146 replies to this topic

[speedman13]

I would like to see some input to the forum from the gearbox karting fraternity.
Whenever karting is covered in motorsport it always seems to be the 100cc karts that are featured, this is probably because a lot of the modern F1 drivers came from this class, but there where a lot of great drivers who started out racing gearbox karts, the likes of Roger Williamson, Chris Lambert, Tony Brise, David Leslie, Nigel Smith, Will Hoy and some guy called Nigel Mansell.
Of all the racing machines I have driven none came close to the thrill of driving a 6 speed 250cc 150mph+ superkart at Oulton Park, Cadwell Park, Silverstone and the IOM in 50 to 60 strong grids.
In its heyday in the 70s and early 80s there would be entries of over 300 at the major long circuit meetings and one can only wonder at what caused its decline to the present very poor entry level.
Over the years there where several fatalities who are never mentioned in the relevent forums, Colin Holmes, Tony Saville, Martin Merrit and Albert Correeri and many others who deserve remembering.
I am sure there are others out there besides David Beard and myself who remember those great days and the fabulous racing of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

[ghinzani]

Good idea, I was thinking yesterday whatever happened to the old Kart GP at Silverstone, when they had entries of 4million, and allowed 250,000 or so karts on the grid for the finals - or at least it seemed like it. Nowadays they struggle to get a grid up at my local gearbox track at Forest Edge, yet even 6 years ago there were good grids of 125 & 250.

[speedman13]

The kart GP at Silverstone ended in the late 80s and is now held at Cadwell Park but it is a shadow of its former self.

[coupekarter]

I'm sure some of those you mention did not actually start racing in the gearbox classes, but went into it on completing their class 1 junior racing at 16.
Its not just the gearbox class that has suffered in terms of entries. I blame the MSA. They quite deliberately stopped karting from being a sport in its own right, and turned it into the bottom rung of the motor racing ladder. Their obsession with pseudo safety related rule changes, and pushing out the DIY karter by having everything homologated, has changed the nature of the sport and the type of person that it appeals to, radically. "New breed karter" had somewhere to go in the direct drive classes - Rotax Max. He didn't have anywhere to go in the gearbox classes - hence the drop in numbers.
Karting has changed from being a dirty, smelly, noisy, bump starting, dirt-under-the-fingernails, turn up with a roof-rack, working class sport; into a safe, sanitised, clean, quiet, electric start, turn up with a motorhome & awning, sport for middle class wannabe f1 driver kids.
Sorry - rant over!

[ghinzani]

Originally posted by coupekarter
I'm sure some of those you mention did not actually start racing in the gearbox classes, but went into it on completing their class 1 junior racing at 16.
Its not just the gearbox class that has suffered in terms of entries. I blame the MSA. They quite deliberately stopped karting from being a sport in its own right, and turned it into the bottom rung of the motor racing ladder. Their obsession with pseudo safety related rule changes, and pushing out the DIY karter by having everything homologated, has changed the nature of the sport and the type of person that it appeals to, radically. "New breed karter" had somewhere to go in the direct drive classes - Rotax Max. He didn't have anywhere to go in the gearbox classes - hence the drop in numbers.
Karting has changed from being a dirty, smelly, noisy, bump starting, dirt-under-the-fingernails, turn up with a roof-rack, working class sport; into a safe, sanitised, clean, quiet, electric start, turn up with a motorhome & awning, sport for middle class wannabe f1 driver kids.
Sorry - rant over!

Hear hear Sir! Bravo! but whisper it, there is still some grass roots left, outside of the MSA.

[sterling49]

Originally posted by ghinzani
Good idea, I was thinking yesterday whatever happened to the old Kart GP at Silverstone, when they had entries of 4million, and allowed 250,000 or so karts on the grid for the finals - or at least it seemed like it. Nowadays they struggle to get a grid up at my local gearbox track at Forest Edge, yet even 6 years ago there were good grids of 125 & 250.

I attended races at Brands organised by (IIRC) the London Kart Club, and remember the races containing millions of karts, with a certain Martin Hines, Zip?) amongst them (and winning,from memory). They were incredibly fast, and the club also managed to fit in many more races than were the norm for a car meeting.

