CycleKarts At Laguna Seca, Page 1!
The good old Delage! The Very First Cyclekart, and it finally made it to the Corkscrew!
Driving the track was a real thrill, and far more exciting than I expected. I sort of assumed that the large track would feel a little like driving on a freeway to the small CycleKarts — Boy, was I wrong! The Delage was drifting out of Turn Two and the fast left after the Corkscrew was CRAZY! Hanging on and laughing! Happily, the Corkscrew itself was really very OK: I took it tight to the right side and the right-hander kind of felt like it catches the car and tosses it off toward that wicked left of Turn Nine! (I was pretty worried as to what might happen going in, but now I'd like to give it another go!)
Below is the only shot I have of the Delage actually IN the Corkscrew, taken from Steve Vinson's great video.
Driving the track was a real thrill, and far more exciting than I expected. I sort of assumed that the large track would feel a little like driving on a freeway to the small CycleKarts — Boy, was I wrong! The Delage was drifting out of Turn Two and the fast left after the Corkscrew was CRAZY! Hanging on and laughing! Happily, the Corkscrew itself was really very OK: I took it tight to the right side and the right-hander kind of felt like it catches the car and tosses it off toward that wicked left of Turn Nine! (I was pretty worried as to what might happen going in, but now I'd like to give it another go!)
Below is the only shot I have of the Delage actually IN the Corkscrew, taken from Steve Vinson's great video.
Lovely photo by Allan Rosenberg
Some of the interesting developments in CycleKarting over the past twenty-odd years since the Road & Track article came out in 2002 are some significant changes from the original concepts we we hoped would guide future builders of CycleKarts.
We had originally — and, I think now, mistakenly — thought that the narrow wheels/tires would not lend themselves to Post-War car designs. The lovely Talbot-Lago above looks great! And it has rear suspension, too (something else we didn't include for the sake of simplicity and lightness.) A number of CycleKarts are experimenting with this now, and I think that the evolution into some sort of "modified/open" class and a "stock/Stevenson-concept" class makes sense. I look forward to running with these modern CycleKarts more in the future to get a feel for how mixed groups of cars fare together.
Other radical departures from our original concepts are the obvious step of tuned, more powerful engines (something I still have mixed feelings about) — The orange-and-black car I tried below was wickedly powerful, and great fun. But it also felt FAR heavier on the controls, less of a delicate dance-like feeling that the Delage has. When I complete the Whitney Straight Maserati, I will likely use a tuned version of the Honda GX200 and explore this new class of CycleKarts! I think both have their merits, but I know I prefer the feel of my own machines (not surprisingly). How a more powerful version of one's own may feel will be the experiment of the Whitney Straight C-K.
Three of the C-Ks at the Laguna Seca event had FRONT ENGINES! This is an HUGE change from the original concept, but — to my happy surprise — they still feel like CycleKarts. Modified, to be sure, but in that growing "Open Class" of C-Ks.
We had originally — and, I think now, mistakenly — thought that the narrow wheels/tires would not lend themselves to Post-War car designs. The lovely Talbot-Lago above looks great! And it has rear suspension, too (something else we didn't include for the sake of simplicity and lightness.) A number of CycleKarts are experimenting with this now, and I think that the evolution into some sort of "modified/open" class and a "stock/Stevenson-concept" class makes sense. I look forward to running with these modern CycleKarts more in the future to get a feel for how mixed groups of cars fare together.
Other radical departures from our original concepts are the obvious step of tuned, more powerful engines (something I still have mixed feelings about) — The orange-and-black car I tried below was wickedly powerful, and great fun. But it also felt FAR heavier on the controls, less of a delicate dance-like feeling that the Delage has. When I complete the Whitney Straight Maserati, I will likely use a tuned version of the Honda GX200 and explore this new class of CycleKarts! I think both have their merits, but I know I prefer the feel of my own machines (not surprisingly). How a more powerful version of one's own may feel will be the experiment of the Whitney Straight C-K.
Three of the C-Ks at the Laguna Seca event had FRONT ENGINES! This is an HUGE change from the original concept, but — to my happy surprise — they still feel like CycleKarts. Modified, to be sure, but in that growing "Open Class" of C-Ks.
This is the first of four pages of photo links sharing the November, 2021 CycleKart event at Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey. We had a great time, and there were so many good photos and memories which we wanted to share, so we decided to just put up a bunch of pages!
The photos below link to larger versions, so have fun exploring! When you're ready, head off to the next page!
