Its not all fun and games at Stratotech park

RITA FEUTL
Special to The Journal
STURGEON REGION

Picture a summer spent outdoors at a race track, tinkering with engines, working with a pit crew putting together $10,000 go-karts, and you'll know why 18-year old Colin Clark is smiling.

If he's lucky, and he impresses the heck out of his automotive teacher and the owner of Stratotech Park International Raceway, that's where Clark will be spending the summer, earning money and gaining experience for a career in the car industry.

Clark is one of about 80 students taking automotive studies at Sturgeon Composite high school. As part of the program, he gets to spend time at Stratotech (www.stratotech.ca), a newly built racing facility for go-karts and sport bikes on the eastern edge of the county of Sturgeon, on Secondary Highway 825.

"I’m so excited," says Clark" When ever you get a chance like this you jump at it. When you're around our age, this is something you’re interested in, and it gets your name out there in the industry."

The link between the school and the race course was forged last year, when automotive teacher Vincent Cullen approached Stratotech owner Dan Beith about giving his students some work experience on his track.

"It's a national facility just minutes from our school and students love this kind of thing," says Cullen. ?I raced for many years as a pro moto-cross racer, and that facility is one of the best in the country."

This year his pupils will help out on race days, doing pit work and track marshalling "and just generally handling the technical and mechanical side of things"

As well, they’re helping to assemble and custom fit karts for individual client specifications, including the RM1 kart -a low maintenance vehicle capable of going l40km/h-that Beith is touting as the perfect racing toy for the over-35 crowd. In fact, Beith's started am RM1 club that meets every Wednesday to practise, with racing times beginning at 4 p.m.

Events such as the Rotax Max Challenge Alberta Series points race, for competitors 16 and up, took place at Stratotech Park International Raceway last June.

"I’ve created this league myself and I've insisted all the drivers have to be over 35? says Beith 50. " I’ve done a lot of racing in my life and I've probably broken almost every bone in my body. The RMI is very safe and it's suitable for the over-35s."

This is probably a good thing, as 21 out of the 26 purchasers of the over $10,000 RMI have never raced a kart before.

"Their wives call it another stupid toy for their husbands," says Beith, chuckling.

But Stratotech makes an effort to get the whole family involved in karting. The fastest growing classes of the Edmonton and District Kart Race Association last year were the Junior Classes, with age ranges of 8-15.

"Last year there were as many racers here without a driver's licence as there were with one," says Beith. He points out that kart drivers go through a driving school, then a race school before advancing to a race event.

Beith admits that many people have a stereotypical view of what used to be called go-karts. “When you say karts, people imagine concession tracks and low speeds and huge bumpers and very tight tracks” says Beith. But some of the karts at his raceway reach speeds of l60 km/h and have six-speed manual transmissions.

Of course the eight to 11 age class only drives a modified and restricted 5.5 horsepower Honda four-stroke engine, with a speed of 45 km/h.

"It's pretty fast enough for them." Sometimes mothers of young racers look away when their youngster are maneuvering their karts but Beith says the track was designed to CIK specification which is the world karting authority on track design.

"And on the motorcycle side of it we've installed foam walls around the corners up against our timber walls, so if any bikes skid off the track the person will hit the wall before they hit the timbers."