AH: What was your shifter kart experience like? Were you just out there putting around or actually racing?
SP: I did some racing-about a dozen track days. I did three or four races at the Willow kart track. I raced in a spec kart class in Vegas called Kart Cup. It was kind of an eye-opening experience to realize that this guy has the exact same thing and he's three seconds faster. I'm getting lapped by him halfway or three-quarters of the way through the race. So it's one of those deals where you realize, at this level, it's probably not the best place to learn. I have to step it back and start from a slower car, then work my way up. But then I put it off for a while and concentrated on learning drifting.
AH: Where should you have started? I honestly don't know anything about karts. Where does someone start?
SP: For an adult, I don't know exactly what it's called now, but it's like a 100cc Yamaha clutch kart. It's one-speed with a centrifugal clutch. But with 100cc, it's pretty quick. You have to learn to carry speed through turns, because if you screw up, you don't have the horsepower and the gears like in a shifter kart. You lose tons of time. So you have to learn to be smooth, to get your lines right. You're not worried about shifts and stuff like that, you're learning braking points and everything. Start there and then move on.
AH: Then shifter karts are a step up in speed?
SP: Yeah. And complexity. And other little things. Clutch karts only have rear brakes, shifter karts have front and rear brakes. Performance is much higher all around. But if you're not ready for that, you're going to be way off the pace from all the guys who already have the fundamentals.
This rotisserie makes seam welding the chassis much easier.
AH: Since you're still learning about carrying momentum
SP: And shifting. But then it feels like you went faster through the turn because you have all this power, but actually you were pretty slow-if that makes sense. It's hard to get a feeling of 'wow, that was a good turn' with so many other things going on. In a centrifugal kart, without a lot of brakes or a lot of power, it really shows you when you've made a mistake.
AH: So that's where you were coming from when you decided to go to H4. I thought you were going to go straight to H1. I mean, with everything you've done, I thought you'd want to be out in front, with the big motor and all the stuff that sponsors like to talk about.
SP: You have to learn to crawl before you can walk. The way the rules are, you spend less money to build an H4 car. And then, if you want, you can upgrade the car later into H1 or time attack or whatever else. That was the theory. Get the car sorted and then work on engine development later, instead of working on everything at the same time.
I'm not out there to be the fastest thing on the track. I'm there to learn road racing. I want to go out and make setup changes, or change my line and be able to reel somebody in, try to pass them, or they're trying to pass me-that wheel-to-wheel competition.
AH: Tell me about the car. This is one of the most detailed builds anyone has seen on an H4 car. How did it all come together? Where did it start?
SP: It was pretty straightforward to me. It's how we're building most of the racecars now. The first thing I did was make sure the chassis was straight, because you don't want go and spend time and money and put a cage in. Once you put a cage in, if you find out it's tweaked, I don't think they can straighten it after that. So I brought it to a frame shop and they checked and confirmed it was straight. Then we took it down to nothing, stripped the whole thing...
By Andy Hope
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