Having stayed in Sydney for such a long period of time, I had finally visited one of the so-called most “prestigious” kart tracks in Sydney. It was extremely pleasurable to feel the adrenaline rush when I am back racing again despite the fact that I did not enjoy racing at Eastern Creek Karting Raceway entirely.

Eastern Creek Karting Raceway offers Arrive and Drive packages that cater for racers of all age, starting from as young as six years old. If you are organizing an activity for your company, you could also opt for the corporate hire. Since there were only 3 of us at the point of arrival, so we hired the 9 HP karts for 30 minutes.

Safety

I have never raced anywhere other than on Malaysian tracks before I visit Eastern Creek Karting Raceway. I must admit that I am extremely surprised by how many safety gears we were supposed to wear. We were provided a pair of gloves, a full body suit and of course, the helmet. In Malaysia, we are only asked to wear a helmet (sometimes not necessary at all).

There was also a short briefing regarding kart racing which was shown on TV and new racers are supposed to watch it. So, as long as you don’t drive straight into the wall, you will be fine.

Kart Condition

Lady Luck was on our side that day, the technicians provided us the wrong kart. Instead of registering us to the 9 HP karts, we were given the 4 stroke 13 Hp karts.

I personally think that the karts are pretty well maintained, the power difference is very minimum, unlike many other tracks whereby their karts have a huge difference in power.

This was the first time I raced in Australia, and also the first time I experienced the heaviest steering in my entire life. It requires a huge amount of effort to turn the car, probably due to the size of the kart and its weight. Did I mention about the enormous 4 stroke engines?

After 13 minutes of racing I barely had enough strength to turn into any corners. Fortunately enough, the staff was generous enough to allow us to race in two 15 minutes intervals.

The Track

The track we raced was the Hire Circuit Two (730m). The track was awesome, except for the fact that the surface repairs were extremely bumpy. After 30 minutes of racing I felt like vomiting.

Other than the bumpy track, it was fun racing there. The Hire Circuit Two consists of many types of low and high speed corners. Especially at the end where there is a 3 joint left hand high speed corners which are fantastic to drive in (pretty similar to the Turkish GP), if only you could ignore the rigorous bump.

On a side note, if you like straight line racing, this is probably not the best circuit to race in, because there is no straight line at all! Thus it is a very demanding track, both mentally and physically.

Overall

I was surprised that at the end of each 15 minute intervals, we were given our own lap times to look at. The lap time’s sheet is not something many tracks offer. My fastest time was 45.19 seconds per lap.

In a nutshell, my search for a proper kart racing track still continues. Eastern Creek is good, but the bumps are definitely a huge turn off. I might be back again for Hire Circuit 3 but I am definitely not going to pay for Hire Circuit 1 and 2 ever again.

If you ask me whether travelling all the way down to Blacktown to race worth it or not. I am afraid I will have to answer that question after I tried Hire Circuit 3.