This would have been around '66/'67.

[Simpson RX1]

Originally posted by sterling49


I attended races at Brands organised by (IIRC) the London Kart Club, and remember the races containing millions of karts, with a certain Martin Hines, Zip?) amongst them (and winning,from memory). They were incredibly fast, and the club also managed to fit in many more races than were the norm for a car meeting.

This would have been around '66/'67.

I only saw proper karts a few times, mostly at Brands, and Martin Hines was the man to beat (this would've been the early 80s).

Zip Karts is Martin Hines' company, started in the early 60s IIRC, and he's gone on to foster many a well known driver.

I wouldn't mind having a go in one of those 250 flying machines now, but I would want a track the size of Brands to do it on!

[eldougo]

Originally posted by Simpson RX1


But I would want a track the size of Brands to do it on!

.

Spot on SimpsonRX1 , finding a field that would turn up to a car track is the BIG problem,The short 650 /850 meter track are just to tight for REALshifter karts ,and we have the cost to insure the events etc and that is the problem found by clubs that would like to have a different class to show off their skills,sadly another victim of the cost of motor sport today .

[David Beard]

This is thread I had been thinking of starting for some while myself. I have quite a few old Karting and Kart & Superkart mags, programmes, a few photos and memories which may be relevant to the thread

I followed karting from the time it first started in Britain, mainly at the Long Marston circuit near Tring. (1960 or 61 I think)The American derived gearless karts were soon joined by the British gearbox ones. Villiers at first, then the first Bultaco powered one that I saw appeared with a chap called Noman Ward with his “Wackall “kart. Then Stirling Moss appeared at Long Marston in a Keele Bultaco…and won, to my delight. (Mike Keele was involved with his Lotus 19 and others?)

I have posted the following a couple of times before, but this seems a good opportunity to air it again, edited a bit…

The day Mansell swore at me.
In 1974, I decided the time had come to enter motor sport in some way or other (some brief forays into Autocross and Autotests were the extent of my experience up until then). Karting I thought...I'll go and watch some at Little Rissington and see what it's like these days. Peeing down, it was. I thought the 210 National gearbox class might suit me, so I watched carefully. One bloke was half a lap ahead of all the others. He seems good, I thought. Looked in the programme....44 Dale Falcon Villiers...Nigel Mansell.
Over the winter I scoured Karting Magazine for a suitable machine. A 250- International at bargain basement price caught my eye..a Zip Silverstone with Merlin Rotary Valve Engine. A bit of research revealed that Chris Merlin had concocted this engine and won the British Championship with it a few years before. It was a Villiers 9e with a square barrel like a Greeves Griffon and a special right hand crankshaft half housing a disc valve like the 100cc karts had...a design going back to MZ 2 stroke racing bikes I think...fed by 2 Tillotson carbs...the sort that have a diaphragm to pump the fuel in using crankcase pressure pulses and are used on chainsaws because they work upside down. It had the Villiers 4 speed box replaced by an Albion 5 speeder. By then, however, despite the machine being capable of 120mph, it was no longer really competitive...Suzuki twins being the thing that year. (Chris Merlin had left karting to be a sheep farmer in Cumbria. His next claim to fame was when he appeared on TV a lot claiming his sheep had been zapped by fallout from Chernobyl.
Despite being out of date and a bit tatty, said Zip Merlin offered a pretty hairy introduction to karting for a novice like me. Off to Shenington where Eric Mansell (father of The Famous One) was scrutineer. He strangely tested everything by standing on the front bumper and observing what wobbled. Most mysterious.

Anyway I did my 4 novice races...always starting at the back of the grid as the rules dictated for novices.
And so I came to my first race on my 250 as a novice no more. Yellow number plates instead of black ones. Grid positions for the heats were by ballot...and I drew pole position! Only having previously experienced tail end grid positioning , here I was on the front row amid the old hands. Despite my tenseness, I got away quite well, only for the race to be stopped because a fair proportion of the field had crashed into the straw bales on the first corner, behind me.

