The Monaco Kart Cup celebrated its 10th anniversary on the street circuit in the tiny principality, Oct. 13–15, and added two new events to the now-traditional Six Hours of Endurance and the Monaco 4-Stroke Contest. These were races for the Junior FIA-CIK class and a separate series for Historic Karts.
While the Six Hours was thrashed out between 42 teams of four drivers each in very modern equipment, the historic karts stole the show when 35 machines, organized by the Historic and Classic Kart Club of Great Britain, appeared for British, Belgian, Dutch and American drivers. Historic kart racing is witnessing an enthusiastic development in both the USA and Europe, while the 50th anniversary of karting was recently celebrated by the FIA in Geneva.
Former World Karting champions Martin Hines (U.K.) and Lake Speed (U.S.) were present at Monaco to join in the festivities. With the historic kart paddock located on Monaco’s Blvd. Albert 1st, the thousands of spectators had easy access to the karts and drivers. The circuit itself uses the F1 pitlane with two chicanes, a descent down to Tabac Corner, a 180-degree hairpin, which takes the karts at high speed around the swimming pool, a chicane before Rascasse Corner, then around Rascasse back to the main straight, using much of the main track in the harbor.
There were no less then seven so-called demonstrations for the historic karts, which all turned into some hard racing, in two classes for direct drive and gearbox karts. A number of people long associated with kart racing were taking part, including Tony Keele whose father produced Keele Karts, Alan Button who raced his kart at Nassau in 1961, Dutch manufacturer/collector Harm Schuurman, and longtime kart and F3 racer Wyatt Stanley, who had a very rare front-engine machine. VR contributing photographer Jim Houlgrave was making his race debut in his Dale, while European editor Ed McDonough drove Ian Pittaway’s Blow Spitfire and Alan Button’s Buckler Goldstar. Based on the enthusiastic response, historic karting will now become a regular fixture at Monaco.
