DAP Brand makes a return thanks to KartRepublic

If you are into motorsport, you will of heard of some guy called Ayrton Senna. The 3 time Formula 1 world champion is a hero to many, even almost 30 years after his death. And if you’re familiar with Senna, you will probably have seen images of him throwing karts around the world in the late 70’s and early 80’s. What you may not of known, is during the later years, Senna drove for the DAP brand, In fact the very kart in the image below came up for sale in 2015, but I digress.

The reason I bring this up, is the DAP Brand disappeared from the scene in the late 1990’s like many of the early brands. However, the brand is set to make a return thanks to the team at KartRepublic. They announced on Tuesday (Jan 10th) that the brand will make a return with a striking colour scheme.

Despite disappearing in the 90’s, the DAP brand was successful back in the day, securing a pair of world championships thanks to Peter Koene in 1979 (beating our man Senna) and Alessandro Piccini in 1987 who took his first of 4 gearbox world titles aboard a DAP powered by a Pavesi motor. KartRepublic themselves have 3 world titles in recent memory to their name including winning the 2022 OK title with Brazilian Matheus Morgatto.

Lets not get too far ahead of ourselves though, while this will be great news for those who love the DAP brand, and believe you me it still has it’s fans, there is a very good chance that the new machines will be rebadges of current KartRepublic frames, in a similar way to Gillard now after it’s sale to OTK Group. That being said, it is great to see the name returning to the grid, and we look forward to seeing what KR do with it. Currently, there are no plans announced for the brand, we have reached out to KartRepublic but have yet to receive a response.