Forgetting the 2-stroke/4-stroke argument for the moment, the progression in karting used to be quite straight-forward. For the normal man, you went from Comer S60 to JTKM to STKM. You were going from a Cadet kart to a light but more powerful kart on hard tyres, to a trivially more powerful kart. They all used diaphragm carbs, the engine packages cost roughly the same with broadly similar rebuild costs, chassis costs were broadly similar (TKM chassis limited to £1,100 or so) and from JTKM to STKM was exactly the same kit. For those that were thinking in "career" terms, you went from S60 to JICA to ICA/FA. All the same arguments apply as above but more grip, more power and open chassis, with the extra cost all that brings.
That system worked and numbers were at an all time high. The key point was that all your skills transferred to the new class and the cost of moving up was low.
Unfortunately, people always think the grass is greener and, in the late 90's switched to Rotax; lured in by the promise of faster laptimes, 50 hour rebuild times and engine parity. They genuinely though they would be spending less money and going faster. The reality, of course, was quite different. Chassis are £3k, engines £2k, rebuilds are £500 and we're not even considering attempting to have competitive equipment. Coupled with the fact that grip levels and weight limits are much higher, you end up with a situation where the jump from cadets to juniors, in terms of cost, weight and performance is much higher than it used to be. Throw in the fact that the classes for the big-money boys failed and they all chose to race Rotax too, and you end up with a big jump in competitiveness and cost to compete.
Bringing the discussion back to the progression for the Honda Cadet drivers, they're in the unfortunate position of having opted for a class that has never had that natural progression in place. I suppose you could argue that Junior Prokart and Senior Prokart were that progression but, aside from a brief high in the 90's, they never really took off for sprint racing. In fact, the popularity of Honda only really took off in the last 5 years or so.
There are really only two solutions to this problem. The first is to bring the junior and senior classes back toward the cadet classes. Ligther, low-cost chassis and engines with harder tyres. The second is to allow the likes of Rotax/IAME to implement their own class progression. In the US, for the Rotax classes, this was Cadets -> Micromax -> Minimax -> Junior Max -> Senior Max. A few years ago when Rotax had a near monopoly, that system would have worked. I'm not so sure now.
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