Germany's middle kart price is 14.90 euros for ten minutes

Reading a German kart price list is straightforward right up to the point where you notice how many of the cheap numbers have a day attached to them. A women's day rate at Kart Center Landau. A Sparticket at Kart Center Hildesheim. A Sunday session at Bavaria Kart in Günzburg. We take the cheapest plain adult session a track publishes, so those are the numbers that end up in our table. It is a fair measure of what karting can cost in Germany. It is not a promise about Saturday.

14.90 EUR

what ten minutes costs at the middle German track

58

German tracks publishing a plain adult session

5 to 42 EUR

the full German range for the same ten minutes

Half of those 58 tracks sit between 13.0 and 16.0 euros for ten minutes, which is a tight middle. Germany's median of 14.90 is 2.2 euros under the European figure of 17.10, and among the fifteen countries we could compare it is one of the cheaper places to drive. The interesting part is not the median. It is how little room there is above it and how much there is below.

Germany sells ten minutes, or it sells half an hour

Twenty-five of the 58 tracks sell a ten-minute session, which is why our ten-minute scale needed no arithmetic at all for more than four tracks in ten. The second most common portion is the 30-minute block, at 13 tracks, and eight more sell fifteen minutes. The rest are scattered: three tracks sell twelve minutes, three sell eight, two sell thirteen, and one each sells nine, seventeen, twenty and twenty-two. The clustering at ten and thirty is real, but more than a third of the country still sells something else.

The cheap end, and what is in it

The two at the top are not quite like the rest. Gaspedal in Löffingen runs electric forest karts for drivers from six years old, and 5 euros buys ten minutes of that, which is a family course priced like a family course rather than a racing hall undercutting the market. Kart Center Hildesheim, at 8 euros for ten minutes indoors, is as cheap as a conventional German track gets in our data. After those two the list settles at 10 euros and then turns into 30-minute blocks at 32.50 and 35 euros, which is the cheapest way in Germany to get a long stint rather than a short one.

Just outside the table, Saxoniaring Kartclub Freiberg sells the same half hour for the same 35 euros. When four tracks in four corners of the country pick the same number, we stop calling it a coincidence and start calling it the German half-hour price.

The cheapest ticket in Germany is 5 euros and the dearest is 42, and both of them are ten minutes long.

The dear end got shorter while we were writing it

Sensadrom Indoor E-Kartbahn in Sindelfingen is the most expensive track in the country on our measure, at 42 euros for a ten-minute single ticket. Then it stops. SK Raceworld in Wildeshausen is next at exactly 20 euros for ten minutes, then Indoor Kartbahn Werther at 19.2, Berlin Kart at 19.1 and DWA Racing Kartbahn at 18.3. One German track is above 20 euros per ten minutes, and one is exactly at it.

That end of the table used to be longer, and it was longer because our rule was wrong. A Doppelkart carries two people and is priced per kart, so it is not a per-person price at all, and a card covering two sessions is a bulk ticket rather than the one you buy on arrival. Both were passing. Both are now out, alongside the packages and the long blocks we excluded earlier.

What that moved: Jumbokart in Oberhausen and FAHR-WERK in Schaafheim published nothing comparable except a Doppelkart, 24 euros for twelve minutes and 59 euros for thirty, so at 20.0 and 19.7 per ten minutes they were the second and third dearest tracks in Germany and are now out of the count entirely. Kartcenter Rostock was worse: its 40 euros buys two fifteen-minute sessions, and read as one that came to 26.7, double what it should have been. Karthalle Coswig went from the cheap half, its 36 euros for 30 minutes labelled pro Kart. Four tracks left, 62 became 58, and the median moved from 15.0 to 14.90.

Three more things from the same 58 tracks

• Indoor and outdoor cost the same. The median is 15.0 euros either way, from 23 halls and 11 circuits that publish which they are. We expected the halls to be dearer and they are not.
• Juniors save two euros. Forty-two tracks publish a junior or child session, with a median of 12.80 euros per ten minutes. Two adults and two children on ten-minute sessions come to about 55 euros at a typical track.
• Only one German city has competition on our list. Kiel is the last place with two priced tracks, and both are at 16.0 euros. Rostock was the other one until its two-session ticket came out.

If you run a German track

Every figure here was read off a track's own website and stored with the sentence it came from. If your price is wrong, or your track is one of the 61 with nothing we could read, tell us and we will fix it rather than guess. The correction form reaches a person, and the Germany page lists all 119 tracks.

One name has already gone. Kartbahn Wuppertal closed its track on Deutscher Ring in October after 29 years and says it will reopen at an address it has not yet named. Its Monday rate of 17 euros for a quarter of an hour sat in our cheap table until the day it went. We will count again when enough German price lists have changed to make a new edition worth reading. Kart prices move slowly, so that is a matter of months, not weeks.