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| Reader's Soapbox - Doug Welch |
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TaG needs a Champion
No, not yet another national champion, I mean a champion for the TaG cause. We need someone who will take charge of TaG’s spirit and philosophy. We need some one who can talk with the manufacturers, importers, sanctioning bodies and racers about the directions of TaG. We need some one who we all can look to direct the course of TaG and not let it become just another class in the alphabet soup of classes spread out across this great country.
I think we can all agree that TaG racing is one of the best things going in karting right now. From a marketing standpoint, it’s fantastic. It is perfect for getting new karters involved and it gives seasoned veterans a place to play without spending the big bucks associated with shifter or other engine formulas. In short, it’s about the best bang for the buck in karting right now. And we are in the process of screwing it up and we have no one to blame but ourselves.
TaG fills a very large void in karting. There is always a need for a class that is fairly quick, for a reasonable cost and one that is user friendly. TaG as envisioned by many but most notably by Tom Argy Jr., fills that void quite nicely. The key to making TaG work is keeping rules that are uniform and techable throughout the country.
The recent events in Las Vegas show how far TaG has come and how much potential it has, and its growing pit falls. Over 240 Rotax racers descended on the X-Plex for the Grand Nationals, now that’s some TaG racers. With a full field at the SKUSA SuperNats and an IRL driver in the mix, how much better can it get! Actually, it can get a lot better or it can get a lot worse, it’s up to us.
The SKUSA SuperNats showed us both sides of what TaG is, the good and bad only we will get a lot more of the bad if we are not vigilant. Let’s talk about the good stuff first. In TaG Senior, it was a full field of 34 drivers from as far away as Florida. There were 6 different engine packages in the top 10, 7 different engine packages in the field. There were 23 drivers in the TaG Senior main event within 1 second of the fast lap and all seven engine packages were represented in that 1 second range. To give a comparison, only the Pro ICC had as close field in the main event, (K2 and S1 had only 19 and 14 respectively within one second of the fast time) and none of the other classes have any where near the variety of engine combinations found in TaG. Add to that the fact that almost every engine in the TaG classes was most certainly OEM stock, TaG clearly can offer very close, competitive racing for those racers who don’t want or can’t spend the ridiculous amounts of money need to fund an ICC or ICA engine program. Most TaG racers don’t spend as much for the whole engine as what a decent rebuild for an ICC engine will cost.
Now the bad, suitcase motors and factory involvement. The ugly side of racing also reared its head at the SuperNats with one of the factories bringing over “special” engines for this event. I fear more such instances will occur again and again if we don’t act, if we don’t have a champion. Every engine manufacturer has the “Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” mentality. But in TaG, do we really want one or two engines to dominate? And let’s make one thing clear, there were rumors of illegal parts on other engines that were brought over for this event also.
For TaG to succeed, the engines must remain stock. For this to be effective, we need the engine manufacturers and the importers to help us. The engine manufacturers need to tighten up their quality control so that each engine is consistent with the engine they submitted for pre-season testing. This eliminates the need for “blue printing” and parts sorting. If they need to make changes for reliability, the engine needs to be re-submitted for testing to ensure there has not been any significant performance enhancement due to the changes. They also need to realize that we will not allow any porting, not even cleanup for casting flashing or other imperfections. Some of the engine manufacturers are fond of doing a little detail work for their castings are poor. But how can we tell the difference between a little work done at the factory to clean up flashing and a builder looking for more horsepower? We need the importers help here, they need to tell the factories that here in America, we will tolerate no grinding, no changes from what was submitted, period. More importantly, we need tech personal trained to look at the different engines and have race organizations with the stones to back them up when the tech people find non-compliance components.
It is for this role TaG needs a champion. We had one, but unfortunately, Tom is no longer with us. TaG desperately needs someone to step into his role, to champion the TaG concept to manufacturers, sanctioning bodies and racers. We need a champion to standup to the manufacturers and importers and tell them that no matter how hard they try to cheat, we will find them, we will expose them and it’s not in their best interest to do that. But further than that, they need to realize that any performance improvements will only result in further weight penalties so there is no incentive to make more power. Their only incentive is to increase reliability for the racer. A 3 or 5 hour bottom end is not in their best interest. It would be far better for them to give up a bit of power if it improves engine life. They will get a weight break and happier customers.
As much as I respect all the individuals involved in TaG right now, for none of them is TaG the first thing on their plate in the morning. This is a thankless position I am asking someone to fill. It means long hours on the phone convincing people who just don’t get it. It means making people realize that by doing what is right for the sport, it is also is right for their company and organization in the long run although it may hurt in the short term. I fear that if we do not get our champion, if we do not have a voice of reason in all this madness of karting, TaG will become little more than ICA with starters. Just another engine builder’s class with short engine life cycles. Just more disgruntled karters looking for another class where the engine isn’t the focus. This is what we have to look forward to if we don’t get our champion.
EKN welcomes constructive commentary on the sport from our readers.
Note: The views presented in this editorial are not necessarily those of Ekartingnews or its staff. |
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