If you want my honest opinion as someone who questioned even getting into karting. And has hit walls when trying to get my friends (age 18-40) into the sport. This is going to seem extremely critical, but we need to be critical of the sport that we love if we are going to see changes!
Most of my opinions come from other forms of racing I have participated in/been around and how they have seen success. SCCA, NASA, WRL, CMRA, MCRA and local track day organizations.
-Relatively large and complicated start up/cost in comparison to other hobbies.
-$1000 to drop nearly immediately even on a used kart, minus stand and etc. We don't see this as that large, but newcomers to the sport do.
-Sky is the limit as far as other equipment is concerned.
-What else do I need, and why is the information not easy to come by. Why is it daunting when I see it.
-Storage area? Transportation?
-EXTREMELY poor organization from local tracks and sanctioning bodies. MAKE IT PROFESSIONAL. BRAND IT PROFESSIONALLY.
-I want to show up and feel like I could take a damn NASCAR season title even though it's just weekend kart racing.
-People want to feel like they've won something, or like they've lost and can do better. That keeps them coming back.
-Poor advertisement from local tracks. Most people have no idea they exist. It took me 2-3 weeks to find even 5 tracks that were local to me.
-Local tracks seem to have no intention of selecting a sanctioning body that is similar to local tracks. Or following through with the rules.
-Predator classes are all different, everywhere you go and require you to change springs/filters etc. just to go run for nothing but a medal.
-Lack of information online without searching for hours upon hours upon hours.
-Our websites are awful. And our Facebook pages lead one to have to scroll for a long time to get to even a schedule.
-What's with having to call to find out rule sets?
-Band together and make your websites somewhat pretty, up to date, and informational.
-No clear "Ultimate goal" top out to inspire new drivers.
-What if it turns out I'm good? What is there to inspire me outside of local tracks? Where do the best of the best go?
-Social Stigma of oval racing. While most see this as a family sport. I never did. I didn't grow up in this. And I raced for 10 years in cars/karts/bikes and hopping into oval racing was certainly different. Completely different crowd. And along with that came the stigma that it's just a bunch of rednecks who like to turn left and argue with each other... That's not the case.
On to the track:
-Sounds like track prep is a well guarded secret. Keeping secrets stops a track from being good when it could be great.
-If a tracks not good it's not good.
-Track reputation and favoritism of local drivers.
-Track management and organization.
-Rental karts! Make it easy and competitive for new drivers!
-Prices seem a little steep for the amount of seat time provided. (In comparison to say... Endurance racing in a car... which is approximately $375/hr. Vs Oval karting which including 2 practices, 2 heats, 1 feature turns up at about $550/hour... Assuming 28 minutes of seat time and $225 for a night rental.)
Other things have been mentioned about the generations. But the truth of the matter is... Nobody gives a damn about racing anymore. We are the weird ones. And racing hasn't been marketable to anyone since the 60's and the 70's.
TL.DR
Motorsports isn't cool anymore to the general public.
It's expensive and hard to get into.
We're disorganized.