Karting Photos

My son, Christoph, asked me to take some shots of him racing his Rotax kart (#04), so I took a bunch yesterday. I had fun shooting the other characters that come out to these events, including the "Mini-moto" pocket-bike racers. Those guys are nuts!

I borrowed my daughter's fancy camera. She showed me how to switch it on and off. Way too many buttons and options on that thing, so I just left it in auto-everything mode. Some of the shots turned out pretty good.

A couple of passing thunderstorms and downpours made for really interesting racing conditions.

photobucket.com

looks fun.

what kind of camera?

It's a Sony DSLR-A300.

cool

Awesome! I really like a lot of those shots, especially the candid ones taken while cruising the paddock. You really captured how much fun (and hard work) those guys were having.

And those mini-bikes are fantastic!

Cab
1990 325i(s)
2004 325XiT

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Cab Treadway
Awesome! I really like a lot of those shots, especially the candid ones taken while cruising the paddock. You really captured how much fun (and hard work) those guys were having.

And those mini-bikes are fantastic!

Oh man....ditto. It looks like your lovely wife helps out on track day (that is so huge). Carts are the most fun and those silly bikes I don't know about those critters

great, great shots Ferdy, thanks

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Cab Treadway
I really like a lot of those shots, especially the candid ones taken while cruising the paddock.

I like the candid ones too. The telephoto lens is great for that as it allows me to lurk far enough away that people don't notice I'm taking a photo of them. Otherwise they usually insist on making goofy faces or posing.

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rkj
It looks like your lovely wife helps out on track day...

The lady in the third shot is not my wife. She has a very similar hairstyle though.

This lady is one of the karting officials. She goes around with a paintbrush and a little pot of paint, different colour each race weekend. After the karts have been tech-inspected she dabs certain critical bolts on the engines so nobody can sneak in any illegal post-tech modifications. After the qualifying sessions for each class she marks all the tires too. You have to race on the same tires you qualified on.

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Ferdinand

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rkj
It looks like your lovely wife helps out on track day...

The lady in the third shot is not my wife. She has a very similar hairstyle though.

This lady is one of the karting officials. She goes around with a paintbrush and a little pot of paint, different colour each race weekend. After the karts have been tech-inspected she dabs certain critical bolts on the engines so nobody can sneak in any illegal post-tech modifications. After the qualifying sessions for each class she marks all the tires too. You have to race on the same tires you qualified on.

Hmmm ....Critical, a little dab will do ya, and who could cheat with a pretty girl lookin at ya!

Yes, the telephoto is so good for capturing people at the most natural- its been a boon for my picture taking its also cool that you're a racer so you'll probably know where the good shots are, and are going to happen

Onboard video from Christoph's Rotax kart.

We're still trying to get the recorder to survive the wicked vibrations for an entire session without the batteries or video connections buzzing loose.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLTaU6BYmb8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gs-sko5BlkM

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Ferdinand
We're still trying to get the recorder to survive the wicked vibrations for an entire session without the batteries or video connections buzzing loose.

Cool video. I love kart racing. A friend of mine's son is about 18 years old, and has grown from the fastest kart driver I know into one of the fastest race car drivers I know, and he's only been driving race cars for a little over a year!

I used to have a similar problem with the battery getting bumped loose in the Pocket PC I use as a datalogger/dash display in my track car. At New Hampshire Motor Speedway there's a huge bump every lap where the road course crosses perpendicular to the NASCAR oval. Every session that stupid bump would jar loose the battery, and I'd lose the display and the data from that session. I finally solved it with double-sided tape between the battery and the Pocket PC, more double-sided tape between the battery and battery cover, and just for good measure, some racer's tape around the back of the battery cover. It has solved the problem. The unit still gets jarred hard every lap, but with no loss of power. I dunno if a similar tape-based arrangement would work with your video camera, but maybe something similar might work.

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Dave
'91 325iX

Yeah, karting is such good fun, I wish I had kept with it And raced motorcycles but I could only afford one kind of racing and bikes won out.

Those tiny bikes are just too weird, I like the one shot of the little girl on one though

Great work Ferdy, you do really capture whats going on out there

Thanks again, for the second look see, Rick