Who can truly be called a “Karting World Champion”?

It’s that time of the year again: following the FIA single-event World Championships for OK and KZ categories, usually held in early autumn, the calendar for the World Finals of the most famous one-make trophies kicks off bringing the season to a close. These are effectively ‘open’ events for teams, modeled on FIA races, such as the IAME Warrior Final and ROK Superfinal, which attract impressive numbers every year. A special case is the RMCGF, the Rotax Max Challenge Grand Finals, run with equipment provided by the organizer for the event; here too the numbers are extraordinary annually.

For a couple of years now, the OK-N World Cup has been added to these events. Now in its third year—we recall its promotional launch at Franciacorta in 2023—it has established itself as a key date on the calendar, with a record 173 entries in Cremona, surpassing all expectations. Speaking of numbers, the aforementioned one-make World Finals gather around 400 drivers.

It is worth noting, since recently the number of entries is often touted as a sign of strength and validity of a project (which it certainly is, but these figures always need interpretation), that the FIA does not recognize any Minikart Group 3 competition as a “World Championship.” In fact, the large numbers in the ‘Finals’ of the one-make series are mainly due to the wide presence in the Mini and Micro categories (around a hundred entries), which significantly inflate total entry numbers. For this reason, our analysis focuses primarily not on total entries but rather on the key categories of these events: “Senior” and “Junior,” which correspond to categories in the FIA World Championship. It should also be noted there are no ‘one-make’ equivalents of the KZ World Championship, except for the TM Challenge organized by Birel Art in Italy, which remains a rather local series.

The history of the one-make World Finals began with Rotax, the original one-make project, which as many know started 25 years ago in Puerto Rico with 66 drivers in the sole category at the time, Rotax Max, coming from 19 countries. Today that event is a global spectacle, with a massive logistical effort by the Austrian manufacturer, managing a week-long event (this year in Bahrain) serving 400 drivers from over 60 countries, as we have reported before – almost an Olympics rather than a mere World Championship. With the arrival of other engines that launched new one-make trophies, such as IAME X30 and Rok, that model has been roughly replicated with similar formulas: a single event at an FIA homologated track, significant logistical and organizational effort, and an increasingly competitive level. In cases like Rotax and IAME, the races are by invitation only, meaning participation requires earning a “ticket” by winning the national championship or achieving a top result in continental or regional competitions, due to the widespread nature of these series in terms of drivers and countries. A recent example is the IAME Warrior Finals (IWF), officially the grand year-end event of IAME since 2022.
With a more niche audience, series such as Easykart (Birel Art’s native one-make) or Tillotson with its T4, a 4-stroke kart aimed at amateurs, organize races named “International Finals” or World Cups, creating a social media context in which it is easy to convey a “World Championship” message. This allows event winners to give their sponsors the chance to be associated with a globally prestigious event. Last but not least, the brand-new FIA-made ‘Arrive and Drive’ World Cup formats, largely inspired by the single-make series mentioned above – especially the Rotax one, it must be said, since the equipment is supplied by the organiser – such as the one whose first edition was held in November in Malaysia.

This image, opening the FIA Karting Arrive and Drive World Cup, brought to mind for insiders the iconic photograph of the Rotax Max Grand Finals

From a strictly sporting point of view, the competitions showing real driver overlap are those three mentioned at the start. Regulations do not allow drivers from OK-N categories to start in the FIA World Championship events and vice versa. Thibaut Ramaekers, for example, OK World Champion at Kristianstad, or his fellow podium driver Joe Turney, have often been seen competing in one-make races that have a sporting format very similar to FIA’s: a Euro Trophy and a single-event World Championship. Ethan Jeff Hall and Matthew Higgins (1st and 3rd on the podium at the 2024 FIA World Championship in PFi), along with several other young British drivers, regularly alternate between one-make and FIA events. This proves the sporting level of the one-make series is by no means inferior to the most prestigious events on the FIA calendar.

Matthew Higgins (UK), a familiar face at the Rotax Finals and a leading contender in the OK World Championship over the past two years, is an example of the overlap between the highest level of FIA competitions and the top single-make series

Marginal to this, we have not included in our analysis the so-called “International” series like WSK, now based exclusively in Italy (originally a continental series launched in 2006) that gathers the world’s top teams and drivers in a very busy calendar leading up to and following the FIA season, with at least two multi-round competitions, the Super Master Series and the Final Cup, both of which can claim the status of “World-level” events given their high sporting standard.

Here comes the key issue: if the World Championship properly remains the title assigned by the FIA in the single-event format, what could its prerogative be in the coming years to distinguish the race from the others? We begin with an essential point that should not be taken for granted, before posing the question to FIA leadership, whom we met privately in Kristianstad to discuss this topic: to obtain the “World Championship” label, a multi-round competition must take place on at least THREE different continents. So when we talk about a “multi-round World Championship” in the spirit of F1 or MotoGP, we should forget about a 4-race World Championship held only between Italy, Belgium, and Spain.

Not without reason, the KZ World Championship is considered by some to be the most important title in karting, thanks to the longevity of the drivers in this category, who are generally devoted to karting for their entire careers rather than treating it merely as a stepping stone toward car racing

The chapter of the International Sporting Code to which the FIA leadership (from whom we expected a more structured response) directed us is the usual one, which we reproduce below, fully aware that yes, in order to call oneself “World Champion” it is necessary to win one of the three FIA competitions that carry that designation (OK, OKJ and KZ, all single-event races).

At the same time, however, it is fair and necessary to point out that competitions organised by private companies – which have in fact developed their own national trophies through collaborations with ASNs – and the various single-event meetings called World Finals, particularly those that bring together the winners of the National Trophies, are competitions capable of crowning high-level drivers, worthy of international recognition and, in our view and based on what we have seen on track over the years, fully deserving of aiming for greater goals – whether that means professionalism in karting or a career in top-level motor racing.

Finally, one last note seems necessary regarding KZ drivers, considered by many to be the best drivers in the world: their popularity and experience are the clear consequence of the fact that their presence in karting is permanent rather than transitory. This is the very simple explanation for why any karting driver in the world knows Davide Forè and Senna Van Walstijn, while very few could tell you (true story) who won the last OK World Championship.