So Much from So Little

I’VE RACED A staggering variety of offbeat cars, boats and motorcycles during the past 50 years, often so I could publish a magazine article answering the question, “What’s it like out there?”

Aside from offshore powerboats, the craziest form of motorsport I tried was Formula Kart Experimental, sanctioned by the International Kart Federation. Yes, go-karts!

But not just any go-karts.
FKE was the Grand Prix class for high- speed “lay-down” karts with aerodynamic bodywork and state-of-the-art technology. The result was a ridiculously dangerous, impossibly uncomfortable miniature race car, a 160-mph rocket capable of grabbing the outright lap record at most classic auto racing tracks.

These kart zipped around with 125-cc engines.

Enter John Kasmierski

I forget who introduced me to engineer John Kasmierski. John’s day job was head of R&D for Johns Manville Corporation, but his hobby was K&K Engineering in Trenton, NJ. John was modest and soft spoken, but he was also the go-kart equivalent of McLaren’s John Barnard in Formula One — brilliantly years ahead of the competition.

Kasmierski’s tiny cars were built around a tubular space frame constructed of Reynolds 4130 steel alloy. The wheelbase was only 40 inches. Kasmierski used a tubular front axle — it looked like a miniature version of the front axle off a ’32 Ford hot rod — and a straight rear axle. The frame was underslung beneath the axles — a mere half-inch above the track.

Suspension? There was no suspension. The longitudinal frame tubes were precisely sized and located, connected by a full aluminum belly pan and engineered to function as a single longitudinal torsion bar, carefully computer-plotted to keep the fat racing tires on the pavement.

Tires were Goodyear slicks, in sizes like 11×3.5-6 or 15×4.0-6, available in the same compounds as big sports-racers use. Tie- rods, king pins and other bits were standard race car components with Heim joints, all scaled down to a 40-inch wheelbase. Wheels were cast alloy, complete with tiny rabbit ear knock-off hubs and demountable rims — just like full-size race cars.

Bottom line, you could put more rubber on the pavement than you could possibly use. Skidpad readings were well over 2.0 g.

Simple sophistication

Kasmierski set up his karts with weight distribution roughly 40-60 front to rear, which he could quickly adjust by moving the rear axle, the engines, the fuel tank or the driver. Or all of the above. His K&K chassis was as tunable as a Formula One car.

Brakes were Hurst-Airheart free-floating discs with hydraulic calipers. Kasmierski built some FKE karts with four-wheel discs, some with two front discs and a single rear disc, some with just a single rear disc. As he liked to point out, “I never lift off the throttle going around someplace like Watkins Glen, so why do I need brakes?”

200 pounds on the track

The K&K karts I raced had a fiberglass body styled either like an aerodynamic bullet or a McLaren Can-Am car complete with chin and tail spoilers, NACA ducts for engine cooling and Porsche 917-style vents in the front deck to increase downforce. The entire body weighed only 10 pounds and attached with four Dzus fasteners.

In round numbers, Kasmierski’s chassis/ body weighed 100 pounds. An hour’s worth of fuel weighed 50 pounds. Each engine/ transmission weighed 50 pounds. In other words, the all-up weight of a basic K&K race car, ready to race, was 200 pounds. With twin engines, it was 250 pounds.

Tiny pistons

Ah, the engines. All serious FKE racers used Italian-made, air-cooled BM two- stroke Singles, each displacing 125cc. The piston was literally the diameter of a quarter. The technology would still be state- of-the-art today — including a ceramic- coated cylinder bore, ceramic-coated hollow connecting rod, Teflon-coated pistons and a built-up crankshaft. Running on straight alcohol mixed 20 to 1 with motor oil, these “B-bombs” put out 50 hp at 16,000 rpm. We’re talking 400 hp-per-liter, at piston speeds that still seem unbelievable.

Even more remarkable, they’d reliably run flat-out for hours.

The motorcycle-style chain drive was unbreakable; the weak point was the clutch. An infinitely variable, centrifugal dry clutch just three inches in diameter, it was wildly overstressed and had to be rebuilt after every race. On the other hand, because there were no gears to shift, there were no missed shifts, no burst engines. Engines were typically rebuilt once each season.

