OKLA East-London

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INFO:

East London, South Africa
Length – 765.36 Meters

Status:

Released – 05/07/2023
Version – Laser scanned

About:

East-London is a fast and short circuit and home to the Border Karting club. It’s about 765 meters long and has an average width of 8 meters. It’s located in East London, Eastern Cape. They don’t use this track for any national events like Rok Cup or Rotax nationals, but we thought it would be cool to add it to our roster as a historical track.

Karting has a pretty cool history in the Border area. Back in the day, people used to bolt industrial engines onto homemade chassis and tracks started popping up in Queenstown (next to modern day Builders Hardware), Mthatha and East London. As karting grew in popularity, chainsaw engines were quickly adapted and modified to provide great performance specifically for karting. The early East London kart circuit was a tight and narrow situated on the inside of the notorious Potters Pass corner of the main track. This was used during the 60s and early 70s and surprisingly some really great names cut their racing teeth on this track, the most famous being the Scheckter brothers. Jody Scheckter went on to become World Formula One Champion for Ferrari in 1979.

In 1989, Mike Methley came along and designed a new circuit using part of the Esses on the ELGP Circuit. He added some loops and straights and got everyone excited about karting again. In 1990, on June 30th, Border Karting was born and hosted their first event on the new facility.

So, it turns out that Border and PE had a bit of a friendly rivalry going on back in the day. They even hosted a 3-way Regional Championship between Border, PE, and Free State at one point. Nowadays, the only two circuits left are Border Karting and Algoa Karting

AAO Comments:

Even though this track isn’t widely used anymore, it’s been an awesome experience recreating the virtual version. We’ve managed to raise the bar once again with this one and AAO members will clearly notice the difference just with the environment around the track. It’s been a huge learning curve for us and what we’ve gained in knowledge on this track will be carried over to all our past and future tracks. Now, as for racing on this track, we’re beyond excited to see what kind of racing this will produce in the OKLA leagues! We got a sneak peek when we made the release video and all we can say is get ready for some high-speed, action-packed, close racing! It’s going to be epic!

To gain access to any of the OKLA tracks for Kart Racing Pro an AAO membership is required. Visit the AAO store for all membership options.

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