KZ is suffering not only from ill-advised political/sporting decisions by the governing bodies, but also from a certain lack of appeal to younger drivers. Yet Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, the two best drivers in Formula 1 today, come from KZ... (by Pierluigi Mancini)
Published: 07 June 2025
Columns: Opinion
The career of an aspiring professional driver today essentially passes through two categories: 60 Minikart and OK. Then, at the age of 15, they move directly to single-seaters without ever having had the opportunity to race with a vehicle equipped with a gearbox, relegating this type of experience to a few more or less sophisticated video games. KZ, technically the queen of karting categories, is inexplicably snubbed, as if the time spent racing in it were totally useless... But is this really the case? The answer is a resounding no.
KZ is an extremely formative, if not indispensable, category for those who wish to pursue a career in motorsport and, possibly, reach Formula 1. Where does my clear position come from? Simple: just look at the current situation of drivers in the top formula. The two best drivers in Formula 1 today, without fear of contradiction, are Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, with all due respect to everyone else. Just look at how they start from a standing start, how they manage the race (except for blunders in the pits worthy of collective dismissals), and their overtaking ability. Verstappen and Leclerc pass where others would not even dream of doing so, humiliating multiple world champions who have been fortunate enough to drive cars that are not just one step, but several steps above the others. We saw Verstappen, driving a clearly inferior car, beat his McLaren rivals purely on driving ability: to make the same overtaking move on the same driver, Max took one corner, while Norris struggled for six laps despite his super McLaren! On the other hand, after weighing heavily on Vettel and Raikkonen's decision to retire, Leclerc destroyed seven-time world champion Hamilton this year, with gaps in qualifying and in the race that made Sir Lewis lose the desire to amaze the paddock with his distinctive look or to embrace some other political battle and cut short his interviews. Anyone who remembers Charles overtaking Lewis at Copse corner, Silverstone 2022, had a clear idea of what would happen in 2025...
Personally, I raced in the 100 and 125 classes during the crusades, but my feeling has always been that, if the 100 taught you to be clean, smooth and to shave hundredths of a second off every corner, the 125 was the university of braking at the limit, it was the school for learning to choose the right gear ratio, to discover that if you took a 100 trajectory using a higher gear, you could shave off those two tenths that, in the end, made all the difference. The secret of the 125cc riders has always been the same: combining clean riding with the power and braking of the gear-changing classes. And when the 125cc riders arrived, many people changed sports...
Those who managed Verstappen and Leclerc always had this concept clearly in mind. Learning to start from a standstill with 30 hungry dogs behind you, ready to tear you apart at the slightest mistake, is not like starting from a flying start. In fact, except on very rare occasions, our two heroes never mess up a start, gaining positions on positions, sometimes in a rough but effective way. Let's not even mention that today's F1 is filtered by all these penalties (Villeneuve and Arnoux, after Dijon '79, would have been sentenced to life imprisonment) and that cars explode like crystal glasses even when they graze each other, but the difference between the two “Martians” and two honest drivers like Norris and Piastri can be seen in those flashes from a standing start, in those unexpected overtakes, in those masterstrokes that are learned in KZ, where two very young Max and Charles fought it out every Sunday, annihilating the senators of the category, who were forced to quit due to their obvious inferiority. KZ is like Formula 1, where everything happens at lightning speed, and it is no coincidence that F1 drivers mainly train with KZ. Except that what you learn to do at 15, you don't learn at 20...
Now, if I had had a son and the financial means, I would never, ever have snubbed KZ, perhaps without leaving OK so as not to lose the cleanliness and fluidity of driving that, with the gearbox, you can lose (after all, for better or worse, you always come out of the corner...). I would have done exactly what Jos did! In addition to Max and Charles, Andrea Antonelli is another driver who races in F1 after competing in the gearbox category, while Arvid Lindblad, who finished on the podium in his first KZ2 world championship, is one of the talents Red Bull Racing is betting on for the near future. In the meantime...
KZ is an extremely formative, if not indispensable, category for those who wish to pursue a career in motorsport and, possibly, reach Formula 1. Where does my clear position come from? Simple: just look at the current situation of drivers in the top formula. The two best drivers in Formula 1 today, without fear of contradiction, are Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc, with all due respect to everyone else. Just look at how they start from a standing start, how they manage the race (except for blunders in the pits worthy of collective dismissals), and their overtaking ability. Verstappen and Leclerc pass where others would not even dream of doing so, humiliating multiple world champions who have been fortunate enough to drive cars that are not just one step, but several steps above the others. We saw Verstappen, driving a clearly inferior car, beat his McLaren rivals purely on driving ability: to make the same overtaking move on the same driver, Max took one corner, while Norris struggled for six laps despite his super McLaren! On the other hand, after weighing heavily on Vettel and Raikkonen's decision to retire, Leclerc destroyed seven-time world champion Hamilton this year, with gaps in qualifying and in the race that made Sir Lewis lose the desire to amaze the paddock with his distinctive look or to embrace some other political battle and cut short his interviews. Anyone who remembers Charles overtaking Lewis at Copse corner, Silverstone 2022, had a clear idea of what would happen in 2025...
Personally, I raced in the 100 and 125 classes during the crusades, but my feeling has always been that, if the 100 taught you to be clean, smooth and to shave hundredths of a second off every corner, the 125 was the university of braking at the limit, it was the school for learning to choose the right gear ratio, to discover that if you took a 100 trajectory using a higher gear, you could shave off those two tenths that, in the end, made all the difference. The secret of the 125cc riders has always been the same: combining clean riding with the power and braking of the gear-changing classes. And when the 125cc riders arrived, many people changed sports...
Those who managed Verstappen and Leclerc always had this concept clearly in mind. Learning to start from a standstill with 30 hungry dogs behind you, ready to tear you apart at the slightest mistake, is not like starting from a flying start. In fact, except on very rare occasions, our two heroes never mess up a start, gaining positions on positions, sometimes in a rough but effective way. Let's not even mention that today's F1 is filtered by all these penalties (Villeneuve and Arnoux, after Dijon '79, would have been sentenced to life imprisonment) and that cars explode like crystal glasses even when they graze each other, but the difference between the two “Martians” and two honest drivers like Norris and Piastri can be seen in those flashes from a standing start, in those unexpected overtakes, in those masterstrokes that are learned in KZ, where two very young Max and Charles fought it out every Sunday, annihilating the senators of the category, who were forced to quit due to their obvious inferiority. KZ is like Formula 1, where everything happens at lightning speed, and it is no coincidence that F1 drivers mainly train with KZ. Except that what you learn to do at 15, you don't learn at 20...
Now, if I had had a son and the financial means, I would never, ever have snubbed KZ, perhaps without leaving OK so as not to lose the cleanliness and fluidity of driving that, with the gearbox, you can lose (after all, for better or worse, you always come out of the corner...). I would have done exactly what Jos did! In addition to Max and Charles, Andrea Antonelli is another driver who races in F1 after competing in the gearbox category, while Arvid Lindblad, who finished on the podium in his first KZ2 world championship, is one of the talents Red Bull Racing is betting on for the near future. In the meantime...
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