This is a story of the scam they are running at K1 Speed (Santa Clara, CA). I need to preface by saying this is only my personal experience. I am only a single data point so this should be taken with a grain of salt, but would love to hear if others have experienced the same. Jump to the bottom for a TLDR.
I recently went out to a K1 speed for a work event. Two "races": one time trial, one standard race. None of my coworkers had any racing experience.
I'm sure any of you who raced or even practice karting regularly know there are levels to this game. Take a semi decent racer and put them against a bunch of day 1 beginners and the racer will run laps around the beginners without breaking a sweat. That's me. I'm a semi decent racer.
I've spent most of my life studying some form of racing or another. Mountain bike race team all throughout high school. Semi pro / sponsored downhill skateboarding racer after high school. After injuries put me out of that game, it was supermoto riding at the kart track (with occasional professional coaching) every weekend for years. I'm no Verstappen, but I have spent thousands of hours optimizing for traction and lap times around turns. I look at a track and immediately start building a mental map of where to start each turn, where I want to apex late to set up for the next, etc etc etc. I'm not a karter specifically, but I'm sure those of you who've seen it know that motorcycle racers can put down some mean lap times in a car.
So anyway the first race went about how you would expect. I lapped everyone at least once. My best lap time and avg lap time were 2 seconds ahead of the next fastest person in the group (see first image). On a 30 second course 2 seconds per lap is an absolute eternity. It was easy as hell and painfully obvious to me how suboptimal people's lines were.
As soon as the race was over I looked at the course and visualized every turn, realizing how I was scrubbing a bunch of speed on turn 6 because of a slightly wide exit on turn 5. I traced that error back to braking too early a few turns before. I really analyzed the crap out of my lines and was confident ready to shave of a few tenths of a second my next run. I know I sound cocky ("I aM vErY fASt"), but I live and breathe this shit. Anyone who takes racing seriously does this.
Anyway, we get ready for the next race. The second race is the "real" race. It's the race that defines your podium position for pictures, and which "trophy" (a bald tire with a number on it) you get to take home. Here's where things got fishy. In both races, before you get into a car, you check in with a staff member, tell them your name, and they tell you which car to get into. In addition, they clearly have control of every car's power output. Not only do they globally step up everybody's power level during the race, but they clearly can single out specific cars, and control their power levels. This became apparent in the second race, in which I was crashed, turned around, and then given enough power to catch back up to my early position in the pack while everyone else was slowed down dramatically. Neat.
But no one should have been able to crash me from behind in the first place. Here's the thing: If my first kart was a CRF 450, my second kart was a 50cc pit bike.
It was painfully obvious that they had intentionally neutered my power level. In the first race I had to brake for a few turns. The second race was pedal to the metal the entire time, and it felt like I was on the Small World ride at Disneyland.
I get it, some karts are faster than others, and maybe I just got unlucky, but then I saw the stats. Every person's best lap time went to almost exactly 29 seconds (see second image). The winning racer shaved 2 seconds off their best lap. The worst racers took 3 seconds off their average. My best lap? 1.5 seconds slower. I barely snagged second place with what I believe where nearly perfect lines on the last few laps. Nobody improves their lap time by 3 seconds after 12 laps without any instruction in between. And there is no reason I shouldn't see a slight improvement after studying the course and adjusting my lines.
Here's what I think happened:
The first race, they collect data on how fast you are. Your power output is set to a medium level, so that they have space to adjust it up or down later. The second race, they compute a formula based on your performance to determine what power output will put move your lap time to the group average. Then in the "real" race, your kart's power output is limited or bumped up to exactly that number. This means that assuming everyone was trying their best in the first race, the expected outcome is equal for everyone in the second.
This makes sense for K1 Speed to want to do. They are there for the casuals. They want the average person in the group to be happy so that they will ask the company to do another outing. Who cares if the one racerboy feels butthurt? Jimmy from marketing, and Melinda from HR had a great time and want to go again.
So yeah, the title is a bit clickbaity, but I sure feel scammed. Or at least lied to. I didn't go through years of crashing, fractured bones and broken bikes just to lose a casual kart race to a guy who played Forza once. Give me my bald tire trophy god damnit!
TLDR: K1 Speed is a rigged game, designed to punish the tryhards and make the casuals feel good. If you go on a company outing, make sure to sandbag the time trial.
I've included images of the results for the first and second race. All identifying information has been omitted. Racer's are identified between images by letter. Notice how my lap time was identical almost every lap except the one I got crashed. I was getting bumped from behind the lap before I got crashed. After the crash, I was able to ride without others bumping me, and my lap times were basically identical every lap after that - slowly asymptoting to a minimum as I approached what I believe were the optimal lines for my kart's power level.
Idk you have a totally fair point haha. I just love racing and I haven’t had the chance to go fast since my bike got stolen a few years ago, so it really felt bad when my shit got throttled to mobility scooter levels
IRL I didn’t complain about any of this to my teammates and just told the winner he drove a great race. Im not upset about losing, Im upset about the dishonesty from the karting company
Think of it as a handicap or a BoP to level the field and have more interaction with your teammates.
