#karting lore

[andthatsp1]

we go way back :) Braga, 2010

[andthatsp1]

Lestappen wheel to wheel action, but it’s 2011 and they’re in go-karts.

Featuring: a Max & Charles front row, a double-overtake on Esteban Ocon, and Charles being a track terror. Max is 214 with the white helmet and Charles is 267 with the orange one.

[andthatsp1]

the cuteness aggression I feel toward mini max is unreal, actually

May 2010 // Karting Genk 🇧🇪

[andthatsp1]

what are your thoughts on lestappen karting lore? im aware that Max has the greatest karting record, it is credit to him ofc, but that is also credit to his father pushing him early that helped him gain lots of experience very early + he had good mechanics + resources and connections via jos (this is not to say they had inexhaustible money, but one cannot deny that they did not have enough connections/help to sustain his karting). on the other hand, in comparison, Charles clearly did not have resources, experience, and perhaps the best mechanics. if you factor all that, how good was Charles in comparison to Max?

I have read a lot about Charles and Max’s karting careers specifically, so I have some knowledge about how karting works as a sport, but I also am not going to pretend to know everything. That said, I don’t think a lot of people realize that it works just like any other category in Motorsport that isn’t a spec series, so the machinery is not “equal” across the board.

I will throw the rest of this under the cut for people who don’t want to see a wall of text 🫶

Max was always part of a very strong team, and Jos tuned the engines and worked on the chassis himself. Max was also able to do a lot of testing and driving outside of race weekends, and was driving shifter karts like a full year before he ever raced in them. That’s part of what’s annoying when people claim that they have the same amount of experience just because they started the same year. Jos had Max driving/testing constantly at home! Charles went through a couple of different teams, and his last two years were with a completely new team (ART Grand Prix was already part of the lower formula categories, and they created a karting team— it has since merged with Birel, I believe). This is not to say that they were by any means a “bad” team with no resources, but CRG was established and their drivers won a lot up and down the karting categories. And if we want to talk about taking over open seats, Charles left Intrepid karting after 2011 for ART’s start-up team and Max joined Intrepid’s factory team in 2012.

With all that said, I think raw-talent wise, they were pretty evenly matched. By 2013 Max and Charles were the only teenagers regularly competing with (and beating) the 20+ year old KZ2 drivers that had years of experience on them. Max’s results were more flashy, but plenty of people who kept up with the karting scene were also expecting Charles to be something special. He has the same instincts Max does, he was just much more unpolished at the time. In equal machinery, I don’t think Max would have come out on top every time (though he did have a clear advantage with sheer hours spent in a kart + Jos’ coaching).

There’s a quote from Frits Van Amersfoort (F3 team boss that worked with them both) that came when he was asked, between Charles and Max, who would be world champion, and I think his assessment about sums it up:

tldr; while happening parallel to each other, their journeys were very different and it’s not fair to look at a list of results and say that Max won everything, so Charles must’ve sucked.

[andthatsp1]

this is what Max and Charles looked like when they first met, if you even care

[andthatsp1]

it’s giving Capulets + Montagues, 2012

[andthatsp1]

in honor of the FIA gala this week, enjoy this photo from 2012 in which Max and Charles were sat on completely opposite sides of the room 😂

[andthatsp1]

the string bean phase was real for these two 😂