Today (Wednesday June 10) we arrived at the track in Genk around 10:00 am in order to begin finalizing the preparations for Thursday’s practice. One we arrived, the team at Kosmic was already busy setting up the hospitality tent, which will feed and hydrate the entire Kosmic team along with the Tony Kart team for the next four days. The extra slack time allowed us to walk around the circuit at Genk and explore some of its unique facilites. A small and tidy Kart-Shop is on site, which is owned and operated by Paul Lemmens (GKS) – For those of you who don’t know the history of Paul Lemmens here is a snipit – He and his GKS team are European Champions and well-renowned and took the European Championships with a driver named Jenson Button (Brawn GP). It just so happened that a British film crew was on-hand doing work on an upcoming Button autobiography – kind of cool.

Outside of the Kart-Shop is a nice rental track with proper rentals ranging from kid karts to the standard Honda OHV categories. Moving forward is the restaurant, lounge, and conference room – something you would most likely find in an addition of DWELL magazine, this area is contemporary, clean and very impressive – not to mention their pricing is very very reasonable – Oh yea, if you order french fires (Pommes Frites) you better like mayonnaise, no ketchup in this area! From here we explored a few other intricacies of the facility including the track, which has already more rubber than Castelletto and the surface and curbing are plush. The curbing can only be described as ‘Proper’ smooth and transitioned perfectly, this will definitely force the drivers to utilize it effectively in order to be fast. One thing that is ‘neat’ is on the exit of the track through the ‘hot lane’ they have a small speed bump setup (I’ll try to get some pics) this is great because it eliminates the driver that is going to drive 60 MPH into the hot grid, lock up their brakes and play ‘Joey Chitwood’ while endangering the 30+ mechanics and drivers. How many times have we all seen this? – Too Many!

Once we completed our round of tourism, we got back to the tent and got the chassis from one of the support vehicles. Just as we left them (Clean and tidy) we finalized the fit by bolting the radiators, body work and a few other minor setup details. The practice tires went on, both air boxes (Rain + Dry) were cleaned, and I reconfigured the integral chain guards and organized the LISTA tool box for Thursday’s battle. Thursday’s practice doesn’t start until after Lunch, which is really nice making the day somewhat laid back – that is if the weather holds up and everything functions* properly – but then again its Karting and ‘Newton’s Law’ is always more prevalent than ever.

Stay tuned and I’ll keep you up to speed on how J3 Competition and Tristan DeGrand are carrying the stars and stripes for the American Karting community in Europe.

About J3 Competition

J3 Competition Inc. is an undisputed leader in Race Services since 2004, providing the necessary tooling and management to take drivers to the next level. Starting in 2015 through its COMPKART ™ brand, J3 Competition will provide a full line of high-quality chassis and products designed and engineered for the Karting industry alongside it potent Race Department. J3 Competition will aim to deliver the COMPKART ™ chassis line to the North American market as well as customers globally in 2015 and beyond with unprecedented performance and service. With its content, B2B, and B2C websites presently under construction, please visit http://www.j3competition.com along with all its social media outlets to stay up to date on the latest releases and happenings regarding the COMPKART brand.