A Fun New Way to Compete with Your Friends
Story By: Brandon Bunch
Photos By: Brandon Bunch & Elizabeth Leal
It’s 2021, we have supercomputers in our pockets while high resolution GPS technology has become incredibly affordable, and thankfully we have creative people like the guys behind LapKing who had the thought to take these now mature technologies and create a simple social media style lap timing system that changes the way we can have fun with our friends—or with anyone that jumps on the app and wants to set a time.
As a kid there wasn’t a proper motocross track in town and none of us had the money to travel around the state, or country, chasing amateur championships. So as a result, we stuck to the desert having a blast eating each other’s dust, while having no accurate measure of how we stacked up against each other. Around the same time, an arrive and drive go-kart track opened up in town that had live timing, and at the end of the race we’d get a print-out of our lap times… The hilarious trash talking that came about as a result of those time sheets was, and still is, absolutely priceless. Now we have the ability to do this anywhere we go—no expensive timing system needed.
For $165 you can get the required Dual XGPS logger from lapkingracing.com, and then download the LapKing app only from the Apple App Store… Yes, it’s currently only available for the iPhone. Luckily myself and my old friend Jeff both are normal humans who have iPhones, and he agreed to come test this out with me. Once we had the GPS pucks mounted, app downloaded, and accounts created, we were ready to rip. The app has categories for just about every form of motorsports including UTVs, and even breaks it down to 1000cc N/A, 1000cc Turbo, and Under 1000cc classes. You can find and compete with the leaderboards on a previously recorded track, or you can create your own. Jeff brought out his Polaris RZR Turbo S and I grabbed our Can-Am Maverick X3 X DS Turbo R from the stable, and we headed to this old graded lot where we’ve been racing our friends for years.
While there’s no real race track here, we pieced together a few high speed sweeping corners, some tight 180 degree berms, and two fast straights where we could open it up and push our limits. Recording and uploading the track to the LapKing app was pretty easy following along with their tutorial videos, we set the start/finish, and we were then ready to start recording our motos. While you can record and upload a track literally anywhere, I must stress that you do this in a safe place. Unless you are on a proper and controlled race course, blind corners and blind hills are a no-go. You never know if there might be someone coming the other way, and an accident could mean serious injury or death for you, an unsuspecting rider, or even a whole family. Use common sense.
We took turns running laps around our makeshift course, as with no dust or slow driver to hold the other up, there would be no excuses. The laps are recorded to the GPS unit, and then you upload to the app after running the moto… Make sure to do this after each moto, if you stop and then re-start recording you will lose the previously recorded session. I found this out the hard way. You are able to see all lap times from your moto, and you select your fastest lap to post to the leaderboard. Lo and behold, it was just like the old times… I had smoked Jeff by setting a lap time 2.8 seconds faster than his, and he of course had the excuses lined up right away. Jeff can now go out and try to beat my time whenever he wants, but I can pretty much guarantee you he will always fail, since you know, he’s just as slow as our childhood days! Check out more info and get your GPS units at www.lapkingracing.com!