Karting

After a Short Break

Turkmotorspor 5 May 2017, 00:53 Updated: 15 August 2017, 11:18 4 min read

By a short break I mean both the winter break we have given the season, and the pause in my own writing for various reasons. I promise to write more often this season :)

Our subject is karting and we are, once again, on the eve of a season; this weekend, in fact, we pick up where we left off with the Turkish Karting Championship. Two weekends later, the Prokart-BPC season gets under way.
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Reinventing the Wheel

You will ask where this "reinventing the wheel" has come from, and you are right; I keep asking myself the same thing. In my personal observation, the biggest problem of the Turkish motorsport community is that it has never quite grasped the importance of the grassroots. So much so that at the Champions' Championship, held in the winter, in what could be called the off-season, and which created quite a stir, the performance of the young karting drivers shocked many people. To be honest, I found this performance entirely to be expected, and it was crowned by Ayhancan Güven's victory. It feels like only yesterday that I remember this wonderful young driver's first kart race, and it makes me happy to know that he will achieve much bigger things, and that there are plenty of other young talents ready to make us proud if they are given similar opportunities.

But sadly, our young drivers who spend years on karting tracks receive neither enough attention nor enough support. The most important problem is that Istanbul, where most of our racing community lives and which has hosted events such as Formula 1, the WRC, the ERC and the DTM over the years, does not have a single international-level karting facility.

The fact that European countries, where motorsport is an industry in its own right, have almost 30-40 karting tracks per country is proof of how far behind we are in this area. The answer to the question we so often debate as a nation, why we have no Formula 1 driver, is in fact hidden here. While the average Belgian, British or German youngster gains thousands of kilometres of experience from racing throughout the season, a young driver racing in our country cannot gain even a tenth of that experience. And that is before I even get into the subject of the standards of the tracks. In short, while we want young drivers to represent us in every field, we invest in karting, which is the ABC of this sport, neither in facilities nor in training. So, in short, we have not reinvented the wheel.

I promise to address the problems of our facilities in more detail in my article after each race during the season, and once again I would like to offer my congratulations to Ayhancan Güven, and my personal thanks to those who have not withheld their support from the driver.
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2017 Calendar

As is traditional, there are seven races in the TKC, but this year we have a calendar with more colour and track variety than we have had in a long time. Instead of the excessive number of races at the Körfez track in previous years, which got drivers to the point where they could almost lap the circuit blindfolded, races will be held at six different tracks. The season will open at the Körfez track, and if the İzmir-Ülkü track receives approval it will host the second race. The season will then continue with the Uşak and Sakarya races, after which the only track on the calendar with two races, Körfez, will be visited once again. As the season finale approaches, the campaign will end with the Bursa Nilüfer track, which is currently being rebuilt, and the Istanbul race, which will satisfy the longing for a track in Istanbul after a long absence.

In the Prokart-BPC championship, the calendar has been announced without stating the locations of the tracks. The Prokart-BPC race calendar is as follows: