Can Adults Start Karting Late in Their 30s, 40s, 50s?

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 8 October 2026 from my podcast episode on adults starting late, which you can play below.

I actually get asked this question a lot. I am in my 30s, my 40s, my 50s. Is it too late to start karting seriously? Am I too old?

The short answer is absolutely not. But there are a few things you need to hear first, and you may not like all of them.

This is the written version of the podcast episode you can play here. I added what I said in other episodes about which class an adult should start in, about weight, and about the habits you bring from the road car.

Are adults at a disadvantage compared to kids?

Yes, in a way. I am not going to tell you it’s a myth.

Kids have the luxury of having more time ahead of them. They started young, so they get more practice time, and that makes it easier for them.

So don’t be fooled. If you start at 40, getting faster than a kid who started at five years old is 99% of the time not going to be possible.

Think about who you find on the track. A 15 or 16 year old who has been driving for 10 years already. And you are just beginning at 40. He has much more experience. He has obviously got better reaction times. He is naturally going to be quicker.

But don’t get discouraged. If you put in a lot of commitment, high quality coaching and a high quantity of track time, you can still get very good. Perhaps not at an international level. At a national or local club level, yes. You can get your way as close as possible to his level.

If you are curious how early the F1 guys started, I checked the ages one by one in F1 drivers who started in karting. The latest start I could find there is Nicholas Latifi, at 13. And if you are asking for your kid and not for you, read the ideal age to start karting.

What advantages do adults have over younger drivers?

The first one is life experience. Adults are normally more mature, so they are probably more coachable. They listen more.

A kid or a teenager may have a lot of talent and a lot of skills, but maybe he is not as coachable as somebody who has got some more decades on his back.

Another one is discipline. When you go through life you have to be disciplined, so in many cases you already have it.

Then there is financial stability. That’s normally something you have in your 30s or 40s. If you have the budget and you can do what you want with your time, you can get super fast much earlier.

And to be honest there is one more. You have a road car licence. I would say in 99% of the cases. So you already know what it means to drive. Maybe you have got some experience on rental karts, or on GT cars.

Kids start from zero, because they have never been driving anything in their life. You don’t. For kids the first few days are quite strange, because the sense of speed is new to them. For adults it is a bit easier at the beginning.

But then you still need to put in the track time, and quality track time with coaching. I explain why in why track time is key in karting. And if all your driving so far is rental karts, here is rental against owner karting.

Which road car habits slow adults down in a kart?

The road car helps you at the start. It also gives you two habits that cost you lap time.

The first is the steering. Most adults drive road cars, and that makes them feel they should turn the wheel as much as they do on the road. On a go-kart the opposite is true. The steering is very sensitive, so you have to use very little steering input in order to be fast.

Kids don’t have that feeling. They have no idea of what driving a road car is, and I think they adapt a bit earlier because of that. So remember, smooth is fast. I go deeper on this in is karting hard to learn and in smooth is fast.

The second is the hands. Adults who get into a kart for the first time after years on the road tend to keep their hands too high. That’s what they tell you when you do your road car licence.

I still remember that day. I was like, are you serious, should I keep the hands like that? I really felt like a truck driver. In the practical exam I just did as he said. After that I kept my hands on the road as I do on the track, nicely centered.

So when you sit in the kart, hands in the center. Not high.

And you do not see these habits from inside the helmet. Send me your onboard and I show you what your steering and your hands are doing, corner by corner, in an onboard review.

What can you realistically achieve starting at 30, 40 or 50?

It always comes down to the time you have available. And to your financial situation, because it is going to cost money.

If you don’t have that much time, it is very, very unlikely that you compete at an international level, in the same races as kids who are 15 and started at five.

If you are able to spend a lot of time and money, you can definitely compete at a national level. Even if you start out super late in your life, if you practice a lot and in a high quality way, you can get yourself fighting for top positions in pretty competitive national championships.

International is quite difficult. Let’s be honest. It requires lots of training, lots of time and money, and not everybody is willing to do that. If you really want it, you can do it, as long as you train a few times per week. But that’s a life choice. You need to engineer your life around that.

And if you just want the hobby level, that’s fine too. You go for a local club race a month, you have fun, you have some beer with friends and you call it a day. You can have a totally great time like that.

If you have not started at all yet, go through how to start karting step by step and check if you need a licence.

How much does karting cost for an adult?

I gave two numbers in the episode, and they are very far from each other.

If you want to go full time in karting, you need to budget about 150,000 to 200,000 euros.

If you just want to do it at an amateur, hobby level, you can do it with much, much less. Even just 10,000 euros a year. That is the local club race a month.

So before you choose a kart or a championship, decide which of the two is yours. Everything else follows from that.

I break the costs down in how much karting costs per year, and if the budget is tight, in the cheapest way to start kart racing.

What kart class should an adult beginner start in?

A single speed, direct drive kart. For an adult that means a Senior class: OK, Rotax Senior, X30 Senior or Rok Senior.

You don’t have much choice at the bottom anyway. 60 Mini is reserved between the age of 7 and the age of 12. Juniors are from 12 to 14. So unless you make a fake licence and pretend that you are 12 years old, which I think is going to be quite hard to believe, you are left with the Senior classes or the Masters classes.

Can you go straight into a shifter? You can. There’s people who’ve done that. I would not recommend it. The jump from not being a karting driver to straight into shifters is quite shocking.

With a single speed kart you only have two pedals and a steering wheel. With a shifter you also have the gear lever, and you have to lift off the throttle when you are shifting up.

And maybe you think, I drive a manual car, I know gears. It’s very, very far from the driving experience of a shifter kart.

So take it step by step. Get your feet wet in a single speed kart. Once you get good, you understand how it works and you want something more exciting, then go into the gearbox class. KZ2, or DD2 if you are into Rotax. That is very fun.

All the classes are in the best beginner kart classes explained.

Does your weight matter when you start karting as an adult?

Yes. And it matters more for you than for a kid.

The only problem about Seniors is that the karts are very light in terms of minimum weight. In Seniors you can stay as long as you want, as long as you don’t grow too much in height and weight.

If I wanted to do Seniors, I couldn’t. I am too heavy and a bit too tall. And I am only about 68 kilos with kit. The reality is that it’s too much.

When you do international Seniors, so OK, it is very hard to stay within the minimum weight. And if you are two, three, four kilos above, there is not even a point to race. You lose so much performance on the exits, in acceleration. The competition is so fierce that racing with extra weight is like shooting yourself in the foot.

I think shifters are more forgiving for an adult. And if you drive X30 or Rotax, I am pretty sure they are more flexible in terms of minimum weight. Check the minimum weight of your class before you buy anything.

You can see where each class sits in the karting ladder.

Can adults race competitively, and in which categories?

They can. How far depends on your goals, and on the time and the money you are able to allocate.

There are categories for people above 30 years old. In Italy, for example, the gearbox class for them is called KZ Masters.

It’s a good opportunity. You compete against people of your age, instead of drivers who are 18 years old and have a bit of an advantage in reaction times and youth.

That’s the thing here in Italy. I am not sure it is exactly the same for every country. Most of the time there are categories for adults above 30 or above 40, and clubs create their own categories in their own series. So check your local tracks and your local clubs and see which category fits you.

How much does fitness matter at that age?

Fitness matters a lot. You need to get super fit. But not for the gym. You need to get sport-specific fit.

You want to be super light on the kart. So lots of cardio and endurance exercises, and bodyweight exercises. You don’t want to be bulky and heavy.

That means changing your training and your diet. You may have to lose a lot of kilos in order to be fast on the kart. Not many people are able to take that commitment, because it requires a lot of discipline.

Can the driving itself compensate? It helps. There is nothing quite like it. If you drive every single day for a full year, you can take a complete beginner into being a very good driver by the end of the year.

And he is going to get very fit, because he trains all the muscles of the sport. The neck, the forearms, the rib cage, the core stability.

But you also need to supplement it with the specific exercises a karting driver needs. I cover those in endurance training for racing drivers and in how diet and hydration impact your karting.

How long does it take an adult beginner to reach good lap times?

It all comes down to the number of laps you do. You are not going to get better by simply the passing of time.

If you do 1,000 laps in a year, you improve an X amount. If you do 2,000 laps in a year, you improve almost 2x. If you do 10,000 laps in a year, well, you can guess.

So break it down into smaller chunks. Say you do 150 laps in a day. How many days does it take to do 15,000 laps? It takes 100 days.

There are 365 days in a calendar year. So almost one time every three days you have to be on the track. You program the testing and race schedule up front.

To get good lap times, 10,000 to 15,000 laps will get you there. That’s about 100 to 150 days of driving in total. The sooner you get those days done, the sooner you get the lap times.

For international races, World and European Championships, you need a lot more than 15,000 laps in your career.

And don’t expect the same gain every day. The first day you may improve three seconds. The second day two. Then one second, then half a second, and then less and less. More on this in how long it takes to get good at karting.

