80's Karting On YouTube

karting1.co.uk has weeded out some great YouTube clips of championship karting from the mid eighties.

This was back in the days of rotary valve 100cc air-cooled engines on simple chassis - no sidepods or nose cones here! The events are the 1986 Italian Karting Cup and the 1987 Junior World Cup. Click HERE to view the clips.

On a sort of related sidenote, last year Italian karting magazine Vroom did a back-to-back test of a kart chassis from this period against a modern day kart.

The publication had Alessandro Piccini's 1987 Formula C World Championship winning DAP Greyhound chassis (28/30mm rails, solid 30mm axle) and pitted it against his current Maranello RS2 KZ1 kart (32mm rails, 50mm axle). For the purpose of the test, both machines were fitted with a 125cc TM K9C engine and current spec tyres.

The difference in lap time? Virtually nothing! In fact, the old DAP actually clocked the quickest lap, but this was part due to it being several kilos lighter (it had sidepods, but no front or rear structures).

Still, it makes you wonder. Modern karts have so many costly accessories hanging off them and an ever increasing number of adjustable parts. Yet when pitted against a 20 year old machine that had very little in the way of adjustment (camber/caster is fixed, no ride height or adjustable torsion bars etc) the performance difference wasn't earth shattering.

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