[Roger Ruthhart]

We are willing to offer any classes that drivers want and will support. Historically, Yamaha Jr. classes (most junior classes) have not been well supported.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Andrew, we did what you suggest several years ago and threw big money at a few classes. We got a bump of maybe 20 entries. For every top driver/team that we attracted we heard from as many or more who said “I’m not coming because I don’t have a chance to beat those guys.” We’ve been paying $2k to win in KOS for years — sometimes more — yet the numbers aren’t there. That math doesn’t add up. There aren’t more than a handful of shifters in the Midwest … most running CES. As I noted above, the key for big teams is not the money WE are paying but the money their drivers are willing to pay to make the trip and be under their tent.

What if we did the opposite and offered NO money? I asked at the Driver’s Meeting how many would not come if there wasn’t a purse until the entries numbers recovered. No one raised their hand. Many told me the money doesn’t matter and they would drop other races before ours. Such a move would give us a $15-$20K bump. What do others think?

Lone Star does have an advantage in that it’s not in the “race season,” there are lots of local clubs/tracks in their area, and there is pent up demand from everyone in the northern two-thirds of the country who haven’t been able to race all winter. Great for them, but we can’t race in March in Illinois.

The race will always be a blast. Our volunteers have a love/hate relationship with it. Right now we are glad it’s over but can’t wait to do it again.

[Roger Ruthhart]

I could turn my fingers bloody trying to respond, but here are a few thoughts.

1) We haven’t had many big teams here since the Murley years of SKUSA. There aren’t ANY teams like there were back then. We’ve still done OK.

2) Teams decide where to go based on where their customers want to race. I have principles for what you would consider major race teams who want to come but can’t get enough drivers to commit. Most teams are driven by cadets and juniors because that’s where the numbers are. We don’t  offer those classes; many/most don’t want to do street races or don’t have the quick decision-making skills that are necessary on a street course.

3) We are at the end of the race season and by Labor Day some bank accounts are empty. Also, many racers are back in high school or off to college.

4) There are a lot of spec series that target specific racers. If you run a good series, there is less incentive to add the one-off events to your schedule. Frankly, there aren’t many of us left.

5) We DID have a good number of new racers — mostly in Briggs and Yamaha. As someone said, money is an issue these days and those are the lower-cost options to run.

6) When Modesto happened our phone stopped ringing. Not that many of those racers run here, but it put a pall on street racing throughout the sport. We usually get two-thirds of our entries in August and this year added just a handful. I hope it’s only temporary .. we’ll see with Lancaster and then Lone Star in the Spring.

We continue to be the safest street race ever. We had two red flags this year and no driver was transported. We were within 5 minutes ahead or behind schedule all weekend and finished on schedule.

7) It’s very difficult to make decisions on classes and rules in December for the following September. This sport can change year to year and we can’t react midstream.

8) Karting is still VERY short of racers compared to pre-recession. NO ONE (other than maybe National Karting Alliance) is doing a damn thing to try and work with local tracks to help them promote and build kart counts. That’s clear by looking around the country. Without local racers there are no regional and national racers. I look around the Midwest and only Badger and New Castle are what I would call healthy compared to years past. Yet we keep adding more series without adding more racers. Someone told me Florida now has 11 karting series… if that’s true, it’s crazy. None can have good kart counts.

9) There’s not a lot you can do to alter the course for a street race. We use the best streets available so anything else would seem substandard. We are pretty well boxed in with the streets we can use and still have relatively smooth streets and access to parking lots/pits etc. Some have suggested running in reverse, but that creates a whole new set of problems regarding pavement, barrier placement etc. and we would have to totally flip the traffic pattern in the pits, move the Start/Finish etc. We’ve talked about doing some creative things in some of the corners but racers we have run it by have all been against it… taking a Briggs or even a Rotax through a very slow 180 turn isn’t well supported. So, it’s not that we don’t want to change it up, but it’s not as easy as it seems.

10) For the record we had 92 drivers and 182 entries — our lowest count ever. The event can’t be sustained at that level. We have always done this event for the karters and our community. Rather than trying to bank a big profit we’ve tried to keep the costs to the racers as low as possible. We don’t make you buy tires or jack up cost for fuel (it’s sold direct to racers from VP). That said, there is a huge infrastructure to maintain whether there are 50 racers or 500.  We have over $10K in barrier rental and trucking, $6K in police, $4K for ambulances, $15-20K in purse, $2k for sound system, plus a huge investment in our fencing system, before we even put a kart on the track.

