T I D B I T S    F E A T U R E

So you want to drive like Michael Schumacher or Mika Hakkinen but can't quite get hold of a Ferrari F2001 or MP14/16.   Or a 550 Barchetta or twin-engined A160, for that matter. What to do? Sulk and head for the nearest Sega console? 

Well, the next best thing is actually better than a video game. Just head to the nearest circuit and jump into a go-kart.  This isn't the ambling toy that you used to ride around the mall while it played nursery rhymes. Karts are gasoline-powered tube-framed racers that can deliver blistering acceleration and handling that you’ll never feel in a road car.  Michael and Mika, Ayrton and, well, all current F1 drivers, learned to race in karts. 

What mkes them special?  Power-to-weight ratio, for one. Even though they're powered by puny 60-cc to 250-cc engines, generating perhaps 15 bhp, karts weigh as little as 35 kg.  Add your body weight to that (say 60 kg) and you end up with 6.3 kg/bhp, about that of a Porsche Boxster.  Running as close to the ground as they do, karts also give a sensation of speed much greater than what you’re actually running.   

Also, karts have plenty of setup options.  They may seem like just a frame with wheels, but you can change a lot of settings, such as tire pressure, wheel camber, caster, moving the wheel in and out of the axle.   Each change can affect the handling tremendously, and make the difference between first and also-ran.  Steering is as direct as they come, with the barest of mechanisms to translate steering wheel motions to change in direction.

In jumping into a kart at Clark, though, professional competition was far from our thoughts of our little group.  The nine of us just wanted to have some fun for a few minutes, and hopefully some challenging wheel-to-wheel action. We each shelled out our P100 for 5 laps.

The circuit, marked out by tire walls, has just 6 corners, two of them hairpins.  The surface is concrete, neither smooth nor level.  Granted, the karts here are far from state-of-the-art.  The bodywork looks like its been repaired several times over. Indeed,  i had just passed a friendly competitor after turn 3, a hairpin, when I was suddenly black-flagged.  I looked down to where the 'marshall' was pointing to see a piece of bodywork sticking out from the car and scraping along the track. Dejected, i coasted to a standstill as other karts sped by. So that's how Mika Hakkinen feels this year.  Unlike Mika though, I didn’t have to sprint to the pit lane.  Another 'marshall' drove out a spare kart.  I was immediately back in the action.  I noticed that the spare kart had its steering wheel mounted upside down!  Never mind, though, it worked just the same.

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