Kart racing

Kart racing or karting is a variant of open-wheel motorsport with small, open, four-wheeled vehicles called karts, go-karts, or gearbox/shifter karts depending on the design. They are usually raced on scaled-down circuits. Karting is commonly perceived as the stepping stone to the higher ranks of motorsports.

Karts vary widely in speed and some (known as Superkarts) can reach speeds exceeding 260 kilometres per hour (160 mph), while amusement park go-karts intended for the general public may be limited to speeds of no more than 25 kilometres per hour (16 mph).

History

American Art Ingels is generally accepted to be the father of karting. A veteran hot rodder and a race car builder at Kurtis Kraft, he built the first kart in Southern California in 1956. Instantly popular, Karting rapidly spread to other countries, and currently has a large following in Europe.

The first kart manufacturer was an American company, Go Kart Manufacturing Co. (1958). In 1959, McCulloch was the first company to produce engines for karts. Its first engine, the McCulloch MC-10, was an adapted chainsaw 2-stroke engine. Later, in the 1960s, motorcycle engines were also adapted for kart use, before dedicated manufacturers, especially in Italy (IAME), started to build engines for the sport.

Caucasian Iberians

Caucasian Iberians is a Greco-Roman designation for the population of Caucasian Iberia, a Kartvelian (Georgian) speaking people in the east and southeast Transcaucasus region in Antiquity and Middle Ages. In the southwest, Iberians extended into Anatolia, inhabiting interior lands beside Colchians, who lived along the littoral area.

Ancient Caucasian Iberians are identified as the ancestors of modern eastern Georgians as well the Laz people, another Kartvelian-speaking group.

History

The area was inhabited in earliest times by several relative tribes of Tibareni, Mushki, Saspers, Gugars, Diaokhi, etc., collectively called Iberians (the Eastern Iberians) by ancient Greek (Herodotus, Strabo, etc.) and Roman authors. Iberians called their country Kartli after a mythic chief, Kartlos. One of the Iberian tribes of Mtskheta (the future capital of the Iberian kingdom) dominated the early Kingdom. The Mtskheta tribe was later ruled by a prince locally known as mamasakhlisi (Georgian for “the father of the household”).