Tales of a Masochistic Troubadour

Event Report: Woodbine Grand Prix (05/08/19 - 05/08/21) - WOW! WHAT A RACE

That was, like, the most amazing kart race I have ever seen in my life!!!

And because it was so incredibly awesome, you will now have to be the unfortunate witness to my long-winded ramblings on exactly how cool the Woodbine Grand Prix was.

Now who's responsible for this incredible event?

At the end of the day, you can thank two people for making Woodbine Grand Prix happen.  The first is of course EC from Simcoe Kart Club and 3S Go Karts.  He was instrumental in inviting Stars to Toronto as a way of showcasing karting to the people of Toronto.  Then there was GK who - while he always downplays his role in this - facilitated the availability of the Woodbine Race Track for Stars.

Three other groups worked really hard to make race day happen.  There was Woodbine Entertaining, who set up all the facilities and put quite a bit of money towards advertising this event.  Then there was the Stars of Karting who are probably the most professional group of race organisers I have ever seen.  And then there was Simcoe Kart Club who added the local flavour to the event.

THANKS!

Tell me about this awesome track

This track is a karters' track true-and-true. Apparently designed by EC and a driver with feedback from Stars, this track was designed with one thing in mind: kart racing.

You'll have to excuse the crude modifications I made to the map. Unfortunately I don't have any skills with any of the image editing tools, so I just used Paid. I didn't realise until I looked at the map while posting this image that they had to make changes to the course compared to plan.

The whole tack was framed by straw bales. I got very familiar with the straw bales over the weekend.

Let me describe this track for you:

1. Turn 1 begins at the end of the long straight (where I have crudely drawn in a curve on the map). This was quite an exciting turn since it starts out fairly wide (about 4 - 5 kart widths) and then collapses into about 2 kart widths at the exit of the U. When running by yourself, there is enough room for you to let the kart drift out and carry the momentum through the turn. But as the first corner after the start, boy was it crazy. Imagine 36 karts trying to make it through the corner at pretty much the same time.
   
   On Saturday, not one of the classes made it through the first corner without a crash. But on Sunday, not one of the classes had an incident while making it through the same first corner. I was surprised the first time the JICAs made it through and thought it was luck. But after EVERY CLASS made it through, I knew why these were the best karters in North America.

2. Turn 2 was a very sharp hairpin, and this is where gutsy would try to make a move. A dive bomb with very late brakes and you'd get ahead of the person in front of you. However, this was not a guaranteed move since there was a good chance you'd hit another karter or a straw bale (which happened often enough) or lose too much momentum to hold on to the lead by the time Turn 3 came along.

3. Turn 3 was a ninety degree right hander which meant a really late apex if you wanted to make it through.  This is not a corner where you can make a pass unless your opponent has made a mistake in the previous corner and has lost too much momentum.

4. Starting from Turn 4 until about Turn 6, passing was a matter of engine power.  On practice day, a lot of karts slid too wide exiting Turn 4 (left handed sweeper U) and Turn 6 (right hand sweeper), ending up in the straw bales.  By midday Saturday, there was enough rubber on the racing line that the karts were able to exit hard without sliding into the straw.  There really was only one line through the corners - with lots of very slippery marbles off line - and with the corners as wide as they were and all the engines being equally powered, there really wasn't many successful passes in these corners.
   
   But boy, did the racers carry a lot of speed through this area.  And when they nicked a straw bale, the accidents were always spectacular.

5. Turn 7 was similar to turn 3, another narrow ninety degree right hander.  The karts had to brake quite hard to make it through this corner.  Becuase the karts are carrying so much speed, some racers did try a dive bomb maneuver.  Not very often though since if your opponent didn't let off, you would both end up hitting the straw bales.  And the karter doing the dive bombing would have been in the wrong and DQ'ed for aggressive driving.

... to be continued ...

Crazy racing weeks

It's 1921 on a Tuesday evening and I'm sitting in front of my computer at work waiting for Capoeira class to start.  I'm probably not going to join the class today; I think I caught a cold while racing on Sunday and it didn't help that I got the crap beaten out of me in Ving Tsun last night.  So here I am, trying to write an update to my blog while my body is exhausted and my mind is addled from the combined effects of illness, exhaustion and pain.

I've been really busy for the past few weeks racing, so it's been hard for me to find the time to write in my blog.  And these haven't been simple races either.  I've had to do quite a bit of prep work for these races...  I'm still convincing myself that it was worth it...

