Hi,

Just wondering about what kind of race distances you usually run in Indonesia? The races at the recent RMAC were really short. I was really surprised that they were so short. The heats we usually run in Malaysia lasted longer than the finals in Indonesia.

The heats for the seniors were just over 6 minutes long and the final was just over 12 minutes. Do all your race weekends have heats this short or was this a one-off?

After watching the AMC in Kota Bharu, India and Surabaya, I share the same opinion with Mikko. The races in Surabaya was a little too short. The track is a fast one and is slightly above 1km. Lap times was well below 38s. 10 Laps race was only 4 minutes. The consolation was that you do not need much fuel to race. Anyway the fuel in Surabaya was cheaper than India.

i thought theres a minimum total race distances rule?
so shorter the track length, the more laps u need to cover.

Here is the part in the Rotax Sporting regulations:


This applies for the seniors only btw - for Juniors the organiser is allowed to decide the distance.

It is 15km or 15mins... so you can have a race of 6 minutes as long as it is 15km in distance. Or do they mean it has to meet both requirements? You'd think they would've said AND if they did right? So meeting either the distance or minutes should be ok.

Now IF the real length of the track was as stated in the regulations 1050m they are within the regulations - I just found the track on Google Earth and measured along the middle of the track - the maximum distance I could get was 875meters. This means that the final should have been at least 23 laps (was 20 ) and the pre-final at least 18 laps (was 18 ) to meet the distance requirements.

I personally feel that organisers should aim for the minutes minimum rather than the km minimum especially if they are just trusting the figures that the track likes to give - many track seem to like to exaggerate their track distance by 100m-200m or more. I guess when a track gets homologated in theory the distance should be measured properly?

yeap that sound right. minimum race distances or maximum time cover. which ever come 1st.
same as F1 i think, min 300km or max 2hr.

btw, Mikko hook us up the coordinates.

Nah it's also minimum time.

All the pre-finals and finals in the Malaysian RMC meet both the distance and time requirements.

coordinates in the "karting tracks in indonesia" thread now.

The races at Surubaya were short - even in the finals we seemed to have just started and then the race finished. Even though the track is fast, having a lap time 8-9 seconds less than we do at Elite/Sepang makes me think the track is shorter as well.

So, I'd agree that the minimum time should be applied - otherwise we could race as the top section at Elite and have races that lasted about 3 minutes - although we'd probably have 2 red flags during each race to clear wrecked karts from the track

In F1 there's also a minimum lap time - I think it's 1:05 - that's why some of the older tracks have had to be extended. I don't think there's a minimum time the race has to be over - the maximum is to take into account rain etc - and to help TV schedules of course.

Like I said I measured it on google earth and there is no way it is more than 875m - so we didn't meet the minimum time or distance regulations, except unless of course we use the official measurement. Google earth is pretty accurate - Measuring the Sepang F1 track for example you can get right on the official measurement by roughly following the centerline.

Officially the Surabaya track length was 1050m, this might be because they want to call it a category B-CIK track... instead of being a C track.


Then again they didn't meet many other requirement for B category or even C category such as white/yellow lines on the edge of the track or the pitlane entry so I think the track measurement might have just been a guess?

All that being said - what's wrong with making the races longer to make the races at feel like races? It just feels wrong flying to another country and only having 30mins of racing (instead of the normal ~55min).

I agree minimum time should be used because it seems that many tracks like to over-state their track length.