Very, very fast go-karts

Let’s talk performance. Kasmierski’s single-engine McLaren-style FKE was officially timed part-way down the Road Atlanta back straight at 143 mph. It lapped the 3.4-mile Watkins Glen Grand Prix circuit in 2:20. His twin-engine car, with 100 hp pushing less than 4 pounds per horsepower —including the driver — topped out around 170 mph and lapped Watkins Glen in less than 2 minutes. At the time, the Trans-Am record at The Glen was 2:04, and the Formula One record 1:42. At most shorter road courses, FKE karts held the outright track record.

Wearing the shrieking beast

I first raced one of Kasmierski’s single- engine FKEs at Watkins Glen. You put it on like a one-piece jumpsuit, both legs at the same time. My toes had to be pointed down flat to fit under the frame tube where the dashboard would be if there was a dashboard. Then, at ankle depth, I turned my feet sideways to slide under the steering tie-rods. Among other things, this meant that in a frontal crash, the only thing protecting my feet and legs was a single layer of fiberglass — which was ready to shred into knife-edge bits.

My toes touched the inside of the bodywork, likewise my knees. My torso went in one arm at a time till my shoulders were squeezed securely by the bodywork.

The five-point safety harness was comically redundant. The car would have disintegrated around me in a high-speed crash just before the alcohol caught fire.

Open-wheel go-kart racers wear motorcycle leathers, but FKEs were miniature race cars. I was inside, encapsulated, snuggled next to 50 pounds of explosive straight alcohol, it’s true, but still technically inside a four-wheel vehicle. So like any racing driver, I wore Nomex and a full-face helmet. And ear plugs. Very good ear plugs.

The two-stroke single engine was cozily located just inches from my right ear, the expansion chamber exhaust wrapped around behind my helmet. At 16,000 rpm, it was like living inside the Pratt & Whitney jet engine of an F-16. A twin-engine FKE, of course, mounted an identical engine next to each ear and two exhausts behind your head. A Bell helmet, even with ear plugs, could not begin to keep out the mind- shattering whine.

FKEs are called “lay-down” karts, because the driving position is lying flat on your back, your chin on your chest, your arms along your sides. It’s pretty much the same position you’d assume on a luge, hurtling down the ice-coated Olympic bobsled track at Lake Placid. An FKE is so low, there’s no room for a steering wheel. Instead, there’s a flat handlebar, a tiller really, pivoted in the center that you push or pull a few inches to steer.

Thanks to the centrifugal clutch, you move your right toes forward to go, your left toes forward to stop. There’s no need for a tachometer, because the clutch engages at 8,500 rpm and off you go. There’s also no speedometer, because trust me, you really don’t want to know how fast you’re traveling.

The only instrument is a huge, digital temperature gauge that you wear on a leather belt you buckle over your Nomex before you wriggle beneath the bodywork. Since your chin is on your chest anyway, the gauge is right in your line of sight. The critical element of the air-cooled engine is cylinder head temperature. During a race, the engine runs so close to the edge of destruction that a deviation of 10 degrees can be fatal. The strict limit is 320 degrees

Tuning on the straight

The most fascinating aspect of racing an FKE is that you can manually tune the engine on every lap. The enriching screw on the carburetor is accessible by reaching over the bodywork with your right arm and dialing in more or less fuel. The place to do this, of course, is the fastest spot on the longest straight, while driving with your left hand on the tiller and your eyes glued to the digital thermometer. In the twin engine car, of course, you need to tune both engines simultaneously, one on either side of your head. Think about that for a moment….

Going bonkers at Watkins Glen

At Watkins Glen, since I had never previously driven an FKE, the officials made me start at the back of the pack, behind 50 other racers. Technically, it was a Le Mans start, but because it takes 2 minutes to put on an FKE and the karts have no starters, the drivers were already strapped in before the crews ran across the track, started the engines and jumped out of the way.

When the flag dropped, four-dozen suicidal maniacs with a death wish piled into Turn One at Watkins Glen six abreast and inches apart. Most of us made it, too. For every second of the next hour, we were continuously diving into every turn side- by-side-by-side, clawing and scratching for every inch. It was like the New Jersey Turnpike at rush hour — only at 150 mph.

For the first few laps, I had virtually no power, and the pack roared off ahead of me. Then my crew held up a pit sign: “RICH TOO RICH.”

