Moran Raceway
Karoline and I brought my friend and Computer guru Tim Bulger out west for our annual Ti2TT Spring Mountain trackday adventure.
WERA National Champion Allen Pett Flew in for a couple of days of riding and so we once again had a group of midwesterners out for a weekend of fun.
That plan was halted when at the last minute Sping Mountain cancelled the event as they had a short window to build garages for the track and so we turned it into a 10 day adventure. Three days of insanity in Vegas with Aaron and Allen as ring leaders. Total chaos was the norm, lot's of gambling and partying.
Our plan included a trip to my favorite place in Vegas. X Plex for a day of high speed karting. However as you can see in the first two photos X Plex was done. The city of Vegas decided to throw a little muscle at them and owners Jim Boltz and Joe Ramos decided not to play the tango and shut everything down.
Thus we visited Acceleration Karting and did a little kart shopping, bought up some goodies and headed for some indoor fun at Fast Lap Indoor Racing.
We ran a few sessions to tune up for our next stop at Moran Raceway which I had been told was the finest kart facility in America.
Allen left on Monday and we drove off for San Diego and 7 more days of fun in the sun.
On Wenesday we headed off for the day at Moran and it was an interesting day to say the least.
The karts are 100cc HPV TAG's and after a day in them I found them to be ok but not on par with the CRG chassis Rotax karts I had used at X Plex. For the most part the Top Kart Chassis did not have the planted grip feel that the CRG chassis has. That of couse may have been down to the setup each facility offers. Motor wise the Rotax wins hands down.
The track itself was true to the hype. Smooth and very fast with a lot of elevation changes, blind corners and off camber corners. On the front straightaway we were seeing around 70 MPH which dumps you into a slightly banked right hand corner. This corner is taken almost flat on the gas and is yet one of the many intimidating corners on this track.
From here you run up to turn 2 which is a long right hand corner. A lot of throttle control is need here and you are starting to pull some G's as you roll off a tad entering turn three where you pile on the G's as you accelerate uphill to the totally blind turn-in fo turn four which is a sharp left hander leading very quickly into turn five which is off camber and throttle control here is critical as you exit the corner turning sharp left almost immediately onto a 50 MPH straightaway leading into another high G left hand corner.
You are full on the gas here leading into a right hander that dumpsy you on to a long straight the culminates into a right hand hairpin drop off, downhill. it's difficult in a TAG kart to keep the revs you need, at the same time trying to dump the speed you just built up to get a good drive down the hill and into the off camber left hander that zig zags from left to right on to the back straightaway.
Here you find a kink that you clip at full throttle leading up to a carousel of sorts. A very fast right hand corner that sweeps left for more big G's. You need a good run into and out of this section to get a drive onto the long front straightaway. This exit to the straight requires using every inch of the track and then some to get the driveyou want for top speed to the finish line.
At any rate thats a lap and I would love to run my own kart at this place. I feel with the right setup you could really fly on this track as was evedenced by the many 125cc shifter karts blazing around the track. My rental 100cc TAG kart was no match for them.
Again the track is so smooth and flows so well that you beg for more and after 2 hours it was the first track I have run that did not wear me out. I was ready for more and could have easily done another hour. However my cohorts were done after an hour and so we called it a day after my second hour.
Both Aaron and Tim now want to get into this karting thing in a bigger way. Compared to bikes it is way cheaper and probably safer. Tim found out that driving one of these things fast requires a fair amount of skill.
Rentals are 165.00 for the first hour and 80.00 for each additional hour. If you own a kart it's 45.00 to run all day. A real bargin!
Thanks to Karoline for the killer track photography.
