Thought that the fun driving events were over when you put your winter tires on? Guess again! Winter may mean less driving excitement for your car, but you can feed your desire with some indoor kart racing!

Josh TurningWe discovered karting at F1 Boston in Braintree, Ma. F1 Boston has two indoor tracks: city and country. Between four and ten people are generally in a race. Karts are five horsepower automatics with brake on the left and gas on the right. But don't be fooled by the low horsepower: in the city course, average speeds of 40 MPH are attained!

Karting has two primary competitive elements: driving as fast as possible on a given track, and safely passing slower drivers. Depending on the set of drivers you end up with, one of these skills may be more important. We've found that by talking to and watching other drivers (and of course driving yourself!) you can improve significantly at both skills.

At the end of each race, drivers receive a printout with all the stats from the race, including fastest overall lap and time, all lap times for the driver, and maximum speed attained. The sheet also contains a graph of lap times during the course of the race. If you save your printouts, you can watch yourself improve as your experience grows!

We found out a little too late that the BMWCCA has two indoor leagues. Leagues meet once a week and get in about eight races a night. At $50/night, this is much better than paying per race, which is your only option if you are not in a league. New leagues will be forming in January 2001 so watch the Boston BMWCCA site for more details. Also, F1 Boston has a number of leagues not affiliated with the car club.

If you're looking for some winter driving fun and your car isn't providing it, head to Braintree right away!