Kart racing is one of the most popular motorsports in the world, but most people in North America know very little about it.

The American race car driver had a wonderful year in 1978. Mario Andretti and Colin Chapman's Lotus team won the Formula One World Championship. The Porsche 935, driven by two Americans Dick Barbour and John Paul, Sr., won the IMSA class at Le Mans. Moreover, as one of the most surprising victories of the year, Lake Speed ​​won the prestigious Karting World Championship. 

Kart racing is one of the most popular motorsports in the world, but most people in North America know very little about it. The simple tube frame and chain saw engine that began in the early 1950s has now developed into a high-tech form of racing car equipped with a matching engine.

Lake Speed ​​Sr., Logan Sargeant, Fernando Alonso, Jan Magnussen, Alain Prost, Aryton Senna, Jarno Trulli, Mich Schumacher, Charles Leclerc, Lando Norris and Max Verstappen, etc., are all world kart champions. Speed ​​and Sargeant are the only two Americans who have won the World Karting Championship. They are some of the most talented drivers gathered in any form of motorsport. 

In the opening ceremony of the F1 race last month, McLaren announced that it has signed 13-year-old American Kart champion Ugo Ugochukwu to join its young driver training program. Although this may be a bit young for F1 at the moment, the team hopes to emulate their success with Lewis Hamilton in 1998. 

In recent years, with the adoption of CIK (International Karting) rules by many American race tracks and sanctions agencies, karting has increasingly become a global sport. Prior to this, the World Karting Championship was mainly composed of participants from Europe, which was very different from North American karting. Different karts have different styles. American karts are more focused on four-stroke elliptical karts and two-stroke sprint/road racing. The centrifugal clutch has been adjusted to maximize peak horsepower. 

There are several regulatory agencies for kart racing in the United States, including SKUSA, a variable-speed kart equipped with a two-stroke, six-speed engine and gearbox combination, as well as the World Kart Association (WKA) and the International Kart Federation (IKF), which include two levels of multi-speed karts. Class-class karting and four-stroke power karting. 

According to Lynn Haddock (Lynn Haddock), he has won the U.S. Karting Championship many times, and participated in the Lake Speed ​​World Championship between 73 and 78, and they learned a whole new thing after participating in the European competition for the first time. Racing perspective. 

"We were about four and a half seconds behind on the 55-second track," Haddock explained. "It's embarrassing. But we learned a lesson from our first year of experience. It showed us a completely different way of looking at it. The way we approached it from the American side is that we never even blinked at the chassis . What we do is power work, motors, clutches, exhaust pipes, carburetor, and everything related to it. For Europeans, the engine is the last thing they look at. It just keeps us open With eyesight, we did not see the whole picture. After we came back, we started to pay more attention to the chassis, and things really improved afterwards."

They met former F1 and IndyCar driver Eddie Cheever in the Belgian race because he is one of the few English-speaking drivers. "He kept coming over to ask us why we didn't study the chassis? Finally, he asked if we would use his spare chassis. I looked at Lake and we agreed that we had nothing to lose at that time. When we connected everything , Did nothing, one lap was fast for two full seconds!"

Lake and Lynn competed as a team in 1975, but after that, Haddock said he realized that he could not compete with his own weight because the kart is very light. The minimum weight of the kart and the driver is about 260 pounds, which is 100. Pounds. Lighter than today's karts.

"I said to Lake,'I can't do anything except hope to be in the top 10 in this deal. I can't be 10 or 15 pounds overweight. I said,'Go ahead, you need to drive. I need to Help the wrench and we will continue to do this. After that, I became a strict tuner. I ran for a year, which was enough to make me realize that the game was too tight to give up anything."

Since the kart is very light, there is no radiator (air-cooled engine) or plastic body and large bumpers, which means that the driver's weight cannot exceed 140 pounds. Haddock pointed out that 137 to 138 are ideal. "I was about 155 years old. I was starving to death in order to be 150 years old. I could almost stay overweight by 15 pounds. But after 10 laps, I was not a driver. I was a passenger. I didn't have enough energy because I ate so much. Dosala has run out of strength."

It took five years to study, but as they said, the rest is history. "This is actually much bigger than we realized at the time. What's interesting is that the game we won last year was a complete comedy from A to Z wrong."

Haddock and Speed ​​discovered that the chassis is as important as the engine after direct drive operation in Europe. "We are accustomed to exploding in the corner. Anything that happens in the corner is irrelevant, because the clutch will get you out of trouble. It pulls the motor down by direct drive, and it takes a longer distance to get away from you because it’s not clean. He recovered from the mistakes he made in the corners, so the engine had to be adjusted differently."

