If you think you know speed, you haven’t seen go-karts post quarter-mile times in under 10 seconds.
We don’t normally think of go-karts as traditional speed demons. Sure, they can be a lot of fun to run around as a kid, but the ones we typically find at amusement parks are powered by two-stroke motors from a riding lawnmower. That’s not exactly a recipe for extreme speed, even if the wind in your face might make it seem like it is.
But those karts are actually just a tiny subset of what’s possible. Once you get serious about kart racing, you can get some real power on the back of these tiny frames.
Take this video from YouTuber channel Mk1Kieran. Taken at the Santa Pod Raceway in Wellingborough, England, we see a whole arsenal of go-karts equipped with vastly more powerful, high-revving motors, custom tube-frame chassis, and aerodynamic enhancements to keep them glued to the road while slipping through the air. Note the equally functional nose art.
Add a set of teeny-tiny drag radials, and you’ve got yourself a set of tiny drag-racing warriors that are every bit as fast as any supercar you’ve ever seen.
What was once a simple 2-stroke or even a 4-stroke motor with around 40 horsepower has been replaced with something approaching 200. Many of these engines are actually repurposed racing bike engines of the sort that rev to 15,000 RPM. The power-to-weight ratio on them is phenomenal, with many achieving zero to sixty times as little as 2.5 seconds.
And that shows in their quarter-mile times. Many of these karts are posting times in the mid-10-second range. A few of them get into the 9s, with one even posting a time of 9.3 seconds. That’s faster than a Dodge Demon.
It takes some serious cajones to get behind the wheel of a kart that fast with nothing but a helmet in between you and serious injury. But if you feel the need for speed, this is probably the cheapest way to scratch that itch.
(via Road & Track)