The World Karting Association (WKA) is listening to our series partners, sponsors, and racers. WKA is changing the current National Dirt Series structure, bringing it to a more affordable level of racing with lower entry fees, more free parking areas available at Dirt Series events, a new gate fee program allowing discounts for kids under ten and kids that are under the age of five who are not racing to gain family’s affordability to attend WKA events. Along with these changes, the biggest move WKA is going to implement is the change to all Reaper Tires for the remainder of its National Dirt Series starting with Triple T on June 17.
“Cost is such a big factor in our sport, and as I walked through the pits this weekend I took notice that with the exception of the huge support we have gotten from the No Pro drivers, there is still a huge part of the eighty percenters that we are leaving out of our events due to cost and the series structure of using two different brands of tires, not making it easy for the local racers to attend our events,” explained Mike Tetreault.
Tetreault continued, “WKA President Kevin Williams’ vision for WKA is to have a place for everyone no matter how small or how big. We feel these changes will help bring a more affordable option to our events with lower entry, gate, pit, and tire costs. To be clear, even with the change to all Reaper Tires, our National Championship points structure will not be affected. All the same classes are still there, we are just renaming the classes that were called HBM Reaper to the Pro Class name. All warmup and National classes stay the same. “
“Also staying with our vision to get more of the eighty percenters at our events, we are going to offer two local option hobby classes as we have had so much success with the No Pro, we think it will also be well received at our events,” Tetreault added.
With WKA’s strong commitment to National Level Dirt racing and being the foundation of karting motorsports, WKA is going to form WKA South, in a partnership with the Florida Karting Series and Vega Tires, for the upcoming 2024 season alongside the WKA North program and their partnership with Terry Odom Promotions and Reaper Tires. All this will start with Daytona Kart Week 2023 utilizing a combination of both Reaper and Vega tires.
Tetreault concluded, “We had a lot of success running two brands last year, and we expect the same success this year. We will announce more details about Daytona in future releases.”
“We look forward to growing a much more affordable way to bring more racers into the sport and this is just a start,” explained Kevin Williams. “WKA looks forward to working with Tod Spaude from the Florida Karting Series and Vega Tires, Henry Moore from Reaper Tires, and Terry Odom Promotions. This is just the start of some great things to come.”
Be sure to stay tuned to the WKA website and social media pages for more news and information as it becomes available.