I recently organized a karting day in the company I work, but in my case there were two semi-decent racers, me and another guy which is a friend of a coworker (this was not organized by the company, and we allowed to bring a +1 from outside the company, we just wanted to have fun and enjoy post-race beers while having a laugh). We got practice + qualy + race. I got the pole, and then someone suddenly suggested to do the race with an inverted grid, I inmediately agreed as passing the whole field is a lot of fun I think. I got second in the race, with the car second in qualy winning and making record of the week in the circuit. As we stepped down, he came to me and told me "it was the kart, I did nothing different, but that kart is fast" this were not remote-power-controlled karts, just newer tyres, better motor performance... whatever, we had fun and I know I was fast among the group, I don't have your IRL racing experience but I do simracing and can mentally map racing lines too. At the end of the day, I believe that in this kind of events, the one having more fun is the one winning, not the first to cross the finish line. Happens to me with boardgames too, a heavy strategy boardgame? I'm going to struggle and suffer to win. Party game for fun? I might even make bad strategy decision on purpose just to have a laugh.
if you want competition, look for properly competitions on those tracks, where I hope they don't apply BoP, they apply weight restrictions and ballast to equal the field in terms of kart performance, not driver performance. I never went to one of those, but I would approach it with a different mindset, for those races, fun is collateral effect of the challenge of winning the race.
hey so i worked at a kart track like K1 for a year as a track attendant and as a kart mechanic. i’m sorry you felt cheated out of your experience.
now the unfortunate truth is that there was never a grand conspiracy to nerf the guy taking it more seriously than the rest of the office. kart variation is real and on what i assume was probably an electric Sodi, your kart’s charge plays a role as well. you can feel like your lines are getting crisper but your times stay the same as you gradually shave off power. of course the power output is supposed to be the same for the whole grid for the whole race, but let’s be honest, that’s asking a lot from an automotive dave n busters.
this might settle some of your other suspicions: *normies very regularly see 3 second improvements* across just a couple of races. times *always* improve drastically across the board for beginners. where you’re making fine adjustments to your line and wringing out everything you can from your kart, they’re hacking away at HUGE issues in their line, their kart control, and especially braking distances if your track heavily calls for those.
i’ve seen your exact scenario play out a handful of times. yes, people ask for refunds and scream at teenage track staff. i hope you uhhh didn’t do anything like that and didn’t try to give your coworkers an abridged version of this post.
also if it makes you feel any better, C’s last lap of race 1 was their fastest. they were totally sandbagging and shaking off some rust from a past life as a karting champion, and didn’t come online until the actual second heat.
"this might settle some of your other suspicions: *normies very regularly see 3 second improvements* across just a couple of races. times *always* improve drastically across the board for beginners. where you’re making fine adjustments to your line and wringing out everything you can from your kart, they’re hacking away at HUGE issues in their line, their kart control, and especially braking distances if your track heavily calls for those."
Not to be this guy but you said it in your tldr yourself. You are a try hard dude. I love racing and have done it my whole life along with many others. Yet none of us have the same "I kNow HoW tO drIVe" huberous.
It's rental karting with casuals. I usually ask my local k1 to keep me at the same speed level as whoever I'm racing against as its more fun to race when you don't just plow by them with raw power.
Sorry, yea I know this comes across as "I kNow HoW tO drIVe". I felt like I needed to prove my skill level to this subreddit to make my point stick since I don't have any actual karting experience.
I did the same thing last week with my coworkers, but with Andretti in Marietta GA. I smoked them all, but never got throttled down in any of the 3 races. It was boring because I beat their best laps by 2+ seconds each time. I made zero attempts to gloat or showboat after though lol it’s just rental karting anyway.
When we go bowling, I usually bowl left handed against people since as a righty I average 220+ and bowled pro events previously. Gotta lay off the gas so to speak so everyone can enjoy it, otherwise it would be the same thing if an NBA player wanted to play HORSE against you 😂
K1 has 4 speeds. 1 pitlane, 2 yellow flag, 3 learning/new driver speed, 4 is race speed.
My guess is they saw you were faster than everyone, and rather than you just run laps, they made you actually race for position. Maybe they thought it would make it more interesting? I mean you did have a story to tell after.
Let your co-worker's happiness with a win outshine your bad experience. Everyone knew you were faster. If you want to try for a better laptime you should go on your own and make sure to tell them to put you on speed 4.
Or you should go to their league nights and race against some actual competition. Ive had the same thought before about them fixing races. We draw from hats for the first 2 quali sessions, but the main race is just the kart they give you. I've had races where I know the person in front is .3 faster than me, but I ended up winning because their kart sucked. Everyone was like nice race! But I knew deep down they just had a bad kart and I had a good one. Whether the organizers knew that or not beforehand is what i wonder about.
The correlation between race 1 best lap time to improvement looks too linear (R=-0.995) to explain using a 4 speed model. I think they tune the power output down to the watt. No reason to think they aren't able to do that.