After the St John ambulance men had done some enthusiastic bandaging, the race was restarted, me on pole again. This time I stalled. I waved my arms in the air furiously while the field screamed past. When the 2 stroke blue haze had dispersed, revealing my stationary condition, a chap in yellowy gold leathers, who was spectating whilst waiting for his 210 national race, ran out into the track to assist. Yes, it was NIGE!
He pushed me and the Zip Merlin… I was anxious to get going and dropped the clutch too early. Mansell nearly went A over T. "Let the bloody thing get rolling!" he shouted at me.

[Bondy]

Good stuff As a teenager i witnessed Lenhart Bohlin, Martin Hines and a few others on their visit to OZ circa 85.... My brothers raced "Superkarts" from time to time from 82 to 97... I raced 80cc Superkarts in Australia from 1990 to about 1998 (also had runs in 125cc karts during this time).... Had a run in my Rotax Max late last year at Calder, lapped about 3 secs faster than a Formula Vee....

Superkarts here have struggled for many years now although the 250cc class gets grids of around 30 at the national meetings.... Sadly the 80cc Class is pretty much no more.... these karts were quick using motocross engines, good for times of 57s @ Amaroo, 48s @ Oran Park South, 1m03's Winton Short, 1m08s Calder Long ....

[ghinzani]

Two names I recall from the Zip Hemetite team were Calvin Fish, who went well as the 3rd man in the classic 1983 British F3 year, and Devons Steve Elmore - who looked quick when he tried FF and F3 cars but never properly made the jump.

[stuartbrs]

Superkarts were doing a "demo" at the Australian Grand Prix in 1985. During their practice they were the second fastest things on the track behind the Formula One cars. I vaguely recall some shennagins when their Demo race turned into an actual race and there may have been an injury??

I ran with them at Baskerville on a Mini clubday once, they looked terrifying.. so fast, so bumby, we obviously werent on the track at the same time. Back in the 80`s they used to run SuperKarts and cars on the track... together.

My 125cc Sprint Kart is bumby and scary enough for me thankyou very much.

If you search youtube for "isle of man superkarts" there is some awesome onboard footage from a Superkart.

[Bondy]

I recall reading race results about the Superkarts running as Formula Libre in Tassie, against, Formula 2, FVee, Group A Sports Cars etc.... crazy stuff.....

[David Beard]

Quite correctly, most here have so far been talking about gearbox karts on long circuits. I’m not sure much of it happens now, but most of the short circuits such as Shenington, Little Rissington, and later Three Sisters used to have a modified, extended layout for the gearbox machines.

The exception to this used to be the Morecambe track on Heysham Head : it had the same layout for each, on the side of a cliff, basically. It wasn’t very long, but really not good for the 100cc karts at all, since it was difficult to gear them for the up hill and downhill stretches. I always found tanking down hill to the hairpin at the bottom to be pretty exciting on my 210N. The circuit was run by Kelvin Hesketh and his father Bert. They made Star karts there, after buying up Blow karts (from Chesterfield)

The highlight at Morecambe was the strangely named “World Cup” meeting. It attracted the big names in gearbox karting from UK and Scandinavia. Bohlin won it twice, I think. (Once on a Swedish kart, once on a Star) Dave Buttigieg won one year on a Sprint (they had their factory at Rye House) He was always good to watch, as was Reg Gange Junior.

Spectating was always good at Morecambe, due to the natural geography of the place. But with 30 or 40 250s racing in the World Cup, it was absolutely awesome.

[speedman13]

And they also used to get crowds of between 20 & 30 thousand for the finals.

[nmansellfan]

I've just been talking about gearbox karts with a work colleague who used to spanner for his mate in 250's, who once destroyed the starting gantry at Shennington from a fluffed start... He mentioned that a fellow karter in the 250 class once did some testing at Hockenheim on the old full circuit. A speed trap before the Jim Clark chicane clocked him at 188mph!

My foray into karting has always been at 100 or 125cc, and that gives me the biggest buzz I ever need. 84mph at Glan-Y-Gors in Wales in our 125cc single speed Rotax Max felt like 200mph so lord only knows what 188mph a couple of inches off the floor though the forests feels like!

