Indoor Karting in Richmond

While back home in Richmond, VA for the holidays, I always like to hit up GForce Karts for some indoor kart racing with my Dad and some friends from high school. I blew tons of money (some mine and some my parents) at this place during high school while dreaming of owning and racing my own racecar or kart so it's fun to go back to one of the places that fueled my passion for racing. It's also nice to see how I've made progress on the driving front by comparing results now to results then. I used to struggle to make the Top 100 times, but today was able to run the 4th fastest time overall (26.721) on their reverse track - (www.gforcekarts.com/top100_adultreverse.htm). I will probably head back there so I can run the regular track before heading back to an indoor-kart-track-less city in Texas.

Check out this picture from back in the day. It is of my two best friends from high school, my Dad, and I standing on the podium after a 2-hour enduro at GForce:



If you a racer in the central VA area, I would highly recommend GForce Karts for some not-too-expensive fun. Here is their homepage with some onboard video - www.gforcekarts.com/index.htm.

ClubSport Pedals for iRacing

I got an early Christmas present from Ali a few days ago because the UPS man came while she wasn't home and the product name was written all over the box...silly Germans. I've been iRacing more recently and my old Logitech Momo steering wheel is just not cutting it, especially the braking feel. With the Momo pedals, your braking in iRacing is based on pedal travel not pressure like it would be in a real racecar. This makes trailbraking and passing under braking very difficult to do consistently. I've been wanting the Fanatec Clubsport Pedals for a while now and was quite surprised when the Fanatec box arrived from Germany. The Fanatec pedals use a load cell on the brake pedal so braking is measured by force not travel which makes the sim racing much more accurate, easier to control, and ultimately leads to quicker lap times. I've tried the ClubSport Pedals for a few sessions now and have been very pleased. Thanks Ali!

The ClubSport Pedals are very sturdy and fully adjustable (pedal travel, pedal spring stiffness, braking linearity, pedal height, pedal spacing, and even color). Weighing in at about 11 pounds, they are made out of what looks to be laser-cut or CNC aluminum pieces. In typical German fasion, there is no slop whatsoever in the pedals and they have Porsche-like precision. If you are into sim racing, I would highly recommend these pedals. They will take some getting used to, but will be worth the money when you start lapping faster and dive-bombing people into Turn 1 without crashing.