   

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July 29th - July 31st: Honda Crystal Cup

I started getting ready for this race on the weekend before, changing out the gears for a wide track and moving everything into RP's trailer.  RP and JP have been great help to the team and we're most appreciative of their support.

While Shannonville is an awesome track, the attendance was a bit of a hit-and-miss due to the SRFKC Grand Nationals (otherwise known as the "Bear Hunt") being hosted the same weekend.  We were expecting more racers but some last minute shenanigans by one of the organisers stole one of the clubs away from us.  I won't go into details since it's a bit hard to follow unless you're part of the intimate circle of Ontario kart racers.  My Friday Sr. Rotax race had 7 people and pretty much the same people raced on Sunday in the TAG class as well.

Friday's race was haunted by the ever persistent handling problem on my kart.  My kart is notoriously loose in the back and on a track like Shannonville where the track consists mostly of long wide sweepers, you want the kart to be very tight to the point where its almost understeering a bit.  That way you can keep the power on throughout the turns.  In the previous years that I've been at Shannonville (first two years in my Yamaha, then one year in a Rotax), I usually run middle of the pack.  But with my handling problems, I needed to keep my throttle partially applied throughout most of the turn for fear of spinning out.  I finished a disappointing last place, but then what could I do with handling so sub par.

Did have one racing incident though on Friday.  The kart in front of me lost control right after the start in the finals.  He hit my right side and warped the whole mounting bar.  The metal was grounding away on the track and it took about three laps before it wore out enough to let me drive properly.  According to JP, I had quite the rooster tail from the sparks generating from the grounding metal.

Sunday's race was even worse than Fridays.  #86 was racing that day, so I thought I could actually beat someone.  3S Go Karts didn't have any Dunlop SL4s to sell, so I decided to run an illegal set of Vega Yellows that have been sitting in my basement for the past two years.  We had to modify the tires a bit so no one knew they were Vegas (mainly to avoid complaints), and hoped that they were able to fix my handling problems.

During the practice run I was doing much better on the Vegas.  My time was a whole second faster than on Friday, putting me only one second off the pace of 42.8s.  I qualified in front of #86 so I was pretty satisfied.  However, as the day progressed, the Vegas deteriorated rapidly.  Because my kart was so loose, I put a lot of heat into the back tires and after about three laps they were completely useless.  Sliding all over the place, I quickly lost a lot of time.  To add insult to injury, my engine malfunctioned during the finals and I was pulling only 12500 rpm vs. my expected 14000+ rpms (figured out the problem at the next race in Sutton).  I pulled in after being lapped by a lot of drivers.

Racing is always fun and I'm proud of the fact that for the most part, I was self sufficient.  But it was a tiring weekend.  Travelling to Shannonville on Thursday, racing Friday, travelling to Toronto for JK's b'day bash on Friday, travelling back to Shannonville on Saturday, racing on Sunday, and then back to Toronto on Sunday evening.  I easily put 1000 kms on the White Rocket that week.

BTW, I also slept at the track on both nights I was there.  I love the guys in the club and was happy to be able to share the camaraderie with them at Shannonville.

    

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August 6th: SKC Race #7 at Sutton

Back at my home track, this should have been a much better race.  I managed to get new tires for this race, so that should fix some of my handling problems.  But I was still plagued by the engine problems from Shannonville and haven't had an opportunity to fix it yet.

I made an assumption that the problem was battery related.  It has happened before on a Rotax; with a low charge on the battery, you wouldn't be able to hit the 13K+ rpm range.  The problem I experienced at Shannonville was much worse than what I've experienced previously, but what the heck, it's a hunch and easy enough to test.

Practice went decently.  My handling problem is almost fixed (I can still use a bit more grip on my back end) but the new battery didn't fix my engine problem.  So for the qualifying run, I tried another battery just in case I was still using a faulty battery.

The new battery didn't fix the problem either, so that proved that it wasn't a battery problem with my engine.  Even with my kart pulling such low rpms, I was still able to qualify ahead of #86 & Strong Man.  I was pretty happy with that result but was still annoyed that my engine wasn't fixed.

BTW, I was a whole 3 seconds off the pace.  Usually that's pretty bad but the pace kart was a JICA who was using our race as practice for the Stars race at Woodbine.  A JICA kart has the same or more horsepower than a TAG but weighs at least 80 lbs less.  Yeah, he better be faster.

