This page assumes that you have (i) decided to start your son/daughter in Honda Cadet,
(ii) decided to race in MSA sponsored events,
(iii) know very little about Honda Cadet racing. Don't assume that because you raced
20 years ago in another class, you know something about modern karting.
I'm not holding myself out as an expert, only telling you what lessons I have drawn from
my experiences.
A lot more than people say. A typical budget is shown below.
One-off costs:
| Item | Cost (Typical) |
|---|---|
| Kart | £800 (Second hand) - £2000 (new) |
| Engine - depends on the class. | £350 (Clubman) - £800, but we have nore to say about this. |
| Transit van or better. | £5,000 - £200,000 . You can get by with a trailer, or carrying the kart on the roof for a while, but it will drive you nuts and is not really a long term option. Don't forget registration and insurance as well. |
| Modifications to van | £200+ |
| Tent/Awnings | £150 - £3000. |
| Tools, compressor, heat guns, etc. | £600 |
| Helmet and race suit. | £650+ |
| Total: | £7750 - £12,250+ |
Repeated costs:
| Item | Cost (Typical) |
|---|---|
| Club membership | Typically £50. |
| Track fees | £100 (practice plus race day) |
| Fuel & oil | £10 per weekend. |
| Tyres | £110 per set, lasts about 2-3 races. |
| Accomodation | £200 per weekend |
| Engine rebuilds | £100 ever 10 hours or so. |
| Total: | £3,200 - £6,600+ |
It's not hard to spend £15,000 per year, and more in the first year when purchasing kit. That's a frighening amount of money. If you assume that's after tax, karting can easy consume approximately £30,000 of pre-tax income. If you have 2 children, both who want to run karts and a mortgage...
Costs vary considerable depending on your ambition. If you want to turn up occassionally then costs will be at the lower end of the scale, but your child will probably also not do as well as he otherwise could. Karting is no different to any other sport like tennis or soccer; the more often your child practices, the more skilled he or she will become. If you want your child to be successful, give hime or her as much track time as possible.
If you race twice a month for 8 months of the year (16 races) at your local tracks, spend should be about £200 per weekend, recurring costs should be about £3200 per year. If you race 3 times a month for 11 months of the year, then recurring costs should be about £6,600 per year.
Accomodation is a killer once you start to try different tracks or decide to contest championships. Say £200 for accomodation for a weekend (Friday + Saturday night). Budget 3 nights = £300 for Super One events.
It is possible to go karting with a standard sedan and nothing else. When I started karting over 20 years ago, it was not uncommon to load the kart onto roof racks and everything else into the boot. I remember looking on with bemusement when the Australian champion arrived with a truck with 9 engines in the back. That is now the norm for successful drivers. The top 5 drivers in Honda Cadet in 2010 all have RVs.
It is still possible to go karting with just a sedan, but karts are much heavier than they used to be. You will not be able to leave the kart on the roof overnight, so you will need to wake up your wife at, say, 6:00 in the morning to help you. If you intend to carry it on a roof rack, you will need to take the engine off and assemble the kart when you get there. That will take about 40 very stressful minutes. You will have limited room for a generator, tent, chairs etc.
I have seen drivers arrive in station wagons and with trailers. These are clearly better options, but station wagons are still quite limited in space. I have seen some quite professional trailer outfits. If you go down this road, don't under-estimate the amount of room you need.
I spent my son's first year travelling to the track with the kart on the roof rack, simply because I balked at the cost. I bought a van for the second year and life has been much better since. Ideally prepare the kart at home, roll it complete into the back of the van, drive to the track and roll it out. Visit a track on race day to see what is possible. I have a hi-roof, long-wheel-base Transit van and find that I still run out of space. I suggest that you look closely at the tools you carry and only take what is necessary. I strongly suggest that you purchase at least a van if are serious about karting.
RV (Recreational Vehicles) are by far the best option, but for the majority of people, these are simply out of reach. I wouldn't even know where to park it (I had enough hassle with the council over the van). If you can afford an RV, then there is no point in reading any further. Go to the track, talk to the major race teams and buy what you need.
Fuel for London to/from Scotland and back could cost you £250+. That's an additional £450 for each away event.
Until recently I lived in a terraced house. That meant that I had nowhere to prepare the kart. I had to take it apart and muscle it through narrow corridors to the back yard where I would work in the open, partially assemble it and pack it up for transport to the track. I had to make sure that I didn't leave any nasty mess on the carpet. Kart preparation suffered, especially when it rained or it was cold or the day's short. That often meant a dirty kart and sometime failures that shouldn't have happen.
We recently moved to a new house with a garage (2nd half of 2010 - to be in a catchment area for a good school). That means I know have a garage, altough I am currently fitting lighting, benches etc. If you live in a terraced house or flat (as do most people in London), you will find it very difficult to prepare a kart to the required standard.
The more money you have, the better. It solves all the problems mentioned above. It buys the best engines, allows access to the best advice and probably more importantly make the whole thing far more enjoyable. It allows access to teams such as Ambition Motorsport who are highly recommended (I'm not being paid for this endorsement!).
You will be up against individuals with £200,000 RVs willing to pay £3000+ for the best engines.
It is exceedingly unlikely that your child will become a Formula 1 driver, even if he or she has an unequalled talent. You need enormous amounts of skill, money, contacts and luck. You will need to be successfull in multiple championships.
Practice a lot first before entering your child in his first race. Assuming your child starts on his 8th birthday, practice ever weekend until he gets down to within 1.5 - 2 seconds from the fastest. It may take 3 months before this happens. It may take 9 months or more. Don't worry, you have plenty of time.
