One of the greatest genres of humor is one thing being very much in a place it should not be, and that is what makes this video of a 1970s Formula One car on a go-kart track such a damn delight.
As the United Kingdom begins to reopen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, motorsport is coming back at all levels, and to celebrate, Buckmore Park, a karting track in Chatham decided to do something different. It decided to slap a 1976 F1 car onto its tarmac.
You can watch the full video from Super GT below:
As you can imagine, a karting track is designed for way smaller vehicles than the No. 18 Durex Team Surtees machine from 1976. Historically, this wasn’t exactly the most successful vehicle to start with. It was shared between Brett Lunger, Conny Andersson, and Noritake Takahara, and none of those drivers ever scored a point or finished in the top 10. The clean white car probably hinted at that, though; fewer sponsors generally signal less available money and therefore less development.
So, we have a fairly unwieldy machine to begin with, and then we stick it on an itty bitty race track. It’s a bit like a bull being let loose in a china shop.
We get helmet cam footage in this video from both the No. 18 and, later, from a kart. It’s wild how much more nimble the kart looks in contrast. We’d normally assume the F1 car would be much faster, but that’s obviously not going to happen on a track designed for the smaller vehicle.
The only thing I wish we had more of here were some overhead shots. The helmet cam is awesome, but it would be awesome to be able to lay overhead shots side by side to see the differences in speed and lines during a lap.
DISCUSSION
Well, obviously with team Durex, the car's gonna be slippery. That rubber compound is optimized to slide, not to grip.