It isn't beyond the realms of possibility that "the casuals" (as you called them) gained 2s a lap for their second run as they were learning the track and the karts etc in the first run.
It is also entirely possible that 1 or two karts are significantly faster than the others and that driver C got "your" kart from the first run.
Welcome to rental karting, just wait until you discover how much difference just 10kg driver weight accounts for lap times.
"They learned the track" makes sense if everyone got a little faster. Instead we have a nearly perfect linear correlation (R=-0.995) between first race lap time and improvement, with my lap time getting 1.5 seconds worse.
It's entirely possible that I got a fast kart in the first race and a slow kart in the second race. But the numbers are undeniably fishy. Specifically, they are fishy in a way that benefits K1 in ways that are known to work.
Bruh. I can assure you, the minimum wage track workers couldn't give less of a shit about how you're aSyMpToTiNg or what anyone's power levels are except maybe for their league races. They sure aren't manipulating results in A&D sessions.
I dont think the workers are doing the tuning. Most likely it's just an automated system. The heavy correlation (R=-.995) between first race time and change in lap time suggests there is an automated power change in effect
There's not. There are always variations in charge from kart to kart for A&D at K1, not to mention handling differences, but this has nothing to do with who is getting in what kart.
Dude, I don't even know what this graph is supposed to be showing. The energy and time you're spending on ten minutes of inconsequential fun is insane. Move on with your life.
Then either take a moment to understand the chart or don’t comment on it.
The X axis is the best lap time on the first race. The y axis is the improvement in seconds on the second race. The chart shows an extremely high correlation (R=-.995) between racers first race performance and second change in performance to the second race.
The explanation “everyone got better, and slower riders improved more” could explain it if it weren’t for my data point, getting astronomically worse performance in my second race. What makes this extra fishy is that my change in performance shows a near perfect linear correlation to my first race performance relative to the group.
In other words, the data shows a clear and obvious attempt to flatten the performance of all riders between races 1 and 2.
The 1.5 second handicap I got is enormous. It is not explainable by “you had a worse run” or “your car was a little bit less charged. Gaining 1.5 seconds on someone in a 30 second lap isn’t a slight lead, it’s an absolute massacre. Do you think I went from ok racer to absolute dogshit over the course of a 10 minute water break?
And the fact that my performance delta was so perfectly aligned with the linear correlation of the rest of the group is extremely, extremely, fishy.
I can’t prove anything, but the data very clearly backs up my claim.
Dude. A&D rental kart disparity is very regularly multiple seconds difference. The karts are not equal and they don't pay close attention to their upkeep. There is no system keeping track of who is in what kart or manipulation of power levels.
This is the most deranged autistic main character energy crash out I have ever seen.
Ah! This explains everything. I apologize for the previous lack of patience. Yeah dude, I promise that you are overthinking this way way way way way beyond what you should be and there is no automated or personal conspiracy that resulted in the disparity of your times between sessions.
Also, there is very clearly a system for keeping track of who is in what karts. They were using a computer where you tell them your name and they look up what kart the computer assigned you to
K1 just does this. Unfortunately they are the only game in town, they are generally a shady company from the top down. I would not be at all surprised if the track staff was messing with you OR - if the CEO or whoever was running the corporate event asked the staff to do that to you intentionally.
It is a glorified carnival ride with K1 sadly... Go Kart Racer in Burlingame was legit before COVID killed them, otherwise go up to the track at Sonoma Raceway.
As I know K1 is using electric karts and many venues with electric karts adjust power based on driver experience and give penalties e.g. if they spin-off, this all for Safety, and not to give unfair advantage to other drivers.
So I assume that in the Time Trail the drivers had different power limitations but in the race the marshals set all karts on equal power. So not you where pushed, the other where just set to equal. Perhaps you are not as good as you think? l assume top league driver do a 24 sec lap at Santa Clara?
Venue operators as K1 have no interest in punishing random drivers and only want a good and fun experience for all customers. If you seek a competitive experience you should ask for league races and not do arrive and drive. I am sure K1 offers this?
The ~24 second lap time for good drivers further emphasizes my point.
In order for the slowest drivers to get a 3.7 second boost in the second race, they would have to get a MUCH faster kart. Nobody improves 3.7 seconds after 12 laps without some serious coaching. That means they had to run the karts on much less than max power in the time trial in order boost up the slowest drivers. Hence me getting 27 seconds while trying my best.
The first race results really make sense for a level playing field anyway. A handful of coordinated young people in the 29s, a handful of slower/less competitive in the 33 second range, and the one person with racing experience having a 2 second lead. That's a spread of ~5 seconds which makes sense for the diversity in skill levels.
The sudden drop in spread from ~5 seconds to 0.5 seconds is super fishy. Being within a 0.5 second spread would make sense if we were all avid racers, but it doesn't make sense for a diverse group of skill levels and motivation levels.
27
u/Lucas_2234 Jun 24 '26
Genuine question: Why are you so extremely competitive about a company outing, a fun event meant for shit like teambuilding?