[Bob Vehring]

For Gary’s questions, from the Wi area. Badger has always been since the demise of FH a BPed Animal track, simply because it was first, and thats what built here. Our Animal class was good before cloan LO or anything else came along

Badger, to some degree is run by its members, these members vote in Class rules, We have a rules Comm. meeting, items placed on a ballot, then, the membership itself, votes. For the last two decades, the 4 cy side has been left to me. My way of handling this, was to gather all the 4 cy racers in the tech barn one or two times before our Badger rules committee meeting, talk out our issues, then present that to Badger. Until this year, it has worked well.

The 4 cy group at Badger is a very close group, around here, we are the largest 4 cy classes in Sprint by far. We also know well who hard it is to maintain that in a 2 cy focused club.

This year I brought up the LO choices to consider, with only one 4 cy shop (us) and 6 or 7 2cy shops, its a hard sell here to get new people to try Briggs. Our group is adamant about one thing, trying to get the largest classes we can. Last year we voted out LM, just not enough of them, and they voted to combine the 2 Jr Sprtsmen classes in to one. The vote on weather to introduce LO class went down 34 to 1, nothing against the package, but you can only split the pie so many ways.

Until the number of Briggs racers grows considerably, I would expect here to remain Animal Blue print focussed

I think in Sprint unlike ovals, speed is important. our guys are surrounded by KT’s and Komets and TaG, even kids. The sales pitch from the 2 cy shops is everywhere ” You got a year in now, your ready to step up and go fast”. Seriously, its peer pressure on the kids. BP’ed Animals in Spts and Jr classes puts them as fast or faster then some of the 2 cy classes. 4 cy only series don’t deal with that, here its serious.

I think we were one of the first tracks to push the 206 KK engine, even with Klaus standing next to me, it didn’t stand a chance. The 2 cy sales pitch quickly  ended that and its a shame the 50 cc Comer must be one of the most expensive engine out there for top level engine. Even when one blew a flywheel down our ft straight scattering shrapnel all over our grid, thank God it was a practice day, it was officially ignored. I even notified the “Powers that be” ,of which no one returned my emails. What was Briggs put through to ensure flywheel safety? What a way to get kids started.

Re, Pro Gas, I have nothing against it other then its too close to Animal BP, Here we simply don’t have enough racers to offer both

[Bob Vehring]

Id say you hit the nutshell on the head David, problem is its been fragmenting for so long now, many of the other changes or series are well established.

Sorry to bother with yet another long story, but I think its important. Most of you know,our business has changed focus to 120 sleds. For us its a much, much bigger world. Regan also races full size sleds himself, and Wendy did it for 15 years back then

Snowmobile racing, all forms, has always been governed by a group called ISR, somewhat along the lines of what WKA used to be. Their is one major and very important difference. ISR itself does not make the rules. They will gather the tech spec’s from manufacturers etc to be used, and they do then publish the rules on their site for everyone to use, but they do not make the rules.

How the rules are written is a different process. Every fall, I already went to 2 meetings this month and have one to go, there is a meeting hosted by ISR where 2 members from each affiliate group (series) attends. This group comes from across the USA and Canada, even a few Europeans. Their are 4 different meetings, one for each discipline, Ovals, Snow X,  Drags, 120’s. Manufacturers and aftermarket company’s are also included. You have several months where each group can submit changes or proposals, an agenda is formed from this. That agenda is sent to the affiliates several weeks before the meeting. At the meetings there can be 50 people at the table, only the issues on the agenda will be talked about and while there is plenty of discussion, at the end of each topic, a vote will be taken, and that will be the rule for the year, period.

The advantage here is while we deal with mainstream big time manufacturers like Yamaha, Polaris, SkiDoo and Artic Cat, where certainly they each could have their own motivations, needing to be approved by majority pretty much ends any self promotion, power grabs, or self interest rules.

While their are a few outlaw race groups, none are very big or get much respect. It is the racers themselves that back the ISR program so all rules are fair and equal, in some of the classes, rules are frozen for a 5 year period unless there is a safety issue involved. That’s important because at the cost of equipment, you can build or buy an engine or chassis, and know it won’t be outdated on you next year.

Karting has become the polar opposite of this, now, whenever someone doesn’t get their way, they start their own series. Not talking about Steve here because we have no other 4 cy series, I’m talking the 2 cy world. Man Cup, Rt 66, MWSS, GLSS, MASS, Rotax, Leopard, Shifter groups that killed themselves. There simply is not one clear direction. Most new series in Karting are now run by one person or small group, it is often centered around their engine or their chassis or tire brand. Our sport is now run by business interests, not racers.

If Steve can take what he has in Gold Cup and start spreading that out to other areas, I think that would be a good start at getting racing, at least 4 cy back going in one direction. If you can start spreading your guys to the west, I try to start my guys going east, see ya in Indy

Bob

[Bob Vehring]

Well my friends, I’mmmmm Baaack only took roughly 8 attempts at Davids reg process, but I made it.

Good idea Steve, even if you don’t intent to come this far west. Badger still has a good number of 4 cy racers. As an example of “if” they want to travel, view the thread on Badgers board re. the MASS, the BP Animal racer asked very strongly to be included, unfortunately the leadership would not answer to them. In the past the same was done with Rt66. The reason people from here switch to 2 cy is and always has been, lack of any 4cy National type series that come here.

Both Rt66 and Mid America Sprint Series have people in their leadership that are based out of Badger, both own 2 cy shops. There is and always has been a very big push here to get our racers to run traveling series. While Man cup was here yearly for a decade, in my 28 years here, Gold Cup has come exactly, once. That has always been the problem, it leaves our people little choice on where to go if they want to move on from the local  track.

There’s no question the 4 cy world has been rocked over the last decade, I think LO has done alot to repair that damage, but it has a long way to go, and its only one class.

I gave up years ago trying to get WKA to care about us out here, the new series don’t care about us. Here’s something Regan has done out here and I want to be clear we only have worked it out for two tracks, Badger and Blackhawk I can’t say it works out as we do it at every track because of length of straight, number and type of turns etc.

He took 3 of Badgers Animal classes, Jr, @300#, Sr. @ 350# and we have a class called Orca which is KT100 or Animal @410.  That class uses YLC tires, the otherYDS

We started by studying both track record, and weekly times for these classes. The 410 class and Sr Animal had almost identical times as is. Jr’s had the potential to be the fastest at 50 lbs lighter then SR. We started with a gold slide, then kept shortening it a few tho at a time until we got lap times equal. This was then tested with multiple drivers/karts for weeks. We’ve had winners from each group and not uncommon for one of each in the top 3.  Regans race at Badger last year had 37 entries in one class, which is the largest class ever run at Badger.

We get that many people, remember this only the milw area people, because, they want something different then Badgers weekly deal. They want different racers and they want big fields. we get people who haven’t had their karts out for years because they are tired of the weekly grind. It is a money race, but not huge money, so far we have gotton your entry fee covered by a  sponsor, and we do something different with the payout. The payout is split in half. one half goes to top 5. The other half is given out on a pea pick for all the rest, 6 place to the end have 5 chances,  so even the guy in last place stands a chance of winning just as much as the winner.

I brought that up for one point, here, it has got people moving, our road race friends come to Badger, our Sprint friends go to Blackhawk  Who knows, maybe I’ll even get Gary in a limited Road Race kart, the world looks different at 110 LOL

Steve if theres any thing I can do to help, you know the number

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