Firstly before I dive into this, I'll make it clear because I know I've a few people ready to dig me.. I don't know much about the Karting scene in Northern Ireland. So if I'm wrong please kindly comment or message.
We head into another season of the Motorsport Ireland Karting Championship but we've a change and it's a worrying one. Watergrasshill in Cork which has been the opening round of the MI championship many times has not been included in the 2023 calendar without any reason given publicly. My guess is rising costs is to be at least one reason but not sure if it's the main. Speaking to other tracks management we will have higher costs due to insurance and Ireland's 'great' economy situation where everything is getting more and more expensive. We're left with Athboy, Meath. Pallas, Galway. Whiteriver, Louth. Kiltorcan, Kilkenny. It's not the first time in the last few years that we've only had four as Kiltorcan had left for many years but thankfully has come back. With no realistic tracks to replace Watergrasshill in the South, is it time we look up North? Do we take on the likes of Nutts Corner which is regarded as one of or the best tracks on this Island? Do we combine their championship and ours together? It's not only loosing tracks that's a problem but MI grid numbers haven't been out of this world compared to TKC for example. Well I'll quickly end that idea as a TKC round at Whiteriver for example leaves the paddock jam packed! On a great weekend for TKC you can barely park a bike yet along another race truck. So if we add another few teams on top of our current entries it would be a disaster as many tracks can't accommodate the extra teams. Another possible issue is the classes we use. For example their main Junior class is based on the Rotax Max engine where South us IAME X30. The list of issues would go on and on but with space being the biggest we don't really need to look into the other issues as it'll never happen.
So the easiest solution is to add on for example, add Nutts Corner right? Well for them it's not that easy as I believe they're really restricted to how many days of racing they can have thanks to their great neighbors. I can understand them wanting to maximize the amount of racing days for their championships up there as I believe when MI went to Nutts in the past the number of entries wasn't fantastic. I don't know if or when last that MI ever raced at Bishopscourt or Kirkistown and I'm not too sure if they're restricted too. All this leaves us in a worrying situation as if another track pulls out we've only 3 tracks left and in my opinion I regard the Karting better than our Car racing scene as we go to multiple tracks unlike them. But we may end up like them in the near future.
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Only reason we can’t go up north is because of the MSUK rules as the north is part of the UK we would have to change the rules between each round