Incidentally, I work for AP clutches, not far from Shennington, and some of the old boys here tell me that the track or somewhere very near used be used as AP's "official" test circuit when evaluating road car clutches, brakes etc. Does anyone recall hearing of this? Although Shennington is fairly long as a 'short' kart circuit, it feels too narrow really for road car use. There is a glider club in the next field though so perhaps there is (or was) an airfield there somewhere (i've only raced at Shennington once, and i can't get Google Earth to work at the moment to check).

[David Beard]

Originally posted by speedman13
And they also used to get crowds of between 20 & 30 thousand for the finals.

Surely not, Charles? Most of them would have ended up falling in the sea...

[2F-001]

Somewhere, David, I think I have a programme from one of the Morecambe 'World Cup' meets. I vaguely recall the name of Graham Liddle as a winner; does that sound likely, or suggest a year to you?

Other than that, the only major gearbox kart racing I remember seeing with any clarity was the Grand Prix at Silverstone with the fast old 'no chicane' Woodcote.
Some years back I did a little driving at Paul Ricard. In one of the pits there was a handful of what looked to be quite similar to the Formula E 250 Superkart devices. (Someome there suggested they actually had larger engines, but if so I don't know what they were for - although they also suggested they'd been driven on the full circuit that we were using). Either way, the idea of turning into Signes, foot hard down after a mile at Vmax on one of those sounds a little tooo exciting for me!

[speedman13]

Graham Liddle won the first 2 World cups in 1968 & 69 Kelvin Hesketh then won in 1970.

[speedman13]

I was at a 250cc superkart race at Paul Ricard a few years ago and one was clocked at 172mph down the Mi.strale straight---- Awsome

[pud0007]

GB v south africa 1976 cadwell park

[pud0007]

more of the same
left side - start of race - neil bettridge - martin hines and brian langdon
right side - reg gange junior - brian langdon and reg gange junior - john simpson support race 210 nat

[pud0007]

malcom turner zip yamaha snetterton

[pud0007]

brands hatch july 1975

[pud0007]

GB team parade cadwell park 1976 right to left reg gange sen - ? - brian langdon - dave buttigieg - neil bettridge - paul gamsa - reg gange jun - ? - donovan collier - martin hines
theres two i cant remember

[David Beard]

Originally posted by pud0007
GB team parade cadwell park 1976 right to left reg gange sen - ? - brian langdon - dave buttigieg - neil bettridge - paul gamsa - reg gange jun - ? - donovan collier - martin hines
theres two i cant remember

Not quite sure through the blur (give your scanner a bit of a kick, "pud0007"!) but John "Miff " Smith should be there, perhaps the one on the far right. I used to work with him at that time in the drawing office at Leyland Trucks.

[speedman13]

I thought Miff only drove class 1s.
Dereck rodgers should be among them.

[2F-001]

Buttigieg and Betteridge both moved on into FF2000 didn't they? Reg Gange is a name I recognize (as is Hines of course) - but I also recall a Nigel Smith (? - noted for a somewhat flamboyant style) moving from gearbox karts into cars.

[David Beard]

Originally posted by speedman13
I thought Miff only drove class 1s.
Dereck rodgers should be among them.

No Charles...this is the team as listed in the programme for the GB v SA events:



Reading this again now, I'm amazed how young they all were. If I had to trust my memory I would have said they were all in their early thirties!

[ex Rhodie racer]

I once met a fellow from South Africa who was an extremely talented driver, so talented in fact, he won the 250 gearbox cart world championship some time in the early eighties. I believe he came from Pietermaritzburg, but I can´t swear by that. Anyone remember his name?
I imagined (and so did he evidently) his victory would enable him to break into car racing of some sort, but he was never even offered a test drive. That was odd I thought.

[David Beard]

Originally posted by ex Rhodie racer
I once met a fellow from South Africa who was an extremely talented driver, so talented in fact, he won the 250 gearbox cart world championship some time in the early eighties. I believe he came from Pietermaritzburg, but I can´t swear by that. Anyone remember his name?
I imagined (and so did he evidently) his victory would enable him to break into car racing of some sort, but he was never even offered a test drive. That was odd I thought.