Races with numbers like this year’s are not sustainable. And you can’t do a race every other year and expect retain your date, to be on the racers’ schedules and retain sponsorship and volunteers. We will sit down after the dust settles and sharpen our pencils with an eye to 2015 and see what other options might be out there. I hope we can do it again. But the bottom line is if the racers — big teams, small teams or whatever — don’t support the event, then the decision is made for us.

I still have a lot of post-race items to complete, so can’t get into a big ongoing forum discussion. I want to make it clear that I am not pointing fingers at any other races or programs. There’s nothing easy about promoting races and I have great admiration for others who do it well. I’m just putting facts out there based on issues raised earlier in this thread. Thanks to Rob and David for their support, sharing their experiences racing with us, and providing this forum for discussion. Feel free to email me your thoughts at grandprix@qconline.com, my personal email if you have it, PM me, or post here and eventually I’ll get back to check it out.

Finally, thank you so much to those who did come out and support “The Rock” this year. I think we can all agree that it was some awesome racing once again.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Please see details of our limited time entry discount posted under General Karting Discussion.

[Roger Ruthhart]

My apologies to Tom and Stan from SKUSA. Following the Modesto race I had several inquiries from people regarding street courses. I was attempting to share some information learned over my 21 years doing them and the philosophy at Rock Island. In retrospect I can see that my post may have been taken as “piling on” which was not my intent.

 

[Roger Ruthhart]

Let’s give credit to Tom and SKUSA for trying to pull off a first class event.

If anyone is thinking about doing a street race, please call me. I would be happy to share what we’ve learned the hard way. But one quick point — kart tracks are about 30 feet wide and streets are much wider. Set up a course within the street so there is runoff (about 8-10 feet) on both sides. It makes a world of difference. If your roads aren’t wide enough to do that, find another place.

Barriers need to be able to move – not against the curb. Oh, and don’t use water barriers — might as well have concrete road dividers, plus they can leak. And pedestrian bridges don’t work — we gave up on them 18 years ago. They narrow the track, little kids can fall on the steps and people can drop things onto the track during racing.

Since we’ve had some people ask, I point out that we have a much different track setup and barrier system at the Rock Island Grand Prix. Come race with us and help us celebrate our 20th anniversary.

[Roger Ruthhart]

As Ted points out, Tom Argy Jr.’s original vision is still very much alive… that these engines could compete together at local tracks where there weren’t enough karts to run individual classes for each engine. The original vision — back in about 2002 — also included a couple of national festival-type events (Rock Island GP, TAG World Finals) where there would be good competition for those who wanted to step up, but also lots of fun things to do.  I was with Tom when he pitched the TAG idea to IAME and others, so I heard it first hand.

What I don’t think Tom anticipated was that TAG would ever become a national class. I believe he thought at the national level there would be enough Rotax, Leopard etc. in the country to maintain single-make classes. But different organizations took the TAG class and ran with it, changed rules etc. and muddied the whole picture.

TAG being run at local tracks under TAG USA rules should continue to be a viable class for many years to come. At the national level, single-make classes have taken root. In both cases, Tom’s vision was accurate 10+ years ago. God bless the man — karting needs more leaders like him. I still miss him every day!

[Roger Ruthhart]

Still running shifters and TAGs at Rock Island Grand Prix. stock moto, open shifter (ICC, mods and stock Honda) and masters; TAG Jr., Sr., Masters and Leopard.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Happy to have you and any vintage kart guys come race with us at the Rock Island Grand Prix street race August 30-31. Vintage karts race Saturday only.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Definitely their own operation. Visited the factory (N. Italy) back about 2002 with Tom Argy Jr. Nice folks and competitive karts, although I don’t think they ever supported their own race team.

[Roger Ruthhart]

How tragic! All of the Cooks are in the prayers of your friends at Rock Island in this difficult time.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Hang tough Wes. Best wishes from all of us in Rock Island!!

