I been looking at maybe getting a shifter kart.....seems fun.
They are fun, BUT, I raced moto growing up, went to college, had some buddies racing karts, sold my RC stuff and jumped in. Raced at Mid-Ohio (they had 2 races a year there for years) and was, bar none, the best racing I have ever done. Several things that I didn't like about karting: 1) One must load up to drive the thing. Make some adjustments and see what they do? Can't do it. Living out in the country, having a motocross bike, I could fire it up and tear off onto my little track in the back yard. 2) Set up. I never got the hang of setting the kart up. Practice at 9:30 am when it is cool and humid, and have a heat race at 11:30 and it warmed up 10 degrees? Set up goes out the window. On a 4 lap heat race, set up is key. Guess it wrong and you know going into the first turn you blew it. It sucked. There is not enough time to recover from a bad handling kart right out of the gate in those sprint races. I just never got the hang of it. Part of the issue was my moto background. SMOOTH was the key. I would fly down the straight, stand on the brakes, slide the thing into the turn, hammer the gas and clutch the thing out of the corner motocross style. It looked cool and was fun, but EPIC FAIL. 3) If you want to see how NOT to run a race event, spend some time at Circleville Raceway Park. Maybe it has changed, but holy cow. practice at 8:00 first heat race at 2? with no track prep! No thanks....