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A Kart is a sophisticated racing machine, with a 125cc, water-cooled 2-stroke engine, producing around 30 horsepower, with the power-to-weight close to most modern super cars! In addition to the rapid acceleration, the cornering and braking performance is even more impressive, and “neck stressing”, achieving lateral cornering forces of around 3G’s, with rapid de-acceleration the experience of karting is hard to match by almost any other motor sport. Depending of gearing and set up the kart accelerates from 0 - 60 mph in around 5 seconds and has a top speed of around 80 mph.

 

Driving Karts are as close as you can get to drive a Formula One or Indy Car, in respect to the skills and reflexes needed to pilot these machines due to the speed in which these Karts react to the drivers input. In fact, many of the top professional race car drivers train in these types of Karts to stay sharp and in shape, as driving Karts is extremely demanding physically, due to the high g-loads put on the driver's body.

 

The chassis is made of steel tube. There is no suspension therefore the chassis have to be flexible enough to work as a suspension and stiff enough not to break or give way on a turn. The stiffness of the chassis enables different handling characteristics for different circumstances. Typically, for dry conditions a stiffer chassis is preferable, while in wet or other poor traction conditions, a more flexible chassis works better. The chassis allow for stiffening bars at the rear, front and side to be added or removed according to race conditions. Braking is achieved by disc brakes mounted on the rear and front axles.

 

Karts do not have a differential. The lack of a differential means that one rear tire must slide while cornering; this is achieved by designing the chassis so that the inside rear tire lifts up slightly when the kart turns the corner. This allows the tire to lose some of its grip and slide or lift off the ground completely. Power is transmitted from the engine to the rear axle by way of a chain. Both engine and axle sprockets are removable, their ratio has to be adapted according to track configuration in order to get the most of the engine.

 

Wheels and tires are much smaller than those used on a normal car. Wheels are made of magnesium alloy or aluminum. Similar to other motor sports, Karts have different types of tires appropriate to track conditions. Slicks for dry weather and special threaded rain tires for wet weather. Depending on chassis and engine setup, the tires can support cornering forces around 3G.

 

The engine is a Rotax MAX liquid cooled 125cc, two-stroke engine with a balance shaft, integrated water pump, electric starter and centrifugal clutch. The combination of on board electric starter and the centrifugal clutch simplifies the operation of the engine therefore this concept is called TaG (Touch and Go). With a max rpm level of 14,000 the MAX engines run on just 2% oil and also the durability compared to other race kart engines is much higher.

 

News

Race Report for Viking Racing, Kart #464. US Rotax Grand Nationals July, 2010

Finally the much anticipated date came up where we were to compete in the US Grand Nationals. The event took place at New Castle Motorsports Park in Indiana and although we are spoiled having Infineon International Karting Center as our home track especially the facilities in New Castle were a nodd up compared to what we are used to.

The track itself is 1 mile with two very long and fast straights where drafting is huge, fast sweeper corners, tight hairpins as well as banked corners. Or  in other words it got it all. A little bit narrow and hopeless curbs/rumble strips but all in all a great track. Furthermore there is on-track restaurant, bar, VIP lounges with panorama view over the track excellent service and RV facilities.

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Race Report for Viking Racing, Kart #64. Redline Oil Karting Championship, Infineon International Karting Center. Race #4 June 27th, 2010

June 27th was the date for the fourth round of the NorCal Rotax Challenge, the Redline Oil Karting Championship this time at the technical and physically demanding Reverse Sprint layout. Due to business travel in Europe we missed the 3rd round, but it is allowed to skip two races in the Championship we were not too concerned about that. We were anxious to get on the track upon our solid start of the Championship with two consecutive wins. When we showed up at the track we were finally (for California) met with almost perfect weather that just got better an warmer throughout the weekend.

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Race Report for Viking Racing, Kart #64. Redline Oil Karting Championship, Infineon International Karting Center. Race #2 April 11th, 2010

April 11th was the date for the second round of the NorCal Rotax Challenge, the Redline Oil Karting Championship this time at the technical and physically demanding Sprint layout that we had not run since July last year. We were anxious to get on the track upon our solid start of the season with one win and two thirds. When we showed up at the track we were met with almost perfect weather but the report for Sunday was heavy rain and wind - something that would show to be right!

 

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