Picking Out a Brand New Chassis
On Saturday, December 12, 2015, my chassis broke. Can it be fixed? Of course. Can it last for another race season? Nope! I spent a couple weekends testing out a bunch of different chassis, and it was a great learning experience, knowing that every chassis is different. Without further delay, here's a list of the chassis I have driven so far and what my opinions are about them!
- CRG
This was the chassis that got me started. It's strong, durable, and can last for a long time. After competing in a whole race season with it, I was able to pick up a driving style consisting of a tight wheel and a heavy throttle, which can be applied to any kart. What was completely out of my comfort zone at the start of the year is nothing compared to my "autopilot" driving today. The CRG chassis is there to test your limits in a kart and give you a goal for every race!
- Aluminos
The Aluminos chassis has a very twitchy feel to it. I like how responsive the cornering is, and it was very easy for me to maintain my racing line. The brakes on both the Aluminos and the CRG karts feel very similar to me, making it easy to adapt to. The Aluminos chassis that I drove has a light steering wheel and throttle cable, which doesn't exactly suit the way I drive, but it was still fun to learn how another driver would prefer his or her kart to perform! The chassis overall feels very flexible, and at the same time it feels like it has a sturdy frame.
- Tony Kart
The Tony Kart chassis has a very soft feeling to it. Because of the soft feeling, they tend to have a short lifespan, but a brand new chassis would be fast right off the bat. One thing about the Tony Kart that I find insteresting is that in order to be fast in one, you need to drive with only 80% effort, leaving more opportunities for you to observe your surroundings. After driving it for a while, I noticed that whenever I hit a curb in which the kart would have been thrown wide, the kart instead glides smoothly over it as if it were a flat surface. That's because the Tony Karts have a 30mL frame, unlike the Aluminos and CRGs which have 32mL frames. On top of all that, the way the chassis was built made mistakes much more forgiving, taking off only a very small fraction of a second from your lap time. Unfortunately, the brakes were something that every Tony Lart struggles with, and so it is up to the driver to figure out how to use them safely and properly.
- Birel
his kart fits me like a glove. It has a 30mL frame and has a very versatile setup. This kart's chassis feels similar to the Tony Kart chassis, but it also shares the same consistency as the Aluminos chassis. Throughout my rookie season, Wes Boswell, my mechanic and coach, told me that whenever I use the rumble strip, it disrupts my steering, and he even showed me how it slows me down when we looked back at my GoPro footage. When I drove over the rumble strip in the Birel kart, it felt very smooth and easy on my momentum. I had no counter steer and hit my marks perfectly every lap. The brakes on the kart were new to me as well, but I adapted to them very quickly. It was tempting to try and use the jumping technique down at he TicTacToe corner, but I had to remind myself that the kart belongs to someone else, and I don't want to risk breaking anything. At the end of the day, I chose the Birel chassis for my next season competing in the 2016 SGKC. Plus, I like the colors. REEEEEEEEEEEEED!
I had a really fun time trying out all sorts of karts, and it was definitely a hard decision for me to decide which chassis works best for me. I'd like to thank Cameron Karting for their awesome work at maintaining my first kart, and I hope that next year, we'll be able to keep a good relationship! I'd also like to thank Austin Elliot, Aaron Farris, Josh Buttafoco, and Nic Le Duc for letting me drive their karts for a day! I really appreciate all of their support!