Firstly, I just wanted to say, I'm sorry but 2 tenths is a lot to give away. If you want to stand a chance of winning you cant chuck 2 tenths away! You don't want to turn up to a meeting knowing your giving that amount of time away, whether you're just a club racer or competing every single weekend. Everyone wants to know they've at least got the equipment to win!
If you ask me CIK karts will be no quicker provided the tyres aren't that much stickier. In my early karting days we used to race in Natska which had more open chassis rules. A number of the drivers would run CIK chassis and seemed to struggle on the low grip Maxxis. Saying that, I really hope the tyres aren't much grippier, otherwise it will ruin the class. Its such a great class because the low grip / power levels teach control that other classes dont. For example, Rotax Max has lots of bad drivers who chuck the kart in and rely on the tyres to absorb the time loss for them and the end result is that the good drivers in the class can get severley hampered by bad drivers lunging and relying on the grip to see the move through - they'd never get away with it on the Maxxis tyre!
It will be interesting to see how the weight/restrictor affects things. I'm slap bang in the middle and could get away with stripping lead and using the restrictor, or adding weight and going without the restrictor. Lets hope they got the balance right! I'm certainly going to be testing with / without! Especially in the wet!
Theres a lot of speculation, but TKM had to do something. The class is really dying since I started 8-10 years ago where there were B finals for TKM at most club meetings! Lets hope they've got it right because with the changes made they'll either reinvigorate the class or kill it off completely. Fingers crossed, because I certainly can't afford to race in another class!
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