Overdrive Studios is the brainchild of former pro racing driver and all-around huge car nerd Scott Mansell. Based in the United Kingdom, Mansell has spent the better part of the last 25 years racing, coaching, and dabbling in just about every aspect of motorsport. Along with his racing and business-based endeavors, Mansell also runs a YouTube channel called Overdrive where he and a couple of his pals muck around with cars and generally pretend to be the original Top Gear.
As you can imagine, Mansell and his buddies know a lot about cars, and the majority of their content is car-focused. What they don't know a lot about or cover on the regular are motorcycles. If a recent video Mansell published over on his Overdrive YouTube channel is any indication, though, they may be up to expanding their horizons.
On a recent rainy spring morning, the lads saddled up and headed to Red Lodge Karting in Suffolk, England for a spot of mini moto racing. If you're not familiar, mini moto is a primarily youth-focused racing league that acts as sort of a training ground or farm league for MotoGP. Riders as young as 10 years old ride these absolutely bonkers 50 and 70cc water-cooled, two-stroke, six-speed racing bikes around technical karting tracks and look totally cool doing it.
Small Bikes, Big Fun
The bikes are similar to the cheapie pocket bikes you might see local kids, hooligans, and assorted dirtbags hooning around your neighborhood. That similarity is skin deep, though, because these tiny, mighty racers are faster, higher-tech, more powerful, and light years more capable than their mail-order cousins.
Now, as Mansell and his buddies make clear numerous times throughout the video, together they have roughly zero experience with motorbikes. Not to be deterred, the three of them showed up to a race morning with borrowed leathers and helmets to race borrowed bikes in a senior league race. Yes, you read that right, senior league. While the series is mostly youth-oriented, there's a mini moto series for adults which is just as hilarious as you can imagine. One of the lads described it as, "Grown men crouching quickly around a track."
So, how'd this pack of car guys do racing tiny hot rod race bikes around a wet track? Well, you'll have to watch the video to find out the whole story, but I can assure you that hilarity ensued.