60-plus years of kart racing history hits the Orange racetrack
They may be restricted from actually racing, but Vintage and Historic Kart Club members and their machines were still showing plenty of competitive spirit on the local track last week.
“It is good to have the old girl back,” says Blayney local, Phil Parkinson, of the 50-old- McCulloch kart he had brought to the Orange Kart Club Track on the weekend.
Phil, the current president of the Vintage and Historic Kart Club of Australia, was one of more that a dozen vintage karting enthusiasts to get their machines out for a fun, practice meet on the weekend.
“The kart that I've got here today, I raced in 1972 and I found it again on the beloved eBay and got it back… The very same kart, the very same engine and the very same wheels!” said Phil, who has spent a lifetime around kart racing and been involved in vintage karting for over a decade.
“There are people into vintage cars as well, people who want to have T Model Fords and people that want to have AP6 Valiants, a 1974 Volkswagen Beetle — there are crazy people like that out there that love those things,” he said. “Some of it is reliving our youth, some of it is catching up with friends from many, many years ago and making new friends.”
But of course it is the karts themselves that are the main attraction. The earliest date back to the 1950s, when they were cobbled together in backyard sheds using bed frames, and modified Victa lawnmower engines.
“Australia basically developed their own engines and modifications, and especially with the mighty Victa lawn mower,” said Phil.
“We have a bit of a group of people in the club who — and they are the very early model karts from the 50s and early 60s — and a lot of them were powered by Victas and Australian ingenuity! Turning something that was about four horsepower into something that's about 20 horsepower.
Michael Burrell is a proud Victa kart owner who came to the hobby later than most.
“My father and my uncle raced in 1959 out at Gilgandra and I never got to race… I found their karts out at the farm tip with the Victa motor and that's what I’ve got over here!” he said.
The Victa engines were soon outmatched by imported American machines made by McCulloch, which in turn were replaced by Italian and then later Japanese engines.
But preserving these machines is part nostalgia and part fun, it is also about saving an important part of motor racing history.
“Karting has been a great basis for just about everybody who has gone anywhere in motor racing,” said Phil.
“If you went through the front row of the Formula One grid now, or V8 supercars, just about every guy there would have been from karting.”
Actual racing is not done with the older karts, being little more that a frame, seat and engine they lack the safety features of modern karts.
“They don't have any protective things around them that modern go karts have got — side pods made of plastic, nose cones made of plastic, rear bumpers — on ours, there is nothing around you — it is like being on a really fast push bike!”