The South African team included Dave Cullimore, which surprises me, because I'm sure he was at Aston University with an old work mate of mine. Cullimore, I believe, did win the World Cup at Morecambe in the mid 70s. Could you be thinking of him?

[Cirrus]

Buttigieg and Betteridge both moved on into FF2000 didn't they? Reg Gange is a name I recognize (as is Hines of course) - but I also recall a Nigel Smith (? - noted for a somewhat flamboyant style) moving from gearbox karts into cars.

I think you'll find that pud0007 can confirm that at least one of the drivers did FF2000...

[speedman13]

Wade Nelson Was the South African that won the World Championship.

[ex Rhodie racer]

Originally posted by David Beard


The South African team included Dave Cullimore, which surprises me, because I'm sure he was at Aston University with an old work mate of mine. Cullimore, I believe, did win the World Cup at Morecambe in the mid 70s. Could you be thinking of him?

Thanks David, but no, it wasn´t him. As speedman correctly stated, it was Wade Nelson.
I think the W/C race was held on the Silverstone GP track. It must have been mental flying around there in an open cart only centimeters from the tar.

[speedman13]

It certainly was. I raced at every GP from 1978 onwards. The circuit used did not include the woodcote chicane and the highlight of every lap was coming up from abbey to woodcote knowing you had to go thru without lifting, extremely exhilarating.

[pud0007]

yes you are quie right dave buttigieg did some ff1600, and myself went into ff2000 with ken hensley racing works dulons sorry about quality of pics think scanner as thrown a con rod had to take pics on phone

[sterling49]

Originally posted by pud0007
yes you are quie right dave buttigieg did some ff1600, and myself went into ff2000 with ken hensley racing works dulons sorry about quality of pics think scanner as thrown a con rod had to take pics on phone

Would that be Mr Hensley of Uriah Heep fame?....."Very Heavy, Very Humble"

[pud0007]

sure was the same ken hensley real nice man pleasure to be in his company

[Tim Murray]

Originally posted by sterling49
Would that be Mr Hensley of Uriah Heep fame?....."Very Heavy, Very Humble"

Not to mention a very fine solo album 'Proud words on a dusty shelf'.

[ghinzani]

Are we off to prog land again kiddies? This place is full of 'beards' in so many ways!

[David Beard]

Originally posted by ghinzani
Are we off to prog land again kiddies? This place is full of 'beards' in so many ways!

Never mind.

Anyone remember the Snetterton 9 hrs? I assume Speedman will, since this is either him or his codriver in 1971..



My Zip Merlin, as described in my first post on this thread, apparently competed once or twice driven by Howard Smith (if I recall the name of the bloke I bought it from corrrectly) but I've never found any record.

[speedman13]

Yes thats me David, we should have won but for a broken primary chain at 5 hours, we did win 2 Aintree 500s and the Flookburgh 4 hours.

[ghinzani]

So the old two strokes could do endurance races then? Makes you wonder what went wrong with the modern ones...

David - 'Beard' is a term my mates and I used to use for lovers of Prog, Arran sweaters and Pipes when we were at Uni. We subscribed to two of the three!

[David Beard]

Originally posted by ghinzani

David - 'Beard' is a term my mates and I used to use for lovers of Prog, Arran sweaters and Pipes when we were at Uni. We subscribed to two of the three!

I see. There was a time when I subscribed to all three! But I was/am selective on the progressive rock, the jumpers always seemed to shrink, and the family got fed up with the smell of Clan...

Back to the karts.

Yes, 9 hours seems incredible for a British 2 stroke! I soon realised why the Merlin had so much Loctite every where that you had to pour boiling water over it before anything would come apart.

Primary chains on the Villiers, Charles...always a problem, eh?

