CONCORD, N.C. — If there ever was a true start to the 2022 karting season, most would agree this weekend is it.

While snow and cold still dominate much of the weather in the North and Midwest, temperatures have been mostly mild in the Southeast and terrific weather is predicted for all four national-level karting events that will take place later this week between Florida, Georgia and North Carolina. 

They are:

Series	Discipline	Track	Days
USPKS	2-cycle Sprint	Orlando Kart Center	Friday thru Sunday
WKA / Southern Kart Club	Road Racing	Roebling Road Raceway	Friday thru Sunday
WKA Speedway Pavement	Asphalt Oval	Charlotte Motor Speedway	Saturday only
CKNA Spring Nationals	4-cycle Sprint	Charlotte Motor Speedway	Friday thru Sunday

At Kart Lounge, we follow both the road racing and LO206 sprint scenes. While we’d love to make the trip to Roebling Road, we’ll be staying in our backyard to cover the second annual Cup Karts Spring Nationals, the second biggest LO206 sprint event in North America next to CKNA’s Grand Nationals each fall at New Castle (Ind.) Motorsports Park.

A huge crowd attended last year’s inaugural event and while this year’s version will lose a handful of drivers to the USPKS opener in Orlando, as of Tuesday morning an outstanding 284 karts had already registered and to no one’s surprise many of the top 206 racers in the country are included.

Identical to last year, eight divisions are on the card for this version of the Spring Nationals.

Class — Current Entry Count
Kid Kart — 9
Sportsman (Cadet) — 46
Junior — 43
Senior Light — 47
Senior Medium — 49
Senior Heavy — 32
Masters (age 35 and up) — 38
Legends (age 50 and up) — 20

With those numbers, we’d expect at least four classes will need to run Last-Chance-Qualifier races Sunday morning before finals.

Of those current entrants, at least 23 US states and two Canadian provinces are represented.

CMS will be open to CKNA racers Thursday from 9am to 7pm for wristband sales, parking, registration, tire pickup and pre-tech.

Gates will open at 6:30am Friday with unofficial practice starting at 9am and running through the day.

Saturday will feature a morning warmup session slated for 8am with qualifying to begin at 10:15am and heat racing at 12:40pm. 

Sunday will start at 8am with a quick practice session for LCQ races, LCQs at 8:40am followed by practice for the eight finals and main events slated to start at 11:30am. 

Kart Lounge will be in attendance at Charlotte throughout the weekend to cover the Spring Nationals including daily recap stories, photos, videos, onboard videos with multiple drivers and special video interviews with a number of racers with Steering Wheel Nation’s Tom Baker joining to give us a hand!

This weekend’s coverage will be brought to you by OTK distributor and top CKNA team AEM Karting led by multi-time national champion Mick Gabriel. AEM will have a 13-driver lineup this weekend including six drivers between the Senior Light and Senior Medium divisions. We’ll have some cool stuff planned with the AEM group plus following all the action from Friday practice through the last main event Sunday. 

For supplemental rules, schedule, entry list and all information on the Spring Nationals, visit cupkarts.com.