What mistakes do adults make when starting late?

The major mistake is thinking about age.

Say you start at 35. You want to race a driver who is also 35, but he started at 15. You think, we are both 35, so we should both be as fast.

No. It’s not true at all. That guy may have been practicing and racing for 20 years already.

What you need to consider is the amount of laps and days of driving he has done leading up to that moment. It’s very hard to track those numbers, I know.

And you can’t close the gap by simply driving as much as he drives now. If this guy is practicing once a week and you want to close the gap, you need to practice like five times a week, for five years or ten years or something. You close it roughly by the time you have practiced five times more than he does.

The other big mistake is just expecting too much. As in any skill and any sport, you cannot expect to get good overnight.

What is the biggest mental barrier for adults?

I believe it is the self-belief. Your inner voice telling you, oh, you are too old. You are too slow. You are too heavy. You started too late.

Say you set yourself this goal: I want to become a race winner in this national championship, even though I started at 40. If you are willing to sacrifice for that and to put in the work, you can achieve it.

It probably requires 10 times more training, and better quality training, than the drivers who started 30 years earlier than you and still race against you.

But it’s not just about believing. I don’t believe in the law of attraction, in thinking and manifesting things into your life. There’s people who believe that. I don’t.

I believe in something practical. You have a goal. You accomplish that goal through a specific master action plan. If you follow the plan, you can get there.

And I don’t believe that talent is a must. You shape your talent. You need to train exactly as Michael Schumacher would do, as Ayrton Senna would do, as Max Verstappen would do, physically as well as in the driving. Senna is a good one to study, and I wrote what karting drivers can learn from him.

Just put in the time required. Otherwise you are fooling yourself.

What is the smartest way to improve if you start at 40 or 50?

Give it the right time. Expect that it is going to take time, it is going to take money, and it is going to take setbacks.

At the beginning it is going to be really hard. The learning curve is quite steep at the start. Then it gets a little bit easier. Then it gets steep again once you have to find the last few tenths of a second.

Finding the first few seconds is easy. Finding the last few tenths when you are fighting for pole position is hard.

But that’s good news. If you are fighting for those last few tenths, it means you got ahead of 90% of the other drivers.

So approach it in a practical way. You need to know you are going to suffer and struggle. You allocate the track time, you have a master plan, and you stick to your plan. You have a proper coach and proper equipment.

On the coach, read why you need to hire a go-kart coach. And this is where we can help here at Senndit. There is the onboard review and there is the 6 months transformation.

So is it too late to start karting after 30?

Absolutely not.

If you put in the necessary time, and you double down, triple down, quadruple down on your practice, you can make it. Not only in the quantity. Also in the quality, with proper coaching.

You can compete at club level or national level and win races in your category. Perhaps in the Senior category, or the Masters category above 30. Even if you started late with no prior experience. Even if you race against drivers who started when they were six and have been doing this sport for 20, 25, 30 years.

But you cannot expect that result by training the same amount as they do. You need to train a lot more than them. And that requires a complete life shift.

If you do that, you can fight for national level championships. And have a blast attempting that mission.

You find the rest of what I wrote for people starting out in the beginner guides.

Frequently asked questions

Is 30 too old to start karting?

No. After 30 you can still compete and win races at club or national level if you put in the track time and get proper coaching. International level is quite difficult if you start that late.

Can you start karting at 40 or 50?

Yes. Starting at 40 you will 99% of the time not be faster than somebody who started at five years old, but you can get very good at a local club or national level, and many countries have categories for drivers above 30 or 40.

What kart should an adult beginner start with?

A single speed, direct drive kart in a Senior class, like OK, Rotax Senior, X30 Senior or Rok Senior. It only has two pedals and a steering wheel. Move up to a gearbox kart like KZ2 or DD2 once you are good.

Is there a karting category for adults over 30?

In Italy the gearbox class for drivers above 30 is called KZ Masters. Most countries have categories for adults above 30 or above 40, but they change by country and by club, so check your local tracks.

How much does it cost to race karts as an adult?

At an amateur, hobby level, with a local club race a month, you can do it with about 10,000 euros a year. If you want to go full time in karting, you need to budget about 150,000 to 200,000 euros.

How long does it take an adult to get good at karting?

It comes down to the number of laps. 10,000 to 15,000 laps, which is about 100 to 150 days of driving, will get you to good lap times. At 150 laps a day, 15,000 laps takes 100 days on the track.