The first regulation in history which defines the standards to be respected in order to produce a karting rib protector,
the newly created FIA 8870-2018 regulation, comes into force commencing 2021. The regulation will be applied, for the first year, only to international competitions (WSK, World Championships and European Championships), to then be extended to the various national and regional races.
Although until 2020 designing and manufacturing a rib protector for karting was a field free from standards and, therefore, totally in the hands of the imagination and the technical and safety notions of the individual manufacturers, with the introduction of the FIA 8870-2018 standard, the international federation
has established precise requirements for these safety devices, thus overturning the rib protectors we were used to see and use. An example: the new generation of rib protectors, in order to be homologated, will have to provide front and rear protection, rigid and made of the same materials and height of the lateral protection (for those who would like to learn more about the specifications of the FIA 8870-2018 regulation, you can do so by reading the article dedicated to it in the “Technique” section of TKART Magazine).
Not only this. The new FIA safety standard imposes the minimum height of the protection which vary according to the height of the driver. The taller the driver is, the greater the height of the protection they will need to have.
Here are the precise measurements imposed by the FIA 8870-2018 standard:
Driver's height (m) |
Rib protector height (cm) |
---|
up to a 1,52 |
12,5 |
1,52-1,70 |
14,5 |
1,70-,188 |
15,5 |
over 1,88 |
16,5 |
Driver's height (inches) |
Rib protector height (inches) |
---|
up to 59,8 |
4,9 |
59,8-66,9 |
5,7 |
66,9-74 |
6,1 |
over 74 |
6,5 |
OMP Racing has been an integral part of the study that led the FIA to issue this new safety standard and was the first company to receive the homologation too, as early as October 2020 for its new rib protector, the KS-1 PRO, which we are about to analyze in detail in this article.