It seems that everyone today  wants to be on Italian chassis, but there are a few British karts that can beat the green and red machines at the highest levels in UK karting.  Wright karts is one of those chassis, so let’s take a closer look at what goes into building the Wright kart, and why you might like to check out a British alternative.

Wright on the process of developing a new CIK karting chassis – “The year of the CIK homologation you generally start thinking about developing a new chassis around January time. Homologations come around November/December time so it gives you a good 12 months developing the chassis and trying bits and pieces. Generally as a starting point you do what everyone else does and look at what’s going well at the time. Be it a red kart or a green kart or whatever. You don’t necessarily copy it, but look at the shape and then add what you know on top of that. Lots of the Italian karts are geared towards high grip Italian racing. This is all well and good, but you want to implement your own dimensions and angles and other bits and pieces on to that.”

“So when you start with the kart you want to think – What basic shape do I want? A frame or parallel bars or occasionally you get some radical kart come along that generally stays around for three years and then disappears into non existence.”

“So you start off with your basic shape and then you build a chassis to that shape. Usually you start with your steering geometry. You’d put all your steering yokes on and in the right angles for what you’re doing at the moment. Then you drop it on the track and go. All you can do is let the drivers go round and see what they think, see what it looks like as well, and have your own input as well. Sometimes you can see things the drivers don’t. So you know, it has to go hand in hand with the driver. Whether it be front end geometry, you can address these problems when you come to them.”

“As you go through the year you probably get 6 or 7 versions of the chassis and hopefully by the end of the year you’ve tweaked bits and pieces. It might not end up being the same shape as the one you started with. Bends get tighter, go further up the chassis or down the chassis, it’s basically trial and error. You want to be able to dissect bit by bit as you go through, and you should end up with something that is pretty much what you are looking for come the end of the year. Obviously you have to leave a good couple of months to produce the 75 chassis required  otherwise it’s a bit of a problem getting it all done on time.”

Are there any new ideas this year for your chassis?

“The thing we found with the CIK 15 was it was a very good all round kart for all conditions, which is fantastic. This is what people want. But also at the same time you want something that’s just going to give a little more edge in the actual racing season. So we’ve basically kept the rear end of last years chassis and just tried to implement a bit more mechanical grip to the front end. And also a bit more variation in set up because people like to change things to suit all conditions. We found with just the front torsion bar in or out the changes are quite dramatic. The intermediate one gives a little more mediation to it. You can also add different gauges of material in there, like Nylon as well.”

“It’s just making the kart as user friendly as you can get it without being ridiculous.”

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3. New Karts For 2009 Pictures!
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Tags: jenson button, kart, karting, wright kart