A Barking Dog

To the regulars that lurk here (both of you) this one isn’t my usual schtick on pro audio or the music biz but one of those once in a blue moon karting posts. The 2k5 season was pretty suckola for me as far as karting went. Only two testing days, aborting the partial season then doing the usual spending most of the year on the road much of it out of the country. One of the reasons I moved down here, other than to stop touring and take a house gig, was to spend more time racing. It’s way more motorsport friendly than in the Northwest. Year round racing, gotta love it. A bit of a note to the karting types that are stopping by for the first time… A Barking Dog is not kid safe for sensitive kids or parents. If you don’t want your kids exposed to adult situations, language and humor, they shouldn’t be reading it. Same goes for you… That said new readers to ABD might want to check out the Mexico Tour series for a peak at what being a show biz roadie is all about on a dysfunctional tour with a well known artist in a foreign land (it’s in reverse cronological order, which means start at the bottom and work up) and “The Glamour of Show Business” short film (it’s big 20MB) that is a video peak at a tour I did about a year ago.

There’s been a recent thread on eKarting News about some of the road race karting clubs withdrawing from the sanctioning body the IKF. Good. It’s about time. While there have been some good, well meaning people on the board, the organizational structure is about as useful as tits on a bull. In my view, it’s a disfunctional, fractionated organization that while bearing a charter to serve the recreational karter, is really nothing more that an insurance broker. The board is elected by the members (which I was for three years) but the board really isn’t accountable to the membership. It can be a pretty defensive bunch which is understandable considering how high strung most karters are. Especially parents of karters. Some of them make hockey dads look rational by comparison. Karting is supposed to be fun. That’s why I started. But it’s hella expensive, and when everything is going well, it’s hella fun. There does need to be a structure in place but when that structure falls out of touch with the racers, it is less enjoyable. That wouldn’t be so bad if the structure was able to deal with change and serve the needs of most of the racers. Sadly, this one can’t.

Sure there’s plenty of lip service about getting involved and a somewhat draconian process for submitting comments. Fred Flintstone started using the Internet and email way before the IKF did. The next comment from the IKF might be something along the lines of “well, if you don’t like it and want change, come to a board meeting”. Horseshit. If I don’t like my Double Double (one of the GREAT things about moving back down south) I don’t have to fly to In and Out HQ and submit something in writing. I simply call the comment line and voice my concern. I can’t remember though, when I’ve ever had a bad Double Double. The fries though, need lot’s of help. And I highly recommend the shakes. The IKF doesn’t get the customer service thing because they don’t realize who the customer really is. The IKF sells the insurance and sanction to the local track/ promoters. It’s really the racers though, that are the customers. Without them the would be paved over and made into condos or parking lots. The structure is such that the board isn’t and can’t be proactive without a submission process. It’s long on supposed protocol and short on results. If it were a for profit business running in a competitive environment in the general business world it would have closed years ago.

So? What to do? Well, bail on the IKF. It’s the local and regional clubs that do all the work anyway. They promote the races, operate the races and take the risk. The IKF supplies insurance (more expensive than other possible options) and a rule book. My suggestion is this…

All IKF road race clubs should bail in the IKF and form a specific series for road racers, by road racers. Let’s use the working name the Road Race Karting Cabal or RRKC. We already have some of the most knowledgable people in road race karting on the West Coast, or in the country for that matter. We simply do not need the IKF. IKF road racing was basically only four regions. I caught some shit from a couple of board members a couple years back when I stated that a total of four regions drove the IKF road race program. Well, now it’s down to two. Texas has had enough and bailed, So Cal and the southwest got screwed on the punch deal and they bailed. I’m going to support So Cal Karters if nothing else (they’re very cool folks) because the had the stones to stand up and say “enough”. What should happen now is that NCK, PKA and PSSRA need to step up to the plate and make the call. Your Duffy’s, while once a very revered award are now really no different than a three club, two region series award. For the IKF to get to a place to allow the road races clubs to be that fed up is disrespecting not only the award, but Duffy himself. A Cheese Cow is really the primo award in road race and has been for sometime. No offense to Duffy winners past and present.

So, how do we do this? Welp…

We form a consortium of road race clubs, the RRKC. We make a board with a rep from each club, plus an equal number of racers. We figure out a voting procedure. While going to WKA might look attractive to some, we are better off doing our own thing. We don’t need Charlotte to dictate how we operate. But won’t this be more expensive. No, not really. We already have these clubs in place, they communicate regularly and even cross compete in nearby regions.

How about the rules? We make our own, based largely on the current structure with a more allowable local option format. We let the locals do what they want though have a base set of “national” classes. The future of road race depends on serving the karters of each local region. The clubs have to do what’s best for the clubs, not for the guys that sell them the insurance.

Classes? We keep classes to a minimum. We support traditional road race classes, laydown, ICE, FKE in addition to modern sit up classes like shifters and TaG as well as TaG laydown. TaG laydown just might be the class that revives laydown so it doesn’t go the way of the dinosaur.

Nationals? We ditch the whole Grand National concept. We do a few races with different regions sponsoring the race and give the series award from that. Or perhaps bail on that and head to Road America to compete in what is really the national road race event.

The days of the IKF are done. They have no one to blame but themselves. They are not offering value to the recreational road race karter and the sooner they are out fo the picture, the better it is for road race.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 28th, 2005 at 9:17 pm and is filed under Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.