Private Equity, Developing 'Talent,' and Arrive and Drive: Modern Karting's Mess.
Birel and IAME commit to developing talent while FIA push arrive and drive. Meanwhile drivers circumvent these routes anyway.
Birel and IAME, who, along with KR, are now owned by the Korus Group. I am not a financial reporter, but Korus is a private equity group and, alongside QCapital and BIC Capital - who bought TM and OTK - this represents a shift in the ownership structures of the major karting manufacturers. I am not particularly interested in Korus vs QCapital & BIC Capital, to be quite honest, though I think it will be fun to see whether LKE and ex-TM man Franco Drudi can make a mark. This is about the only saving grace for the 2026 season from an interest standpoint. Gone are the days of the “giant names” of karting being in control, and it is very, very sad to witness.
What I find somewhat confusing is the mixed messaging that is now being put out. On one hand, we have the FIA putting a lot of effort into their “Arrive and Drive” initiatives, and on the other, we have Birel and IAME coming out with a “developing young talent” statement within the OK and KZ structures as they formally announce their technical partnership:
“The two brands will work in close synergy, providing drivers with the best platforms to develop their talent, once again highlighting their company’s values and commitment to nurturing young motorsport talents.”
This is all while we have Ollie Bearman doing well in F1, and Williams signing Luke Browning (who did not do much so-called ‘elite’ level karting) as their reserve driver. To say this is a colossal mess is an understatement. How can we have a situation whereby the FIA seems to be saying “arrive and drive this” and “arrive and drive that,” while the manufacturers are banking on a structure for karting built in the context of being a standalone sport, really just Formula 5 in all but name? Meanwhile, the “talent” out there is starting to circumvent all of this entirely.
The inherently weak position that the likes of Birel and IAME find themselves in is a propaganda war over arrive and drive versus the cut-throat nature of full-blooded multi-manufacturer racing. Arrive and drive will win every time. I happen to believe arrive and drive racing is not ideal for anything other than a hack with mates on a stag do, but the position these major companies face is that if they want to push this “developing talent” narrative, then they should not be surprised if a hypothetical Sodi/Rotax Formula 5 one-make package wins the day.
While there may be some anti-trust issues, it is not out of the realms of possibility that the FIA rebrands karting as Formula 5. F4, F3, and F2 seem to be unburdened by this kind of monopoly issue, so it is perfectly plausible that a Sodi/Rotax package becomes Formula 5 and it is bye-bye Birel, OTK, etc. It is hard to sell multi-manufacturer development racing for children whose future career apparently depends on it. It makes no sense. That sort of racing only makes sense if it is the career, not something for a future career.
As I stated earlier, Browning and Bearman bypassed any of the FIA classes, and I am not even sure if Browning did any international-style karting at all. I have always felt Max Verstappen’s route through karting to be the “optimum” one, if you believe in the stepping stone ideology (which I do not for karting’s sake) but in reality it is a one-off. Max learned the most brutal aspects of elite-level motorsport - tuning and development - while racing top-level professionals like Ardigo et al. But this cannot be emulated, nor do I wish it to become the norm, because as soon as it becomes “the route,” it is already dead.
We have seen this with the OK class, which has shed its professional status to become a strange zombie class. By that I mean the culture that gave birth to Group 1 World Championship racing is no longer actually alive, but its body still moves, hungry for the bank accounts of the rich and well-to-do. The reality is that the whole “developing young talent” idea increasingly feels like an empty statement. We have teams, manufacturers, and governing bodies pulling in entirely different directions with no firm identity.
When you really dig into it none of it makes any sense at all. No one really can define what it is or what it means. It’s constant contradiction after contradiction. The sport, at least at the top end, doesn’t really know what it is.
This nails the fundamental contradiction nobody wants to address. If karting is truly just Formula 5 preparation, then yes, arrive-and-drive makes more sense for career progression. But that strips out everything that made karting intersting as its own competitive ecosystem. The Browning example is especially telling since he essentially skipped the "required" path and still got results.Feels like everyone's optimizing for different endgames here.