If you are looking for fast, fun and extreme hobby or the easiest way to step into NASCAR or IndyCar racing, then your next step is to buy a racing go kart.
To the layman and uninformed or just the general population a lot of people look at a racing go kart as a glorified bumper car, nothing could be further from the truth, the same principles a driver uses to win with a racing go kart are applied to winning the Daytona 500 or the Indy 500. A racing go kart is not a toy, a racing go kart is not a bumper car, or something you buy at a garage sale (unless of course you’re lucky enough to stumble upon a garage sale at Dale Earnhardt JR’s house). A racing go kart is a well oiled, high tuned, lightweight, high-performance machine. The racing go kart of today is extremely fast and handles with technical precision making it an amazing way to start racing without spending as much money as you would if you jumped right into NASCAR.
Getting going with the racing go kart is relatively simple and fast. Our recommendation is to find a local track that will write you time on one of their rental setups before you go out and buy a racing go kart of your own. Getting time on the track with a rental setup let you discover what type of driver you are where your natural strengths are in areas that you may want to work on. Knowing this ahead of time will allow you to buy a racing go kart that plays to your strengths and minimizes your weaknesses. Many new drivers fail to do this type of analysis before they go out and buy a machine. They end up getting a fantastic racing go kart but quite often a little research would’ve allowed them to purchase a machine with the right combination of power, breaking and handling to better match them as a driver. This phenomenon is actually a great benefit to more seasoned kart racers because they’ve done their homework and know what the next racing go kart they want to buy is they can typically by that model from a rookie who paid full price before realizing it was not the right set up for them.
There several different track types for the racing go kart.
Spring track: Sprint tracks are typically the most popular courses for racing their circuit courses giving the driver opposition from both left and right handed turns as well as straightaways. These circuit style courses typically range from 3/8 to 3/4 of a mile. However in some larger cities if you are lucky you can find courses a mile long or longer, the larger courses are a great way to test both your skills as a driver in the long-term performance of your racing go kart.
Oval track: Not much needs to be said about an oval track this is the place to test the speed of your racing go kart ovals are typically comprised of dirt or asphalt and most range from 1/10 to 1/4 of a mile per lap.
Enduro: these are the mother of all racing go kart tracks. They are road course circuits ranging from 1.5 miles to over 4 miles.