Go-Karting In Taiwan

[quote=“Stian”][quote=“mabagal”]

anyone up for a forumosa karting meet?[/quote]

At sunrise?[/quote]

I don’t get the reference, but the life of racer does often mean being at the track at dawn, so whatever time.

is this the place?
karting.trk.com.tw/index.php

[quote=“mabagal”]
is this the place?
karting.trk.com.tw/index.php[/quote]

Taroko National park is in Hualien so I would assume that Taroko karting land is there as well.

[quote=“Stian”][quote=“mabagal”]
is this the place?
karting.trk.com.tw/index.php[/quote]

Taroko National park is in Hualian so I would assume that Taroko karting land is there as well.[/quote]

The site says it’s in Taoyuan. I called them yesterday and they are open and operating. Fairly sure they don’t run the outdoor track in the rain, however. It’s probably easiest to drive or cab there, but Goog maps shows good accessibility via public transportation, also.

Place looks legit. High-grade rental karts, opportunity to rent a real centrifugal Yamaha-powered racing kart, can store your own kart there, AMB transponder timing.

It’s 300NT/8min for the vanilla karts and 800NT/8min for the faster kart, which is cheap as shit in comparison to the rest of the world, so looking forward to checking it out.

If this rain ever stops on a weekend, will definitely get out there to check it out. Anyone else want to go?

Back in the states during the winter months to get our fix, my racer friends and I would often go around the local indoor karting centers in Seattle trying to set the rental kart lap records for that week/month/year/all time. This was actually a pretty fun and challenging past time, as there were a lot of great drivers that show up to the karting centers in the winter! All the cast of characters from the local track, rally and autocross scene would show up and everyone eventually learned everyone’s alias. Even if one of us would set a record, it usually wouldn’t stand for long and people kept one-upping each other. Eventually the lap times started to bunch up around the same tenth at which point the places would change the track layout or introduce kart upgrades (eg: more power) at that point to keep it spiced up and keep us addicted. :slight_smile:

There were a couple of karting centers run by a bunch of ex-Microsofties who were wise to have a live leaderboard online and an e-mail notification system that you could opt into. So if say got bumped from the top-ten you’d get a notice, sometimes with a coupon. I wonder how it is here. Maybe we can set up something like this informally among the Forumosa gearhead crowd?

Thoughts?

There’s a lot of stale and incomplete data in this thread. From a newbie-to-Taiwan’s standpoint, it’s hard to know if the tracks are still open or what they offer. So how about as we go to these karting centers, we put in the info… :slight_smile:

Here’s one I went to today. Thanks to igorveni for the tip.

Anyone who wants to join next time or to go try out other tracks, let me know. I might start making this a normal weekend morning activity.

Taroko Karting Land
karting.trk.com.tw/
(03)316-0189
Put this into google maps to get the directions: 桃園市中正路1650號

Track is good. Place is very professionally run. Layout is somewhat technical with a lack of “cojones” corners, but overall still challenging. In the rental karts, a time in the 30.xx range on the half track is doing OK. The record is 28.5 set almost a year ago, so it may not be as easy to get there now. I was about 1.5 seconds off the record, probably can shave another half second or so, but not sure about 1.5 seconds. I’ll definitely be back on a hotter day when it hasn’t rained in awhile and there’s more rubber laid down to give it another go.

They offer normal rentals at 300NT/8min and also have a 2 seater kart. You can also rent a Yamaha 100 for 800NT/8min after qualifying; basically showing you are fast, in control and not a liability in the faster kart.

They also have facilities to store karts and a lot of guys are out there running Rotax setups.

Video. First try shooting, editing and uploading all on the phone… Hope it turned out well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79sdsBY56Jg

Some pics:

Today, Saturday 26th March, was the first day of the TKOC and K4A karting championships.

I did not join because of family issues, but I can see on the photo… many taiwanese flags, and…
one South African flag, one Australian flag and one Netherlands flag.

Is it anyone from this forum ?

It’s not me but I’m interested to know where it is.

My mate’s just had a birthday and we’re looking for a good kart track to head over to for a few sessions when the weather breaks.

I live in Jhongli and I only know of one track called GFRT next to the new MRT line. Does anyone know if that one is any good, or of one that is in Taoyuan county?

By good, I mean fast cars that are pretty even…

This one looks a lot better than the GFRT in Jhongli, plus I don’t think you can rent the fast (2T?) karts there either.

A few colleagues and I are planning a b-day celebratory kart trip next month. I’ve been charged with finding the place and I think Taroko looks like the place, even though most of the guys live a stone’s throw from GFRT.

Anyone else keen? We have five guys and a girl, if four more people turn up we could make it a mini foreigner GP perhaps?

On Facebook, I created a group called: Wasabi Karting Taichung
It’s public, you don’t have to join or register (I think)
I try to translate all the news about Karting in Taiwan into English.

You live in Zhongli and you are looking for a good track.
I would answer Taoyuan Taroko and Taichung Rosso.
There might be more. Please double check.

And I want to join ! … even if I don’t know you, lol. May I ?

No worries brew, the more the merrier. I looked on their website today to see the different tariffs and couldn’t make much sense of most of it. I can see $300 for 8 mins on the little one and $800 for 8 mins on the big 2T but the other stuff has me confused, I’ll have to get my wife to translate it for me later.