[Roger Ruthhart]

Best wishes Tom from all your friends in Rock Island!

[Roger Ruthhart]

The celebration doesn’t bother me, although he picked a horribly unsafe place to do it. But I agree with Gary — I’m bothered by the contact with the crew member from behind the tires. What if he ran the race 5 lbs. light and the guy slipped him weight. We keep crews separate until they clear the scales for a reason. I wouldn’t DQ him for the celebration, but I would sure encourage a discussion about doing so regarding the guy over the wall.

[Roger Ruthhart]

I’m not naive, but we’ve been doing our event in Rock Island for going on 20 years. We’ve been stiffed twice and one guy eventually paid when his kart shop applied pressure. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve had credit card issues but karters always came through — except for one and as far as I know he’s long gone from the sport. Kart racers are basically good people… too bad we even have to have such a topic pop up, but I guess every sport has the occasional bad apple.

[Roger Ruthhart]

We had a number of racers express interest in having a place to run ICC’s so we offered an Open Shifter class this year but it only drew 7 entries. Hope this works for FWT — let me know if there is any way the Rock Island Grand Prix can support this effort.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Still not seeing Pro Open results… am I missing something.

We had some interesting stuff this year — Lynn again set the bar high, but there were some other good efforts including Travis Porter’s twin Yamaha and Clayton Snow had a tweaked Leopard. Still happy to hear from anyone with ideas how we can create more interest in this class.

[Roger Ruthhart]

At this point I like Dan’s idea. We don’t need another show. I like the Springfield show, but its goals are different than KMI and it seems to be developing a niche. The beauty of the KMI show was that it brought everyone in the industry together at one time. LOTS of deals got done in lobbies, meeting rooms and over drinks. Importers met new shop owners, shop owners met new suppliers and promoters met with both. Those who had product on display usually were able to sell what they had so they didn’t have to haul it home, although I think sales were secondary. And we did meet some people from the Midwest who were looking into karting.

If we had a venue to do all of that — that we ALL attended — and could also connect with the larger motorsports community (for those who could benefit from that), that would be great.

[Roger Ruthhart]

I think the Feb. timing of KMI was because 1) many manufacturers didn’t have their new product lines ready and homologated before that, and, 2) It was before the race season kicked in.

 

[Roger Ruthhart]

Well, it seems to me there are two issues:

1) The economy. Now would be the time to import used karts.

2) Finding a good importer. A lot of good kart products are already over here but we don’t know it because the “importer” is one shop with no network. Historically, that has been the biggest issue for many importers. On the flip side, I’ve heard its tough to find an importer when you demand they buy a container full of karts. Not many karting businesses are well enough financed to jump into importing. Factor in cultural issues, money, customs, parts support, etc. and Margay looks pretty good.

[Roger Ruthhart]

The Grand Prix doesn’t actually end for us until probably around Thursday when all the fence, barrels, crash pillows and other equipment are stored away for another year. Thanks to all the volunteers and racing staff who help make this happen. You are the best. And thanks especially to all of the amazing racers, staff and families who come to Rock Island. You help make this event really special.

I have lots of great racing memories from this event, but that Yamaha SuperCan race was something special. Pretty sure there were about 7 different leaders!

[Roger Ruthhart]

Losing that show was a terrible blow to karting IMO. Darrell has moved on, I believe.

[Roger Ruthhart]

Oh. Oh.

I’m hearing stories of perhaps several entries with nitrous on board. Guess we’ll find out soon. :)

Chris, what do you mean by open wheel? Pretty much everything under this year’s rules is “open” except bore/stroke.

[Roger Ruthhart]

We started the class trying to rekindle and encourage that innovation, knowing it would appeal to only a very small percentage of karters. Unfortunately, for the most part, even that small part hasn’t stepped up.  This year we opened up the rules for 4-cycles and wankels, and marketed to Muscle Karts, but that doesn’t seemed to have helped much either. Frankly, it’s disappointing. But the same thing is going on with NASCAR, IndyCar etc. Everything has to look and run the same and if you show up with something new and innovative, you likely will be penalized or DQ’d. And then they wonder why they are losing fans…

[Roger Ruthhart]

Never heard anything but good about the Bondurant karting school. Run by great karter and great guy, Alan Rudolph.

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