CKNA Grand Nationals '24 Kid Kart Final (With terrifying crash!)

Apologies in advance for the long message here! So we attended our first ever national karting event, CKNA Grand Nationals 8. It took place in New Castle Motorsports Park in New Castle, IN. We had never been to this track before, so I had a developer make the kid kart layout in Kart Racing Pro for Liam to practice the layout before we arrived. I spent many hours getting his kart set up for this event, testing by himself and with one of his close friends, we had the kart exactly where we thought it needed to be going into the event. Here's how it went: Wednesday - we arrived, got pit stall setup, mounted the new tires to the kart, and checked into the hotel. Thursday - 4 practice sessions and Liam was immediately quick (between 4th and 7th fastest in all sessions) which proved the time and effort spent preparing was effective. Friday - Morning practice was good, no improvement on his previous days times, but not far off them either. Before Qualifying the CKNA tech crew made some changes to Liam's kart because they thought it needed to be done to make him legal ... however the tech person measured incorrectly and the adjustment he made wasn't necessary and actually robbed the kart of power. This caused a nightmare of qualifying and setup a very rough two days of chasing the kart setup trying to compensate for the lost power. It also affected Liam's motivation and confidence, as the changes I was making were making the kart worse and he saw an increase in his times despite trying to carry more speed into/thru the turns. He qualified 13th down on power, and then dropped to 18th in the 1st Heat race Friday afternoon. He couldn't do anything but fall backwards and that really disappointed him. Saturday - Heat races 2 and 3 .... we had the kart power issue sorted out (fortunately the engine builder was there and he took our engine back through tech and they owned their mistake and allowed the engine builder to adjust things back to close to where they were while they watched and resealed the engine) however I had made many changes to the kart on Friday that pretty much all hurt the handling ... and as a result, Liam still suffered. He managed to fight through the bad setup and got 14th and 17th in those heats. Sunday - I finally gave up and just set the kart up the same way it was when we arrived on Thursday .... in warm up he IMMEDIATELY seemed more comfortable. In the DRAMATIC final race he started 17th and managed to work his way up to 9th or 10th before a kid spun in front of him on the last lap and he had to get into the grass to avoid him and fell to 12th. There was also a terrible accident that had one of Liam's close friends flip over after hitting a spun kart ... we are thankful that he was ok after that! After all the bad luck over the weekend, to see him fighting to move forward again was a positive! We all learned a lot in our first national event. You have to take the good with the bad ... Enjoy the footage!