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:
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.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.
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.
- 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. 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 ...
