2014 Modesto Grand Prix

This weekend about a dozen of our friends joined us Downtown Modesto to watch the kart races. This was the first year that Modesto has hosted the Grand Prix race. Superkarts! USA has a five-year history of putting together these races and the turn out was spectacular.

They set up a .88 mile track thru the streets of downtown Modesto between 10th Street and 13th Street and I street and K street. This was a citywide event in downtown Modesto the race as the central focus. There were the usual fair vendors and concession stands as well as some of the restaurants and bars in the areas participating. I have to admit I was a little disappointed that some of my favorite places didn’t go all out to open their doors and create an atmosphere to come in and have a drink. That’s okay though because Firkin and Fox did a fabulous job of making up for it.

We are told it was one of the grandest venues ever created for the sport of karting and the work put into the festival surrounding the event was at a level never before seen in North American karting. The Superkarts! USA Summer Nationals was sponsored by many different organizations including Save Mart Supermarkets This event was similar to the grand prix events in Long Beach, St. Petersburg, and Toronto. It certainly felt like it.

According to the website promoting this http://www.superkartsusa.com/national/skusa-pro-tour/event-calendar/summernationals.html, over a quarter of a million dollars was invested into the project. Other than the SuperNationals, this is the only other opportunity that SKUSA racers have to race under the lights at night on city streets.

There were two 2014 Pro Tour Classes in this race. The Shifter Classes had four categories, S1 Pro Stock Moto, S2 Semi-Pro Stock Moto, S4 Master Stock Moto, and the S5 Junior Stock Moto. Then the Tag Classes had their own four categories, TaG Cadet, TaG Junior, TaG Senior, and the TaG Master.

Unfortunately they tried to smash all of these classes into one day, which turned out to be impossible. With all of the delays, crashes and other issues the race was still going long past their 10:30pm promoted end. When we left at almost 1:00am, they were in the middle of a race though it had been red flagged due to an accident, and there were still two more races to go. Considering my husband had been up almost a full 24 hours at that point, having worked earlier in the day, we decided to call it a night and go home. Most of our group had left long before 10pm when the races weren’t even close to being half over at that point.

We hope that they learn from this experience but are still willing to host it again next year. It was a great excuse to get together with some friends for the evening.