Quadrant Technologically progress always looks dramatic in retrospect, but how often can you compare the competitive advantage of that improvement decade to decade? In a recent video from Lando Norris' Quadrant squad, Norris and former teammate Carlos Sainz gathered to test go-karts from the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 2000s, and today in a back-to-back same-track-same-day run. These were some of the most competitive racing karts of their day, and seeing how much faster each one was than the kart that came before it is so incredible. Each driver had a go in the 1950s kart, which was basically a pile of tubes with a small engine and a seat bolted on. They didn't know anything about seat bolstering in those days, apparently, because the drivers spent most of their energy and most of the lap just trying to hold themselves in the seat. Each subsequent decade saw the drivers swap off, then compete against each other on modern equipment bearing their own names. It's really interesting to see how the karts shed time from decade to decade until it plateaus in the 1990s. These are two F1 Grand Prix winners who have hundreds of miles under their belts in go-karts when they were younger. I don't think there are two men more qualified to test these karts back to back and see where the chips lie. It's quite obvious that most of the progress in lap time happens in the earlier decades. The difference between a 2000s kart and a 2026 kart is quite minimal, for example, but the gap between the 1950s and the 1970s is stark and dramatic. It makes sense, then, that the lap gap between each decade shrinks until it all but disappears altogether. It's more than just the kart Quadrant There's more to a lap time than just the chassis or the engine, obviously there are a ton of variables that affect handling and speed. The rules change over the decades to make the karting fair and reasonably equal for the young kids coming up through the ranks. Some of these karts feature wider and stickier tires, but maybe the modern compounds being built today would have been much softer than what they ran in-period. It's possible the gaps between the decades would have been more dramatic, but it's impossible to know exactly. At the beginning it was Carlos who ran the faster lap time in the 1950s equipment, but Lando who spit out the fastest time of day in the modern 2026 LN Kart. With the 1950s kart running a 59.6-second lap, how fast did you expect the modern equipment to be in comparison? Would you have said it could do the same lap in half the time? Faster? You'll have to watch the video to see just how much faster it was, but the differences are pretty stark. Would the 1950s kart have been quicker with just a few modifications? Slap a well-bolstered seat on there and move the engine forward to be within the wheelbase next to the driver, and you've probably got a few seconds of gain right there. Though I suppose that's pretty much exactly what they did in the 1960s. This is a pretty cool comparison, and I'd love to see more same-day-same-track tests with competent drivers pitting vintage equipment against modern equipment. Maybe they should do one with F1 cars next? I bet the lap time difference would be even more stark. Or perhaps Le Mans-level prototypes? Wow, that would be cool.