CSifu tried to convince me that I had a jetting problem and that was why I wasn't able to get the rpms I needed on my engine.  I use the MaxJet tool to set my jetting on the Rotax and while some people disagree with the readouts it gives (especially where it tells you to use an IW34 spark plug), it's been able to consistently give me at least 14k+ rpm on this Camden re-worked engine.  Willing to try anything, I used this CSifu's setting just as a test.  It didn't make a difference.

I lost a position in the pre-final to #86, but that was due to the engine.  I actually started the race in second place since EC put the JICA at the back of the grid to give him passing practice.  Kinda useless since he passed us all in the first lap.

On a hint by EC, I finally found the problem.  My power valve had collapse and it wasn't opening up to allow the exhaust gas to flow at the high rpms.  So for my second race at Sutton, I now had to do major surgery to my engine.  There was very little support available since most of the folks at 3S have very limited experience with the Rotax.  Some guess work and wet'n'dry surgery later, I had one working power valve.

For the final, my engine was working like it should.  I finished behind #86 again because I made three stupid mistakes: i) I set my power-valve incorrectly so my rpms took forever to build up; ii) anticipating heat build up in my tires in a 20 lap race, I put in way too little air and lost all the traction benefit I gained during the day; and iii) I made a very aggressive passing move and ended up climbing onto and damaging StrongMan's kart (sorry!).

But once again, I was happy to finish and happy to figure out the problem with my Rotax.

   

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August 13th: SKC Race #8 at Gamesbridge

This one race has caused me quite a bit of stress for the week working up to race day.  SKC made a decision that the only exhibition classes they would race at Woodbine are the 4-stroke classes.  The race at Gamesbridge was going to be my acid test; if I sucked I wasn't going to race at Woodbine.  It wasn't just a question about Woodbine; my ability on a 4-stroke would also define whether I was really a bad karter or whether I was just having technical trouble on my Rotax.

In the Gilman Racing team, we have two karts that are ready for 4-stroke racing.  #12's kart was set up for StupidKid to race in Senior Lite but it's not ideal since it's a torsion designed for the higher horsepower 2-stroke engines.  #11's kart is perfect for 4-stroke but it's missing quite a few pieces (stolen for use on #12's kart) and the seat was damaged.  Nevertheless, I decided to get #11 back to racing condition.

So for the week working up to Gamesbridge, RP & JP helped me get #11 going.  We had to rebuild the seat since #11 put major holes through it and was essentially unusable.  We had to rebuild the brakes twice since there's a phantom leak in the gasket.  And we needed to get the gears set, engine mounted, etc.  I spent every free night up at RP & JP's house working on #11 and didn't have it ready until Saturday afternoon.

Because of all the crazy races, I've had to skimp out on my Capoeira and Ving Tsun training.  I need to pick it up as soon as the Woodbine race was over.

We started the day at Gamesbridge with a wet track for practice.  The practice really freaked me out since I was pretty much unable to control #11 in the wet.  I thought that this was it, I really sucked at karting.

Then the weather got better and I switched to slicks and a dry race setting.  Due to some scheduling changes, I almost missed my qualifying.  I went out and my driving was not bad at all.  Even with my lack of experience, I was only a second off the pace.

The pre-finals and finals were much much better.  As usual the grid very quickly split into the top group of racers with the really good karts, and the rest.  In both races, I actually put up a really good fight.  I was in passing position quite a few times but backed off because of lack of passing experience in the 4-stroke.  I received quite a few positive comments: most of the racers said that I did not look like a 4-stroke newbie at all.

Running a 4-stroke is a very different experience from a 2-stroke.  It's just as tiring if not more so than a 2-stroke.  It's very evident whether you are driving well or not; with the limited horsepower coming from the 4-stroke engine, the kart just won't accelerate if you're not smooth and have the steering wheel straight.  The kart is a lot less violent and with the absence of throttle steering (not enough horsepower) I found that it was easier to focus on really putting the kart on the right line.  It's also a lot more difficult to pass since you can't use horsepower to get you out of a late-brake situation.  Hopefully I'm able to take my experience with the 4-stroke and use it to improve my 2-stroke racing.

I paid my race fees for Woodbine at the end of the day. ;-)  See you on the track.