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Friday, 22 April 2011 09:39 |
 This year’s Superkarts! USA Pro Tour is fast becoming one of the bright spots of American karting for 2011, as our sport is now rebounding from being hard hit by the recent economic recession. Despite the continuing issues with the national economy, karting is certainly fighting back as entry numbers in the primary regional series have been extremely encouraging, and SKUSA is part of this recovery. There is positive momentum building all over the country and SKUSA’s West Coast-centric ‘Pro Tour’ is enjoying significant buzz regarding good fields in virtually all of its classes. The opening round of the SKUSA Pro Tour – the Honda Racing/HPD SpringNationals in Tucson, AZ - is now less than a week away and the research performed by the EKN staff shows that this program will see significant growth for 2011. The inaugural Pro Tour launched last spring at Infineon Raceway with just over 100 participants and the forecasted numbers for this year’s opener are north of 170.
The 2011 SKUSA Pro Tour will consist of three events, anchored by the granddaddy of them all, the SuperNationals in Las Vegas in November. The season kicks off on the April 29 – May 1 weekend in Tucson, Arizona for the second running of the SpringNationals. As recently announced on EKN, Honda Racing and Honda Performance Development (HPD) have signed on as the title sponsor for the event, helping to raise the bar for an event that SKUSA’s Tom Kutscher is aimed at making into a “mini SuperNats”.
SKUSA’s return to the S1-S2-S3-S4-S5 class structure in 2010 has provided a clear ladder for drivers looking to advance in their gearbox categories and the Pro Tour will provide a great look at this program in action. Several drivers have made the move to the next level of competition, namely the class champions from both the S2 Semi-Pro Stock Moto and S5 Junior Stock Moto classes. The one major change to the shifter dance card has been the departure of G1, as the class drew only minimal support through SKUSA’s multiple offers to reserve a place for the class on the Tour. The organization’s TaG class approach is equally as clean, with drivers moving from Cadet to Junior and eventually into the Senior class, anchored by a growing Master division.
To read the full story including provisional entry lists, please visit eKartingNews.com.
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