to get your average down to as close to 200 as possible. We will probably institute a min number of laps per person based on 2, 3, and 4 person teams so you don't get a team with a 160lb person and a few heavier people and the heavy people just do a few laps because, well, that's bullshit. Other than Milko, Steve C., Noah, I don't think we have many people who are significantly under 200 so it's likely to be 1-2 teams in that class (or they'll just team with some heavier folks to get a team as close to 200lb as possible. There will be no ballasting of karts since you have to swap karts, but if you need to put a few pounds of ankle weights, that's fine.

When Jeremy, Noah and I did the MMX 3 hour enduro, we weighed in at 609 lbs the 3 of us

and we each did 2 stints each of ~30 minutes since we split the cost.

RodneyWright · **Posted:** Thu Dec 12, 2013 10:54 am

I won't be able to make this anyway. I'll be in Charlotte w/ Art for the big mustang 50th anniversary party.

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