Tom's Race Log
First time at Lemans Karting (10/20/2008)
Tom's Race Log
First time at Lemans Karting (10/20/2008)
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I've been wanting to come here for some time, but never got it together till today. My first impression was kind of negative. The lobby is much more like a doctor's office than a race track. My wife and daughter had to sign a release to go back to watch me race. This was the first, and only track that requires this. I was also a little disapointed in the safety equipment. That don't have you put on coveralls so it seems much more like a concession kart track than any other indoor track I've been to. The head socks were standard issue but they also make you wear these gardening gloves for some reason. They really cut down on your feel on the steering wheel. The only good thing about the safety equipment was the helmet, which was this mean looking non-glossy black thing. Rather cool. By an amazing coinidence is was again in kart #13. There was nothing wrong with the kart, but it took some laps to get used to. It was much longer and heavier than the Go Kart Racer kart, and it also had less power. Of course eveyone else on the track has the same kart so it's a fair fight. Which I'm not used to. At the Burlingame track that have karts handicapped depending on how much you way, so being a person of weight, I get a kart with no balast. There is no such advantage at the Fremont track. The course layout itself offers a single interesting corner. For 3/4 of the track I have the gas pedal buried, which further hurts me because this allows the little guys to pull away from me. Complicating things though is the on-line/off-line traction differential. Even when on the racing line there isn't as much traction as the Burlingame track. Then when you get off-line there is no traction at all. Several times, when trying to get out of the way of the faster karts, I slid four wheels sideways into the barriers. I wouldn't have thought this possible, but I was wrong. I slowly got better and better, identifying where I could or could not take the kart. I figured out the interesting corner and thanks to being right behind a faster kart for a couple laps I found that I there was traction much wider on the corner entrance than I thought. Using that space gets you lined up correctly for the switchback, which greatly improves your lap time. This is the kind of track with a very narrow scale of best-to-last time. I wound up 2.66 seconds off the track record, but each tenth here would be hard to gain.
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