I've been into the indoor kart scene for a while now.
Although these karts are heavy by nature and with top speeds hovering around 35 to 40 MPH the big thing you learn in them is total control and how to be super smooth.
The tracks are set up in huge warehouse buildings on a sheet of concrete seperated by steel, rubber covered tire walls. The tracks usually have one long straight and a combinantion of turns which negate out right speed and instead make you rely on being smooth.
The big issue is grip as most indoor tracks run super hard compound tires. Combine that with the the weight and non-existant acceleration and being smoth with the gas, brakes and steering input becomes paramount in running fast laps. To further complicate things there is very little room to pass and sizing up any pass a few corners before the attempt is a must.
With the grip issue any kamikaze moves to pass usually end up in a spin or a ton of lost time and you have to re group and make another assault. Again being smooth is the key. .
Over the years I have raced and won quite a few indoor sprints and endurance races at Kart 2 Kart in Michigan. For a couple of years Karoline and I also ran a race series over the winter for our Trackoholics customers.
I felt we ran a pretty good series as we ran inverted fields where the qualifiying order was inverted putting the fastest guys at the back of the field and gridded to the slowest qualifier on pole. In the endurance races we ran, we paired the fastest qualifier with the slowest qualifier and so on.
Originally we allowed teams to run as they wanted but I felt that pairing the teams as I said above really leveled the playing field. And we had some pretty exciting races.
Over the years I have ran on indoor tracks in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, California and Nevada. Each one offering a little different flavor of racing! The karts and the track in Vegas were far and away the fastest!
Again if you enjoy going fast and being precise, give indoor karting a try.
