Why did I start Karting Track Guides?
Let me tell you about Karting Track Guides.
This is a transcript, please excuse typos.
My name is Simon Dean, and I'm the founder of Karting Track Guides. This is the first Founder Update after KTG has been live for around about one month, give or take. So I'm going to cover three things in this video.
Number one: Why did I start Karting Track Guides?
Number two: How does the UI work? And how do you learn a track?
Number three: Thank you to the drivers who have started posting their videos.
What’s the “why” behind this business venture?
What I'm looking to do with Karting Track Guides is create the world's best database of karting videos, so that newbies like me can learn news track before they get there, and race faster. What I noticed is that there are many videos on YouTube, but not all of them are great quality. So what I want to do with Karting Track Guides, is prioritise strong videos that are either HD or 4K, low wind noise, maybe a commentary over the top, not too much vibration, or shaking.
From my point of view, I started doing Club100 this year. All but one of the tracks I hadn't been to before. So I started looking on YouTube and I found great videos by Rich Tea Racing that I would use to learn the tracks. His videos were really great because they had this voiceover and sometimes hit freeze frame and say, you know, you want to hit that drain pipe cover.
So that's kind of part one of “why” - I wanted to get more of these videos together in one place so that people could learn kart tracks more easily. Part two of the “why” is actually for the creators themselves. About halfway through my first Club100 season, I got a GoPro and I started making some videos. You spend some time making a video and you think it's amazing. But what if it could just get more exposure? And that's also what I want to do with Karting Track Guides is create exposure for the people who put in the time and effort to make really compelling go kart videos, so that “we,” go-kart racers, can learn from them and enjoy their footage.
The Karting Track Guides use interface (UI)
The next thing that I want to talk about is the user interface on karting track guides. This was kind of a happy accident, actually, because I was thinking that I needed a way to showcase the tracks. And I went to Google Maps and I took a photo. And then I read the terms and conditions and it says you can't really use screen grabs of Google Maps.
Then I created an outline of the map that turned into a graphic that can double up as a social title, and the thumbnail for the track. The other problem it solves is when you put the YouTube video and the little map next to each other, you can essentially watch the video of someone driving around the track and see where they are on the small diagram.
Before KTG, I was doing this on my big monitor screen: I would pull up the Google Maps of the track and then I would watch the YouTube video and kind of trace them around. Sometimes even printed out a piece of paper and schooled on it. But with Karting Track Guides, you can watch the video, and you can see the small thumbnail in the corner as well.
And then added bonuses that the drivers can have these thumbnails and they can use those to promote their track guides.
Brad’s guide for Whilton Mill is rapid!
Welcoming the inaugural kart racers
The third thing I wanted to cover is the inaugural drivers who have made Karting Track Guides a possibility. It’s very easy to submit a track—In the top right hand corner of the website, there's a button that says Submit Video and you essentially put your email in and then you will get sent a Google form.
It takes about three minutes to fill it in: You type in some information about what kart you were driving, your best lap time, what you think of the track and the facilities. And this is all good stuff that will help with Search Engine Optimization (SEO)... So more people can find your track guide.
In alphabetical order, these are the people who have been invaluable so far.
Brad Philpott
Brad is a very fast racing driver sim driver, professional driver, also a pundit on the Missed Apex F1 Podcast, which is where I had met him. He's done some great track guides. He's got a an indoor one at Docklands. He's got a Wilton Mill in a Rotax and then he's also got GX-UK at Hooton Park, which is a great track guide. He does really great videos with slow motion and highlighting bits of the track that you want to hit.
Mango Motorsport
In your very first Club100 race, they buddy you up with a person. And Tom Angier was my buddy. Tom is one of the founders of Mango Motorsport, and he's done loads of videos, both with Club100 and with Daytona. He's very good at the whole race day with commentary and he's very watchable, and very easy to listen to.
Rich Tea Racing
RTR, or James, does really good videos. He does the slow motion breakdown, really thorough, really thoughtful video making. He is a very entertaining and amiable guy, and very nice to listen to. Watch RTR videos here.
Racing Dean
The other person that you'll see on custom track guides is myself, Racing Dean. As a beginner, I aim to have a bit of fun with music and commentary. I've got a 360 degree camera so can you can spin it around for interesting views. And at some of my track guides, I have actually started delivering quite good lap times, for example at Ellough Park I was doing some quite quick laps, ahead of some drivers in the A final.
That’s a wrap
That's a all from Founder Update #1. In the next video, I'm going to talk a bit more about the tracks themselves and some of the companies that we started to work with, and I look forward to seeing you there. Catch you later.
