The adrenaline starts to flow !

Introduction

There seems to be a great deal of information about two-stroke karting, but very little on the prokarts which use 4-stroke engines.

If you are interested in racing karts, the prokart is an ideal place to start, the chassis is relatively simply, robust and stable. The engines, providing they are looked after extrodinarily reliable and will give you top performance for many hours. This appealed to me because I don't have the time to stripdown and prepare the engines after every race.

The Prokart is easy to set-up to give you a competent performance. It is relatively easy to drive. Prokarts all use the same Honda 163 cc engines and theoretically all have the same power potential. This means that in a race the competition is due to driver performance and technical know-how in set-up. Lap times are very close. This is probably one of the best forms of racing for the amateur as you do not have to spend much time and money on development. Some classes of Prokart racing do allow modifications to the engine. I am not interested in such classes as I prefer a level playing field. If you are more interested in tweaking the engine in a illegal way to gain an advantage, I am not able to tell you how and you obviously already know more than I do.

I am not an expert and have only been racing for two years, but I was in a position where I knew nothing - it was quite daunting, particularly when entering the first race, not least the expense associated with entering an entire series of seven races and competing against teams with sponsorship to whom money seemed to be no object. All the karting lingo, particularly regarding set-up of the chassis and engines was intimidating. You should not be intimidated - all you need to do is to learn some basics about your go-kart and put in some practice.

To put it bluntly, you will find that a lot of advice given to you is rubbish! My belief is that if you keep every thing simple, there is less to think about and less to go wrong.