Most of us have been karting in the UK before and it’s looking like we’ll have about ten people including three or four shielas. We want to have a mini GP for us lot, but I don’t know how many karts they have. It would be rude if we could muster a full grid of us for a battle to flag!

By the way, I weight 75kg this week. People who know how to drive and weigh less than that are not welcome to join us on this particular occasion. (Just kidding!)

Let me share my experience:

Last december,
For my 39th birthday, I rented the Rosso Track in Taichung. It -officially (I got a discount)- costs 12000 NT for one hour.
I organized the ‘39 minutes of karting’. My wife and I invited 20 people to join. Every driver paid 500 NT to join.
5 minutes of qualifying. The fastest teams up with the slowest. The second fastest with the second slowest… and so on.
The fastest in each team starts the race. First relay 10 minutes, then change drivers. Second relay 10 minutes, and so on… etc… With podium and gifts at the end. We had a wonderful time! Everybody was very happy.

For you, to read the content on the website is not enough. You have to call and ask how much it is to rent the track for an hour, maybe two. Explain your idea. Make friend with the boss. Good luck.
If all of you are not slow, I mean, have experience in karting, I also suggest you call Tony Chen from K4A to rent a few -fast- go-karts for a whole day.

By the way, I weight 85 kgs, lol, but I am not slow… 39’'22 best in Rosso track. My wife is much thinner though 55 kg, I think. lol

Photos?

Took the young fella out karting today. First went to Taroko Karting Land in Taoyuan. Nice looking place, better than the place I go to back in Australia. But there was a 2 hour wait to get a kart. Quite busy, guess that shows it is a good place.

So I rode out to GFRT at ChungLi. Been there once before. Still a pretty nice place. Only charged me NT$200 for 10 mins for my boy and it was in one of the regular karts as compared to Taroko NT$300 for 8 mins and they wanted him to use the slower kart. Actually got to say I was pretty proud of his driving today. Only 10 years old but he was holding off some of the adults racing with him.We usually go to the much shorter track in Daxi, but he did well to keep pushing flat out the whole time there today. Ha, think I might have difficulties beating him now.

Also at GFRT, I ran into a bunch of my motorcycle racing team mates. They had their bikes and scooters there. They paid NT$300 for the whole day and get sessions when there’s no one waiting to go on as well as scheduled sessions if the place is busy. I thought that was OK. I wish I had worn my padded riding pants, had my jacket, it would have been fun and good cornering practice to take my NSR on there.

So will try Taroko another day soon, maybe get there a lot earlier and I will wear my leathers next time I go to GFRT so I can also take my bike out on the track.

To rent the faster 800NT per session karts at Taroko Karting Land, you need to get a certain time on either the half or full track. If you are a typical western size and weigh more than 175lbs or so like me, consider trying to set this when they are running the shorter track. If you are carrying extra “ballast”, the long track will eat you alive on the backstraight no matter how good of a run you make onto the straight. Simply because the kart doesn’t tap limiter until very deep into the straight so acceleration matters there.

You will need to be pretty quick to get the qualifying time, but it’s not that bad. If you can pull consistent high to mid 29s, then you need just one good lap in clean traffic to run the 29.2 needed for the faster karts. The key is as always precision and cutting as much distance as possible. The traction circle on the normal karts is extremely wide and flat on the +acceleration axis, so speed-maintenance and using only as much track as the kart needs are the key considerations.

So TPS you’re telling me they let bikes on the track at GFRT? I always thought it would be perfect for the slow as shit CPI! Is it RK, Beast and those boys?

Yep. they sure do, there were about 20 zapping around the track last Sunday afternoon. There were scooters, wolfs and some other 4 strokes and a kid about 10 years on a small Honda MotoX maybe a CR50 or something like that, but they had changed the tires for the track. No NSRs, but I was out there once with Temple and he had a go on his NSR but didn’t give it too much as he didn’t have his track gear on. I wanna go to LongTan tomorrow and then in the afternoon go out to GFRT to let my boy play on the karts and I might see if I can get my NSR on the track. Doubt I would ever get out of 2nd gear but I think it would be great practice for cornering.

Cool as! I might see you there tomorrow, what time are you thinking about going?

Do you guys have an address or (better) GPS coordinate for GFRT? Thanks!

768, Section 1, ZhōngFēng North Rd, Jhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan
maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= … 73,0,6.91

Longitude: 121° 13’0 .8 "
Latitude: 24° 58’47 .8 "

[quote=“nivek”]768, Section 1, ZhōngFēng North Rd, Zhongli City, Taoyuan County, Taiwan
maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source= … 73,0,6.91

Longitude: 121° 13’0 .8 "
Latitude: 24° 58’47 .8 "[/quote]

Thank you! Gonna go later today with my gal for a few seshes. Anyone wanna join, PM me on the board. :slight_smile:

It’s cool this is so close to the Taroko track. May end up going to both. :slight_smile:

OK this GFRT place is fun. Really like it! The proprieter is friendly and always smiling. The karts don’t look great but they have lots of power and even in the slow karts there are a few actually scary sections.

Did 43.7 first time out in the normal kart on the longest configuration (layout B). The track record is 43.1. Need to clean up a few sections, but it’s definitely within reach. Going to move up to the faster karts now and see how I do there. Maybe will go on a time attack again for the record later today, we’ll see.