Practice by turning up on a Saturday and making friends with the other drivers parents. Let you child follow their child around the track. They will slowly get better.
Why practice so much first? So they won't feel so bad when they don't win their first race. (Perhaps they will!). If they will a novice trophy, they win be over the moon. It's also potentially quite dangerous if they are lapped. That can happen in a 12 lap final if your child is more than 2 seconds off pace. My own boy rolled his kart twice, once when the leading pack simply ran into him because they were to busy battling each other. It takes a long time to recover from those sorts of incidents.
In 2009, the MSA introduced Honda Clubman. The idea was to reduce the cost of karting, by reducing the initial cost of engines from £700 - £800 for a good selected parts engine, to £350 for a less developed clubman engine. (Ha ha ha) The kart shops at Backmore and Bayford were and are very much in favour of this.
Grady.
(As of 2009) Project One dominates this class for good reason. TWS and Zip and less popular. The reason is that the Project One karts are more consistent in their handling. Once they have been setup, they stay pretty good moving from circuit to circuit. From experience, the TWS is much more sensitive to the track conditions. The kart may actually be faster "in the right hands" (I personally doubt it) but you will find it usually takes at least a year for your child to even understand the concept of oversteer and understeer. He will not generally be able to tell you what the kart is doing. He will be too busy during the race or practice to think about it, or remember much of what happened. It takes some confidence and maturity for an 8-12 year old to correctly analyse the kart handling. Generally the best a child can do for a long time is to say he likes or doesn't like the handling of his kart. That's why the Project One is the better kart - you only need to get it set up properly once.
I would buy a Project One kart until the child is good enough to run in the top half of a competitive Honda Cadet race. If he is then overwieight, look at alternatives. Otherwise stay with Project One.
Don't buy a kart from eBay
One would like to say that the kart shop, with all their experience, will set it up for you. Alas this is not my experience. There is a fundamental conflict of interest between kart manufacturers and racing teams. Kart manufacturers should tell you all the technical information available about their karts but they also make money from their race teams which keep information close to their chests. I'm not sure this is always the case. It's also a possibility that the Cadet kart manufacturers don't have detailed information about how their karts behave and rely on experience and rules of thumb. I would be surprised if it turned out any of the kart manufacturers did finite element analysis of their kart design.
The main factor in kart setup seems to be where to position the seat for a given class/driver weight. Once this is done, other factors such as front and rear track can be adjusted from track to track. If the seat position is wrong, the kart will never handle properly.
It may be worth getting one of the teams to help you. Other driver's parent are usually helpful as well. But ultimately you will need to rely on yourself and feedback from your child. Here is some tips:
Clubman engines are a bit of a wild card, and I would not saty too long in Clubman. Once the child gets near the front, wait till someone buys your engine and move to Honda Cadet.
Selected parts engines (RPM and UFO). Surprising the number of competitors with acces to their own dynos, and these competitors may build their own engines. It is unclear how often this happens. Some engine builders have a reputation for inconsistency. RPM, for example, managed to put a non-baffled exchaust on one of my selected parts engines during a rebuild. That cost a lot of power. I personally recommend UFO.
P.S. Don't believe what anyone says about how much power their engine produces. I might be true, but then you won't be able to do much about it anyway. ;-)
There are 2 championships: NKRA and Super One. The NKRA championship is not as well regarded as Super One. Super One is televised, and races take place all over Britian. The first 15 competitors get to race with the number indicating the finishing position in the championship (i.e. The champion runs with kart number 1, the runner-up runs with number 2, etc). Expect very serious competition.
Yes, if you can afford it. It's very expensive but it makes the experience so much more enjoyable, and the advice and help will ensure that your child will consistently improve. Ambition Motorsport is very child friendly.
Join the club.
The MSA raised the weight limit to 103 kgs from 100 kgs for 2010. The government measures ever primary school child and the statistics show that, in 2009, the average 11 year old in a standard Project One kart would have been a few kgs overweight. The MSA techical committee talk about "safe" ratios of kart to driver weights, and they may have a point.
2 kgs of weight is probably worth about a tenth of a second (this appear to be the consensus). If you are 4 kgs overweight, then you are 0.2 slower than you should be, and in Honda Cadet you are going to drop a couple of places in a races with that much of a handicap.
MSA has introduced a new class. That's not viewed very favourably by most people I have spoken to since it means changing to a new class for a sort period of time before moving to Mini-max or KF3(if you are very rich).
The Honda Cadet weight limit has had a very serious impact on my son. We spent the last year battling the weight limit. He is an average 9-10 year old but would probably be about 110 kgs if it had not been a full-on attempt to reduce weight. Worse than that, the most common kart for Honda Cadet cannot be setup ...
If I had my time over again, I would not go karting again. However I refuse to simply give-up since I don't want to set a bad example for my sons. I would like Senan to win a trophy, and I believe he is good enough to do that with the right equipment. I want him to taste success (which is why I am so angry at the MSA technical regulations) It has proved to be far more expensive than I ever imagined, and has put strain on the family. Senan and myself are way for more weekends than not. We don't go to a football match for a few hours and come back.
On the positve side, I have got to know my son better than I would have if we had not worked together. I have come to trust his judgment more and more, and regard his stoicism in no small way as heroic. I hope that I can supply him with the tools that he deserves to be successful in the future.
Copyright (c) Shaun O'Kane. 2010.