British driver Jenson Button currently leads the Formula 1 drivers’ championship, but he says some of his best memories of motor sport are from his time kart racing. Like generations of drivers before him, his journey to pole position began in karts.
Long before the champagne sprayed from the podium, cute-faced kids such as Jenson Button, Lewis Hamilton, Nigel Mansell, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher were thrashing the life out of karts and no doubt celebrating victories with a drop of fizzy lemonade.
Lewis Hamilton was just ten when he sped to victory in his first British Karting championship in 1993, a triumph he went on to repeat four times. Seven years later the future F1 world drivers’ champion was crowned world karting number one, after gaining maximum points in the European Karting championship. It was this success in karts that made Lewis the only teenager ever to be recruited by a F1 team, when McLaren’s Ron Dennis signed him for their driver development programme.
Seven-time F1 world drivers’ champion, the legendary German Michael Schumacher, was five when he first got behind the wheel of a kart. Michael’s father Ralf reportedly took his son along to the local Kerpen-Horrem karting circuit, after crashing his home-modified pedal kart into a lamp post. Regulations in Germany required drivers to be 14-years-old to get a competitive kart licence. But the resourceful Schumachers swerved around this, by obtaining a licence in Luxembourg in 1981, at the age of 12.
Meander through YouTube for baby-faced clips of future F1 stars and it’s not difficult to see why karting is such a fertile breeding ground for champion speedsters. It has been described as F1 in miniature and on the cheap. Lewis Hamilton certainly looked a consummate professional racer before he was a teenager. Indeed, when Michael Schumacher made a one-off nostalgic return to karts in 2001, the 16-year-old Hamilton finished in seventh place, four places behind Schumacher, who had no hesitation in picking Hamilton out as a future F1 star.
For young guys who hit the winning trail early, such as Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, success in karts teaches them to be as adept at steering through media interviews as hairpin bends. Press interviews, media interest and seeing your picture in the paper quickly becomes a way of life.
Hamilton advises young kids keen on kart racing to approach it with discipline and not to neglect schoolwork. The Motor Sports Association (MSA), which governs kart racing, restricts competition to aged 8s and above, with over 20 kart classes in the UK for eight to 16-year-olds.
How to start karting.
The Association of British Kart Clubs advises not to go out and buy a kart but to try it first. You can find venues at karting nation.
Most karting venues operate with a minimum height restriction, which is usually around 140cm.
Karts racing classes range from 60cc engines for 8 to 12-year-olds and up to 160cc engines for up to 16-year-olds.
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I think Michael Schumacher was the best driver Ferrari ever had…so many wins…so many records