Ok, THIS is freaking nuts. We have to give credit to the crew at Motorsportretro.com for digging this video from the late 1980s or early 1990s up. What you are about to watch is  on kart video of 250cc go karts racing wheel to wheel on a small city course on the Isle of Man. Of course the Isle of Man is more famous for the insane motorcycle race that is held there each year but we’ll be honest. The guys on these karts are just as tapped as the motorcycle racers and you’ll see why when you press play below. Shifter karts are not toys. They are amazingly fast and nimble machines that actually hold absolute course records and lots of road courses not just here in the USA but around the world. Like all kart racing, it is a great study on how to drive a full sized race car because everything happens so fast and precision is so important.

There is some question as to whether or not this was some sort of “open” type kart race of if it was an actual SuperKart competition because as you will see, the racer we are “riding” with does not have any front bodywork on his machine and others do. Frankly, we don’t really care because the action is so good and tight, the guy could be riding a hot rodded golf cart and we’d still be into it. Make sure you listen to the announcer at the beginning of the clip. He does the right thing by introducing what’s going on and then getting out of the way so the old sounds are the karts themselves screaming away and making banging and clanging noises as they head over rough pavement and bumps.

We consider ourselves pretty gutsy dudes around here and have been able to do some fun stuff over the years, but racing those bastards as fast as they are, on slick tires in the rain? No thank you. We’ll leave that action up to the racers in this video who handle the course, the rain, and the amazing power to weigh ratios of their racing vehicles with aplomb –

PRESS PLAY BELOW TO SEE ONE OF THE NUTTIEST VIDEOS THAT YOU WILL SEE ALL DAY!