Mini Indy

VENTURA —  Jim Hall says racing is in his blood.

As a race car driver and owner of Jim Hall II Kart Racing School, the 42-year-old has spent much of his life on the track.

Kart competitions--a lower speed, amateur form of auto racing--places a tiny but powerful go-kart on a race track the width of a jogging path. Hall’s school has taught this sport for nearly two decades next to the Edison plant on Harbor Boulevard in Ventura.

Recently, his client base has shifted as more corporate groups attend kart racing classes as team-building exercises.

“We filled up one class and came in Monday morning showing each other videos,” said Laird Owens, social director for AeroVironment Inc. in Simi Valley, a company that researches and designs unmanned aircraft. “We all had a blast doing it and had so much fun we went back and did it again.”

“It was extremely effective,” said Stephen Tetmeir, district manager for American Express Financial Advisors Inc. “It kind of acted as a metaphor for our business: It’s really not who won the race, but that everybody finished.”

While the racing school’s customer list includes Technicolor, Frito-Lay, General Motors and Amgen, Hall said he has also trained his share of professional drivers, including Todd Bodine; Brett Bodine, winner of the inaugural Brickyard 400 in 1994; and Kyle Petty, son of legendary racer Richard Petty who has eight career wins in NASCAR’s top division.

And Hall said his list of former students includes celebrities such as comedians David Letterman and Jerry Seinfeld, actors Timothy Dalton and Stephen Dorff, and two-time Oscar winner Kevin Spacey.

The average sprint kart, on which all beginners learn, costs about $4,000. It sits less than an inch off the ground on an aluminum frame about 5 feet long. These open cockpit racers--with no seat belts nor air bags--reach a top speed of 80 mph and can go from 0 to 60 mph in 6.7 seconds. An extremely sensitive steering wheel allows a kart to corner with a flick of the wrist and can pull a driver around a curve at better than 1.3 Gs.

Hall joined the kart racing circuit while attending UC Santa Barbara in the late 1970s, but the influence of the sport hit him much earlier.

“I grew up with a father that was in racing,” he said. “I worked as an assistant mechanic on his race teams as a teenager.”

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Hall was raised in Texas and the San Francisco Bay Area, around some of racing’s top names, including Al Unser, Johnny Rutherford and Brian Redman. His father, Jim Hall I, successfully managed professional racing teams in Texas in the mid-1970s. Unser won the fifth International Race of Champions in 1978.

While he studied engineering at UCSB, the younger Hall began to race karts in his spare time.

“I said, ‘It’s now or never to become a race car driver.’ So at about 19 I took my summer earnings and started racing.”

In 1981, Hall earned his bachelor’s degree and later used his engineering knowledge to design his own shifter kart, a machine that eventually took him to several national championships. His customized kart had a seat that allowed the rider to lie flat, like on a luge, which was unique at the time.

“When I graduated, I started to race at a regional level. Then at a national level, and I did very well, right away.”

Hall opened his Ventura track in 1982 as his kart racing career was taking off. It started as a shop where karts were sold and serviced, and within a few months Hall began to give racing lessons.

Since then, more than 27,500 people have graduated. The school has also maintained an excellent safety record. According to Jan Gaspar at the International Karting Federation, the Jim Hall II Kart Racing School is the longest established school of its kind in the U.S. and is considered one of the nation’s premier go-kart racing schools.

Throughout the 1980s, Hall garnered more than 250 first-place trophies. In 1987 he won the Grand National series for six-speed, self-designed shifter karts.

About nine years ago, Hall followed in his father’s legacy and began working with Indy car racers. He managed John Andretti’s racing team, was co-owner of another Indy team, and he personally raced in the Sports Car Club of America Formula Mazda Star Series for four years.

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These days, Hall says he is back to his first love--go-karts.

“I’m still enjoying the heck out of racing karts,” he said. “I make a very reasonable living for a local business. I have eight full-time employees, and I just really enjoy racing.”

Kart racing has been a major training ground for drivers on the NASCAR (National Assn. for Stock Car Auto Racing) and Indy (Indianapolis 500-style) car racing circuits. Nearly 90% of all Formula One drivers and two-thirds of all Indy car drivers began racing karts.

And it’s the chance to grab the wheel like a pro that leads hundreds of weekend warriors to visit the track each year for a lesson.

Shao Wang and his younger brother Ricky of Oxnard immediately wanted to check out kart racing when they discovered the school on the Internet.

“After the first few laps, I was like, ‘I can do this,’ ” Ricky said. But a few sessions later, the 19-year-old spun his kart during a tight turn.

“The spin just flipped me out, though,” he said. “But it was fun. I would definitely do it again.”

Shao Wang, 22, was more competitive when it came to racing against his little brother. And after a half-day of lessons, his top time edged out his brother’s by three seconds. Upon leaving, both graduates said they were eager to race again.

All racing students at Hall’s school must wear a protective helmet, neck pad and a well-padded racing jacket. Beginners lessons range from $150 for a half-day course to $495 for up to 20 hours of instruction during a weekend.

The school provides lessons in two styles of vehicles--sprint and shifter karts.

A sprint kart has a 16-horsepower engine and an automatic transmission, with one pedal for the gas, one for the brake.

A shifter kart, only used in advanced classes, has six speeds, 23 horsepower and a top speed of 90 mph and the ability to go from 0 to 60 mph in five seconds. A small gear shifter is positioned on the side of the steering column. Hall said such karts require 13 actual gear shifts in the 25 seconds it takes to complete one lap on his track, where 2 1/2 laps equals a mile.

The U.S. kart racing circuit, where seasoned amateurs compete for trophies, is primarily for shifter kart racers. However, Hall holds his own racing series for drivers of sprint karts who can complete a lap in less than 25 seconds. The series runs twice a year mostly for recent school graduates, though it is open to other kart drivers.

Hall said most people find kart racing is full of surprises. The machines are much faster than they look. A track’s turns are not as easy to maneuver as they appear to be. And driving a kart is nothing like driving a car.

But the one sure thing is that Hall plans to continue racing.

“The more you do, the more you want to do--the more you want to excel,” he said. “For me, it was very hard to do anything else.”