Haddock said their engine is designed for high peak power, but the power band is very narrow. Their engine power is about 22 horsepower, while the European engine has 18 horsepower. "If you look at the power at 9,000 rpm, the Europeans still have three-quarters of the horsepower. We have nothing. When the clutch falls off, it’s the equivalent of being in the wrong gear and trying to get on the motocross track. Out of the curve. It’s in a no-man’s land without power. Today, the difference between European-style motors and American-style clutch motors is that we have returned to their tuning methods, because everything here now uses dry clutches (low-speed lock-up clutches). ).

However, in the past few years, old-fashioned kart racing in the United States has revived. Lake Speed ​​and his son Lake Speed, Jr. returned to the kart field and cleaned up some of their old karts. There is now a retro karting association that held karting events across the country from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. 

"What I saw in the vintage kart market is that the vintage group is very interesting. There are many intersections between modern karts and modern racing cars," Lake Speed, Jr. explained. "Most people who appear on the go-kart track have some other points of contact in motorsport."

Speed ​​points out that the level of competition in most vintage karting events is incredible, with people running various combinations of engines and chassis that you no longer see. "I remember participating in a sprint race in Barnesville a few years ago. In my heat race, you had a former NASCAR driver (Old Lake), a 410 sprint driver, and a freshman from Laguna Se The old Trans-Am drivers who got stuck and a former WKA national dirt track champion. They gave up the green and I noticed that everyone around me was racing."

According to Speed, many old-fashioned Margays, Emicks and Invaders used many types of two-stroke engines of that era in vintage kart racing, including KT100S Yamahas and McCullochs, which were all modified chainsaw engines. "The courses are divided into rear-engine karts, bicycles and two-cars. Then there are Sidewinder karts, bicycles and two-cars. Then there are subcategories by displacement. You have 100cc and 130cc classes. Then they have some Mac 49 (McCullochs) courses. , They’re just singles and doubles. Those guys are eye-opening all over the place. They slide often, so it’s fun to watch. Then, they also have 80s courses for karting in 1982 and newer."

Haddock and Speed ​​started to compete in karting at the same time around 1958, but Speed ​​was successful in his NASCAR career and left the karting behind in 1980. Haddock said he participated in kart racing for 40 consecutive years before focusing on engine manufacturing. He said that when they first learned how Europeans adjust their karts, it was challenging to work on the chassis without touching the motors. "It's hard to get rid of the habit of going to the track and setting up the carburetor and then forgetting the motor. We won't change the pipes or anything. Many times, if we don't trim the motor, we will have nothing to do."

Haddock said they didn't even tilt the high-speed jets to get a little extra power like many American clutch karts. "Tilting the engine at the end of the straight did not bring any improvement because it was all gasoline. In any case, its adjustment window was very narrow, not alcohol. At that time, most karting races in the United States were conducted with alcohol. In Europe As elsewhere, alcohol kart engines do not exist. You burn more than twice as much fuel, and the adjustment window for alcohol is much larger."

The early engines of karting were mainly piston ports or rotary valves. Haddock said the engines they run in Europe are all rotary valves, which allows you to adjust the intake and exhaust ports independently. Over the years, the development of better reed valve materials and what is called "collision ports" has allowed reed valves to surpass rotary valve engines. 

Using the piston port design (ie Yamaha KT100S), the ports are fixed at TDC and BDC, so the two ends are the same. And on the rotation and reed, you can change the port timing and scavenging. The reed valve engine uses crankcase pressure (negative pressure and positive pressure) to control the opening and closing of the valve timing. 

We asked Haddock to explain collision transplantation to us, and he said it was complicated. But in short, it involves aligning the air intake to the top of the piston to help cool it and create turbulence, which in turn allows denser fuel to fill the engine (this also cools and lubricates the two-stroke). 

Although Lake Speed ​​was the first American kart racer to win the Kart World Championship in 1978, another American named Logan Sargeant finally won again in 2015. In 1980, in Speed's last kart race, he started the final in the front row against his old friend Lynn Haddock. The two opponents and friends duel again, and Haddock won the game that time. 

In 2005, Speed ​​was lured back to the karting track by the then NASCAR technical director Steve Peterson. He built a CIK-certified track in Charlotte Motor Speedway. And the rest, as they say, is history. Karting is still active in North America. EB

Engine: Rebuilding Subaru's WRX

Engine: Hangman – 6.7-liter Cummins engine

Engine: Anatomy of the 6.6-liter Duramax engine

Engine: ATV and UTV engine

Product: Hays Billet Steel SFI certified flywheel, suitable for Gen III Hemi

Product: Holley alternator for Gen III Hemi engine exchange

Video: 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL Gullwing inline-6 ​​engine

Engine News: Permatex won the Best New Product Award at the 2021 AAPEX Show for its advanced epoxy resin

Engine News: 2021 SEMA show ends, becoming the largest North American auto trade show since the pandemic

Survey-how do you use engine information?

Compound turbocharged 5.9L 12-valve Cummins engine