The New Kart on the block : 8 Questions with xkart’s Matty Street
Image © Envision Images
The karting season has been extremely busy since July, but within the paddock, some have been busier than most. Matty Street is one of those. Alongside launching the Cadet Kart Championship in 2020, he also runs the TeamKartingIndoor circuit in Rochdale and the TK Xtra race team. Now though, he has launched his own kart brand: XKart. We decided to put 8 questions to one of the busiest men in karting.
KE: To kick off, give us a brief history of yourself in the karting world.
MS: Iv been involved in karting since the age of 12 racing in a number of junior classes. I was also part of The Blair Projects rising stars competition. Everything I have done has been involved around motorsport, raced as a lad, when to college and did motorsport engineering, then uni and studied motorsport management and logistics. Then dropped out to start my first business, TeamKarting which is now one of five business I have that operate within the motorsport industry. Its not just a passion or hobby for me it’s a life style.
KE: You’re an extremely busy guy operating an indoor circuit alongside its race team, sim racing centre and your own race programme. Where do you find time to do anything, let alone bring a kart to market?
MS: I did don’t know how I manage to fit everything in, long days but sometimes not enough hours in the day. I am lucky enough to have a great team who work with me on all these projects so I am able to jump in and out. For example when I’m away on a race weekend I have very little to do with the indoor karting track but when spend Monday/ Tuesday catching up.
When you think I run TeamKarting, a very busy and popular indoor track, TK-Xtra which helps people progress from indoor karting to outdoor racing, CKC – The Cadet Kart Championship which is a national karting championship now along with all of this Xkart, which is a kart brand and will also have its own race team in 2021. A lot of man hours go into all of these.
KE: Your latest project, X Kart has now broken cover, what brought about having your own kart?
MS: As we have a number of businesses in the karting industry we’ve helped over 130 people over the last couple of years become owner drivers. We’ve helped these people source a kart, service it, store it and help run it on a race weekend. So all of these people have taken decisions to get a certain type of kart and kit based on our recommendation. Deep now when I looked at certain offerings I was like “we can do this better” that was how CKC was born and how we came up with Xkart too.
KE: There are 2 different routes when creating your own kart. Partnering with an existing manufacturer or creating your own from scratch. Which way did you go and why?
MS: We have technically used both of these roots. With our junior / senior chassis it is a rebrand of an already existing Italian kart brand, the TB Kart S55. It was won a number of championships in Europe and the united states. So is a strong proven offering, only issues with the kart is it is green. When you think green what kart comes to mind. TONY KART…so they had no real presence in the UK. Which I knew I was in a position to change that. So going with an already existing chassis it gives us a strong foundation and saves us a lot of effort in the design, testing and development of a new chassis.
However we have also developed our own Honda Cadet chassis from scratch as TB don’t produce any chassis like this. Which as been challenging to find the right balance we are happy with as its important the chassis is competitive. We are a few versions in but I think we will have a strong offering for 2021.
KE: The final product definitely looks the part, what’s been your favourite part of the project so far?
MS: I am a very creative person and love bringing an idea to life, so the brand development is always my favourite part of any project. Motorsport is all about appearance, and it plays such a big part in reputation, shiny trucks, big flashy awnings etc so it has always been a factor that we need to look good. Lucky the karts don’t disappoint and we are also able to do out talking on the track so far we have done two races and finished on the podium in each one.
KE: At launch, you have a kart aimed at the Rotax and Iame classes, is it safe to assume that a cadet variant is coming down the line?
MS: It is in development as we speak, but as we said earlier this has been designed from scratch so been hard work but still very enjoyable. We will be doing over final bits of testing over the next month so will be aiming to launch early 2021.
KE: With the project in its infancy, what does the future hold for X Kart?
MS: Who knows, we’ve just got to ride the wave and see where it takes us. If you asked me 6 year ago would I have an indoor karting track, I would have said no way, or 24 months ago would we have a fully booked national karting championship I would have said no way. So like I say who knows. The big aim and ambition is to have the team compete in the British championships but that’s a year or two away yet.
KE: Finally, if people want to pick up their own X Kart, where can they find out more?
MS: First point of call would be with check out the Xkart website which is www.x-kart.co.uk, or Facebook page X Kart. We are also happy to arrange a test day in one of our demo karts too.
A huge thank you has to go to Matty Street for answering our questions, we look forward to seeing more from XKart and CKC in 2021!
