Paolo De Conto

Two KZ world championships in two years, and then, at 27, a handshake and goodbye. Paolo De Conto compressed more into a decade of gearbox racing than most drivers manage in a career — and left at the exact moment everyone expected a third act.

The karting years

Born in 1992, De Conto built his reputation in the toughest neighbourhood in karting: the 125cc shifter classes chronicled in our KZ history. He announced himself internationally with Energy, winning the S1 headline class at the 2014 SKUSA SuperNationals in Las Vegas, before CRG signed him as the spearhead of its factory KZ programme.

The world title should arguably have come at Le Mans in 2015, where he led most of the final before Jorrit Pex mugged him at the last-lap hairpin. De Conto's response was ruthless. At Kristianstad in 2016 he won the KZ World Championship after an extraordinary final, with Sodi's Anthony Abbasse chasing him home. In 2017 at Wackersdorf he did it again — fourth after the heats, a legendary around-the-outside pass on Jérémy Iglesias at turn one along the way, then victory over polesitter Abbasse in the final. Back-to-back world crowns, plus the 2017 European KZ title sealed in Sweden, made him the undisputed king of the class. He capped 2019 by giving BirelART its maiden SuperNationals victory in KZ2 — and then, in December 2019, announced his retirement, months after his great rival Marco Ardigò had done the same.

What made him different

De Conto was a pure racer's racer: brutal in the heats, ice-cold in finals, and one of the best overtakers KZ has ever seen. The Iglesias move at Wackersdorf — outside line, first corner, last-gasp — is the kind of clip that gets shown to junior drivers as a masterclass. He won everywhere the discipline mattered: CIK-FIA finals in Europe, SuperNats in Vegas, the Race of Stars on the Gold Coast. And he was honest about the cost. When he stopped, CRG boss Giancarlo Tinini publicly saluted his determination and tenacity while admitting a season without him seemed impossible to imagine. De Conto simply refused to hang around as a diminished version of himself — he wanted a life beyond the awning, and took it on his own terms.

Legacy

His 2016–2017 double stands as one of the great peaks of the modern KZ era, achieved against the deepest shifter fields ever assembled: Ardigò, Abbasse, Pex, Lammers, Hajek, Iglesias. He also proved a factory karting career could be complete in itself — world titles, global wins, out at the top. The story has a coda, too. De Conto resurfaced at the 2024 European Championship at Alcañiz, and in late 2025 returned to KZ1 racing at Lonato with a BirelART, fitting one-off weekends around a full-time job because, in his words, the passion still drives him. Once a gearbox racer, always a gearbox racer. For today's contenders chasing his standard, the ladder still runs through KZ2 — and the target is still two world titles in two years.