[neville mackay]

David Beard says:

"The exception to this used to be the Morecambe track on Heysham Head : it had the same layout for each, on the side of a cliff, basically. It wasn’t very long, but really not good for the 100cc karts at all, since it was difficult to gear them for the up hill and downhill stretches. I always found tanking down hill to the hairpin at the bottom to be pretty exciting on my 210N. The circuit was run by Kelvin Hesketh and his father Bert. They made Star karts there, after buying up Blow karts (from Chesterfield)"


I say:

I have been an avid motorsports fan for more than 40 years. I have seen grand prix cars at Monte Carlo; NASCAR's at Daytona and Champ Cars at Indy. I have stood in the depths of Keilder forest as Ford Escorts showered me with stones and I have marvelled as spindly relics from the 1930's defied gravity ascending Prescott hill. I have witnessed the thunder of sprint cars on a quarter mile oval and the awsome power of top fuel dragsters at Santa Pod. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the memory of the Morecambe World Cups. I really can't begin to describe what it was like to see 30 or so overpowered and underbraked 250's pour into the Morecambe hairpin on World Cup day. It was the nearest thing I have seen to the Roman Gladiators. To this day I can remember the local hero Kelvin Hesketh barrel rolling his kart along the cliff edge coming out of the hairpin and then nonchalantly walking away from the precipice as if this sort of thing happened all the time!

The circuit was lost to a housing development in the early 80's with, as they say, great saving of life.

[David Beard]

Originally posted by neville mackay
I have been an avid motorsports fan for more than 40 years. I have seen grand prix cars at Monte Carlo; NASCAR's at Daytona and Champ Cars at Indy. I have stood in the depths of Keilder forest as Ford Escorts showered me with stones and I have marvelled as spindly relics from the 1930's defied gravity ascending Prescott hill. I have witnessed the thunder of sprint cars on a quarter mile oval and the awsome power of top fuel dragsters at Santa Pod. But nothing, absolutely nothing, compares to the memory of the Morecambe World Cups. I really can't begin to describe what it was like to see 30 or so overpowered and underbraked 250's pour into the Morecambe hairpin on World Cup day. It was the nearest thing I have seen to the Roman Gladiators.

[stuartbrs]

The modern water cooled 2 stroke kart engines are quite capable of doing Enduro`s. They run 24 hour meetings here in Australia, even in tassie we did a 4 hour Enduro in launceston a few weeks ago.

[Doc-L]

I've just enjoyed a truly nostalgic read of this excellent thread - thanks David for guiding me to it!!

I competed in 210 National in the 70's and agree totally with all that haqs been said - by speedman about grids of 60 screaming karts streaming into Old Hall or Redwood 7 abreast - by neville mackay recalling the extreme sight of 30 karts funneling into the Heysham hairpin... In fact one of my favourite memories of Heysham (78 World Cup I think) is loosing it under braking into the hairpin whilst in mid field, actually being avoided by everyone and catching it just in time to exit the hairpin in 4th position - honest!!! Unlike some of the fine performances of some of the contributors to this thread, my best World Cup performance was winning the "C" Final in '78!!! It was SUCH good fun!

My local track was Rowrah - my target always Dave Leslie Jr! I remember every vivid moment of the twice (in over 100 races!!!) that I actually managed to finish in front of Dave .. but I was usually very close behind him at Rowrah - so that was good in my book!

Mention of speeds, etc reminds me of the lap times I remember at Oulton Park when I raced there - the 210 Nationals (remember they had modified invalid carriage engines - well, sort of!!) were, if my memory serves me, just a fraction quicker than FF1600 cars of the time ... now that was good value motor racing!

Another little known fact is that DABGP has designed a couple of unique karts over the years - I was lucky enough to be his partner in the last one (the late lamented Kuga!!)... I have to be careful in saying this, but I firmly believe that the aforementioned Hesketh Star Kart of 1980 was inspired by DABGP's design ... sorry - allegedly!!! ... but then again, I may be mistaken! :

Great days, great fun, great people!

[Doc-L]

It was late - I did of course mean "Redgate"!

[David Beard]

Originally posted by Doc-L
Another little known fact is that DABGP has designed a couple of unique karts over the years - I was lucky enough to be his partner in the last one (the late lamented Kuga!!)

I was trying to hold back on photos of the Kuga and its design/build team, each with haircuts which few will believe once belonged to the people they see today...