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"This thing is so much fun, you'll absolutely love it," says former 4-time 500cc motorcycle world champion and current Superkart racer, Eddie Lawson. This, right before I squeeze myself into his 92-bhp, 140-mph Superkart, one of the fastest karts on earth. Having raced 100cc and 125cc karts, along with many full-size cars, I approach Lawson's rig with no small amount of trepidation. Not only blindingly fast for a kart, this thing is blindingly fast, period. It's quicker around a typical racetrack than most GT race cars and even some formula cars.

Before my turn at the wheel, Eddie warms the kart up with a couple installation laps around the 1.8-mile Streets of Willows Springs road course. From the side of the track, he's visibly quicker down the short front straight than any car I've witnessed here before. It sounds like he's grabbing gears every few hundred feet as he accelerates past the pits. Especially impressive is that he's not lifting for the fast right-hand kink approaching the tight first turn.

When I ask about that back in pit lane, he confirms, "Yeah, I can take that right-hander flat-out in 6th gear at just shy of 120 mph." When my face shows disbelief (120 mph?!), he adds, "It moves around a little, but you just keep your foot in it. The rear wing is producing good downforce there and it will hold." Okay, it will hold for Eddie Lawson, the country's fastest superkart driver, but that's no guarantee that yours truly, superkart rookie, will experience similar results.

With that in mind and my 6' 2" body crammed into Lawson's No. 7 kart, he bump-starts me, the engine fires and I'm off. Once underway, I spend the first couple laps getting acquainted with the kart's 6-speed sequential gearshift, the no-lift upshifts and the phenomenal braking power provided by ventilated discs front and rear. The track also looks completely different from such a low perspective. Despite having driven "The Streets" many times in production cars, it might as well be a different planet from behind the wheel of a superkart. Not only am I sitting nearly two feet closer to the ground, but everything is also happening much, much faster. So fast, that for the first couple laps my brain has trouble keeping up with what's happening on track.

With 92 bhp propelling just 462lb. (including driver), the superkart absolutely screams around the track. Low-end torque (6,000-10,000 rpm) is surprisingly good for a 2-stroke 250cc twin, but get up around 10,000-13,000-rpm and the engine takes off. Revs jump and upshifts come fast and furious. The no-lift ignition interrupt produces seamless flat-on-the-floor upshifts with no jerkiness whatsoever. Downshifts are just a matter of nudging the shift lever forward without worrying about the clutch (a hand-operated unit is only used for starting from a stop) or matching revs when coming down through the gears.

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