FORT WAYNE, Ind. – The Rumble in Fort Wayne racing weekend inside the Allen County War Memorial Coliseum is about much more than just the headlining national midget division.
Interspersed within are two swathes of 600cc micro sprints, several classes of quarter midgets and both caged and clone-style go-kart divisions, which often put on the tightest and closest racing of the week.
One of the notable names in this year’s karting field at the Rumble is Grafton, Ohio native Steven Berlin, who brought out a brand-new Rage Chassis No. 2 for the weekend and has found speed as he’s gone through the Senior Caged class in the three-day event.
The new kart, nicknamed T-Rex, is a fresh design from the Rage stable and one that Berlin said he’s enjoyed getting the chance to figure out.
He also enjoys the conversation that the kart’s code name has generated.
“It’s a really cool piece,” Berlin told SPEED SPORT. “The name of it actually comes from the owner’s granddaughter. Jeff Hoisington’s granddaughter loves dinosaurs and her favorite dinosaur is a T-Rex. So when he was thinking of a new chassis design and he was trying to think of a name of it, she always had a toy T-Rex and she was running around in his office … and that just popped in his head.
“I think it’s a perfect name. A lot of this stuff is new. It’s a new geometry, new chassis, new flex, new everything. There’s not anything the same from any of his old chassis. It’s working pretty well so far.”
Berlin values competing at the Rumble as one of the premier events of his season, something that he wants to play a part in every time he has the opportunity to do so.
“This is like the Super Bowl or the Daytona 500, at least for me, when it comes to the karting realm,” Berlin noted. “The competition is so close and so fierce. The difference between first place and not even making the A-main is roughly within three tenths of a second, so you have to be on top of your game every time you hit the track. If you have one bad heat race, you’re in the B-main.
“It’s very self-satisfying to know that you come in here and you race with the best of the best in the world of go-kart racing. If you can hang out with the best of the best and be competitive, that’s all you can ask for in my mind and it’s something I truly enjoy.”
While Berlin, a former Little Eldora Speedway track champion, is still seeking his first Rumble victory, going home with a trophy isn’t his sole objective this weekend. It’s been about trialing the new chassis as well to make sure all the bugs are massaged out of it going forward.
From Berlin’s eyes, that part of the puzzle is so far, so good.
“The goal for me has been just to make both A-mains, and once you’re in the show, anything can happen,” he said. “My goal driving the T-Rex was basically to shake it down and make sure everything that Jeff from Rage thought it would do actually happened, and so far it has held true to that.
“We have a few more setup changes we still want to test out, but I think that it’s more the driver trying to figure it out. I’m having fun, though. I really am.”