Of course. The little BM engine made the most power when it was leaned out until the very edge of destruction. My engine was being over-cooled by excess fuel delivery. The temperature gauge on my stomach was reading only 250 degrees, when it should have been reading at least 300.

Down the Watkins Glen back straight — this was before they put in the hated “Inner Loop” to slow everybody down — I reached over the bodywork and turned the mixture screw half a turn. Woowee! It was like somebody put in a second engine. The next lap, 280 degrees. Down the straight the next time, I give the screw another quarter- turn. 300 degrees. Now I’m really moving. 310 degrees. 312 degrees. 315 degrees. I didn’t dare to get any closer to the dreaded 320 degrees — when the engine is said to instantly seize.

FKE racing technique was deceptively simple: Keep The Revs Up! This translated as precisely drive the racing line, never lift off the gas, never use the brakes. There was lots of high-end horsepower and almost no low-speed torque. With no gearbox, to keep the revs up, you had to keep the speed up. Want to go fast? Go fast!

At first, I moved the tiller back and forth, wobbling through the corners. Then I figured out to keep my wrists in one place and just roll my knuckles. You kind of wish the kart around the course. It’s not like you’re in a machine at all, really, it’s more like just you, lying down in your Nomex pajamas, whistling around the track at 150 mph.

I wasn’t conscious of being low on the road, I just stayed on the racing line, clipping apexes next to the grassy hedges that lined the course. Only when it was all over did I realize that the green wall all the way around the Watkins Glen course was actually a 6-inch-high lawn. There was a tremendous sensation of speed, kind of like driving a street Porsche 911 Carrera at 2 million miles an hour. Exciting doesn’t begin to describe it. Orgasmic, maybe.

A couple of laps after I got the engine running smoothly, it started to rain. Of course it started to rain…this was Watkins Glen in October. I’m running 150 mph down The Glen’s back straight, aquaplaning to beat hell on slicks, half sideways most of the time. There are no rain tires for FKE. It’s raining? Get over it.

Which is when I started to seriously pick up spots. As an SCCA racer who grew up in New England, I learned to race in the rain soon after I learned to walk. I kept passing cars. This included my patron John Kasmierski, who aquaplaned off the end of the pit straight into a chain link fence at well over 100 mph, bounced off with no apparent damage — except to his ego — spun around a dozen times and got stuck on wet grass.

With four laps to go, I ran out of fuel. Because I drove the first few laps with the engine running rich, I used up too much of the carefully-calculated alcohol. If I’d tuned the carburetor properly, I’d have coasted to a stop during the cool-off lap. After starting 48th, I ended up ninth. I would have made it onto the podium if I hadn’t run dry.

Looking back, Formula Kart Experimental in lay-down machines defined a Golden Age parallel to Can-Am, when speed-crazy people could race insanely fast and dangerous machines, essentially unfettered by arbitrary rules. I mean, 150 mph, 160 mph, 170 mph lying flat on your back at pavement level was obviously too exciting for most people, even most racing drivers. Just as in real racing, FKE karts have been superseded by one-design classes intended to be safer and more equal.

Todays fastest Karts

The modern successor to FKE is SuperKart. Sanctioned by the CIK division of the Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, the fastest SuperKart Division One is restricted to 250-cc, two-cylinder engines, either two-stroke or four-stroke, either water or air-cooled, with 6-speed sequential manual gearboxes. Honda or Yamaha Grand Prix motorcycle engines producing 100 hp are now the powerplants to have.

SuperKarts are restricted to a minimum weight of 450 pounds, including the driver. With aerodynamic bodywork—tall enough to include room for a steering wheel and a driver reclining but not lying down—top speed is about 155 mph. Thanks to improved tires, lateral acceleration has increased to about 3.0 g, but lap times haven’t improved much beyond FKE times set decades years ago.

FKE vintage racing!

As you’d expect, there are now vintage races for old lay-down FKE karts, just as there are vintage races for old Can-Am cars. As you’d also expect, most of the drivers are vintage, too. Surprisingly, John Kasmierski is not one of them. After winning multiple National and Canadian FKE Championships, John got into Micro Stock, which is essentially go-karts with enclosed bodywork that race on tiny oval tracks, most famously .33-mile Wall Stadium, a paved, banked oval on the Jersey Shore that dates back to 1950. But that’s a whole other story.

Photos by Jean Taylor-Constantine

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