Karting videos...who made 'em?

by **Bob Preston** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 9:59 pm

Hey all,
Any idea who produced these videos? Lots of footage at NTK, OMC, Vegas and even a dirt track from my hometown of Phoenix. I even think I saw a Gaddy in the #2 video. These might be great to loop at the Autorama display?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoLYpMus ... re=channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEiIzWPa ... re=channel

Regards,
BP

by **Yaani-Mai Gaddy** » Mon Jan 12, 2009 11:14 pm

Robert,

I just listened to the 1st 5 seconds & that is definitely "Professor Denman"! The owner of KartWeb.com

John used to travel to a lot of the big national races & film videos. His video website was a subscription site to view awesome racing videos. I was fortunate enough to be the turn 2 camera man for John at the 2005 Rock Island Grand Prix (street race). I have the 2 CD set I will loan you. It has some awesome footage. Turn 2 was at the end of the second long straight & the karts really had high speeds & a lot of momentum at that point in the course. I got to see a lot of action & incidents at that spot. It is a really exciting race to spectate at but a bit nerve racking when your kid is racing in it. I was really happy every time I saw Ansel come around turn 1, I knew he was still in one piece!

Street racing & careening around corners that are blind because of the buildings & over different surfaces, asphalt, brick (at intersections) & manhole covers is a whole different ball game when you are used to purpose built kart tracks, not for the feint of heart.

John Denman isn't active anymore at NTK but is a great asset to us, he is a huge source for anything about karting, a very knowledgeable person. I wish he would come out to the track again. You'd love him, he is a great guy, a lot of fun to be around & like I said he knows everything there is about karting.

John was a big promoter of Stock Shifter classes way before they became popular in recent history. It seems his dream finally came true then he quit? What's up with that John? When are you coming back to race in the stock shifter class?

by **John Denman** » Tue Jan 13, 2009 8:45 pm

It's hard to believe that I've been away from NTK this long.

Yes those were my videos, part of the New Karters series on Kartweb

It's nice to see they made Youtube.

We started webcasts of karting long before Youtube was even a dream.

We created the TAG class in 2002. We broke all the rules that karting seemed to be founded on by creating a new class that made sense and publishing the rules on the web. The good old boys society that ran the organizations like WKA and IKF had no choice but to follow, and not without a grudge.

Stock Moto was a SoCal invention (like most things karting) we just wanted to make it practical. I would say that effort was a success.

The real secret about karting is this:

Its not about winning the race. Its about being a winner as a parent. Karting offers a level of parent-child bonding found no where else. The best 6 years of my life (and my son's) were in karting. We had huge fun along the way.

These days I play with Tonka Toys. Real ones. It keeps me extremely busy. I do plan on coming back to karting one day and it will probably be with something new............