UK Karting - Karting Kid Article

The Karting Kid
"In a Class of Our Own"

In his latest article The Kid tries to make sense of the number of classes in the sport today...

" In a Class of Our Own "

It has long been suggested that Karting has too many classes, yet little is done to redress the balance with around 10 plus Junior classes in excess of 16 Senior direct drive classes and more than 9 Gearbox classes. All include 2 and 4 strokes alike, totalling in excess of 30 classes to be divided up between a mere 4,000 license holders Nationally, which begins to show the reasons that Clubs are beginning to struggle through lack of entries. Most drivers actually measure the success of a grid through the quality of the grid for their own class and not necessarily the size of it! Circuits like Kimbolton, PFI and Shenington receive large entries, not because they are scratching around to find entries and so therefore adding every new and minority class they can find in a feeble attempt to swell their numbers, but are attracting mainly full grids and more of the most popular classes on which they seem to concentrate on. This meaning that before you leave your home, you know that you will not have only a couple of other average drivers to race against, but you will have the opportunity to race against top competition at the same time as being able to find someone of your own level to have a race against and therefore increasing your enjoyment.

The MSA's policy on new classes seems relatively clear, despite their recent announcement, in that if you threaten them with the office of fair trading, then they will allow you to register your newest commercial motor, that you have managed to do a deal with Hoover for and drag out of disused vacuum cleaners, to which you are likely to make a modest profit on. However, the ABkC appear to be campaigning alongside the BKIA and you'd have to wonder if the BKIA's permanent Secretary also consulting for TKM has anything to do with this stance, to restrict the new classes entering into the sport. The MSA's view of survival of the fittest, unfortunately usually means that some people buy an engine to which they never end up racing against a full grid and any decent grid can only be found at a National Championship or because an enthusiast within the class is fed up of racing against themselves, so has had a ring round to try and enthuse the other unfortunate minority owners.

The reasons for this rather unsatisfactory position is that several years ago the MSA saw the offloading of making class rules as the way forward as part of a cost saving exercise, at the same time they dropped all British Championship Titles to all classes other than Formula E, which they misguidedly saw as the pinnacle of our sport in Britain. Formula A (only after much lobbying from the ABkC) and Junior Libra (whatever that was or is), which has never actually run in this Country from the 1st day the rules were printed within the Blue Book, and in actual fact was sensibly run as firstly Junior Britain and then subsequently JICA and 250I for Long Circuit with the virtual demise of 250E. In recent years the Cadets title has been reinstated after the MSA was given the right incentive. This MSA policy then left a great hole as to who would legislate for the remaining classes that had just been dumped from a great height by the MSA, into which organizations like ABkC, ALICK, NKRA , ASKC and NIKA stepped in and formulated rules and Championships for their members to adhere to and compete in, but alas this also left the loop hole of N1.3 classes, which allowed for any commercial operator to offer up an engine for approval for their own class to be administered either well or badly by themselves, a policy that has only ever seen TKM successfully take over the legislation of their already successful class under MSA and ABkC legislation and through experience and much pain, tighten down the rules and grow the class considerably both at Club and National level! Many others have tried to follow, but mess around with either slacker restrictions or attempt to seal, which is impossible to police, nor guarantee a similarity in engines.

There are many of the new classes on the decline or at best at their peak, whilst some exist in the Gold Book in name only, so the ABkC's intended policy to only allow new classes into the sport that allow for something additional are a distinct improvement on what we already have, is the way forward back to the quality grids that we all desire and hopefully both the MSA and ABkC will work together to lose the classes that aren't either in existence, are not what they are purported to be or are flailing, the NKRA and the ASKC will make small changes and change to common names allowing us to move forward to where we were a decade ago.

The Kid.

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