I’ve always been enthusiastic about cars, speed, racing simulators. I’ve driven slow karts a couple of times in the past but always wanted to experience more speed, more of a track time & adrenaline. I had booked two practice sessions at Buckmore Park Circuit here in the UK last week and have already enjoyed them both!

Buckmore Circuit

The Track.
Length: 1000m
Racing line length: 850m (my approximate theoretical, based on manual GPS map measurements online)

The Go Karts.
Sodi RT8 390cc, they say it’s up to 80mph, however, I believe they’re limited to less & driver’s weight is affecting acceleration and the speed. Quick conclusion: want to be fast – be light.

The experience

As of the day of writing this article my best lap record is 53.025s. Taking my theoretical racing line length and the lap time, the average speed is 57.6km/h which is not quite slow when you consider no seat belts or safety cages. Just four wheels and yourself sitting nearly on the tarmac. I haven’t had a chance to find out, but I believe the top speeds I could have been reaching should be around 80km/h which is around 50mph. They claim the provided Karts can do up to 80mph, but I personally find it hard to believe I could have been doing more than 50mph.

Update: my lap times

I decided to keep tracking my lap records in this post below.

Date Lap record (s) Diff (s) Conditions
26/07/2019 53.920 base Dry
28/07/2019 53.025 +0.895 Dry
03/08/2019 52.223 +1.697 Dry, track temp 28°C
11/08/2019 53.097 +0.823 Dry, wet, dry, cold