I’ve been keeping a lot more notes lately during my kart weekends — not just lap times, but gear ratio changes, tire pressure tweaks, how the kart handled in different sessions, and even driver notes. I like having this stuff recorded somewhere I can actually make sense of later, especially when I go back to the same track or run similar weather conditions. The more I add, the more I feel like my current way of storing all this is kind of clunky. Right now I’ve got a mix of handwritten notes, screenshots, and a couple of scattered files on my phone. I’m starting to wonder if there’s a cleaner or smarter way of organizing this info.
Something that sparked this was when I was dealing with some certificate files on a tool I was using for an unrelated thing. I had to convert pem to crt and key, and I ended up using a lightweight tool that made the whole process super quick. For anyone not familiar with that, PEM and CRT are different formats for security certificates — PEM files can include both a public certificate and a private key, while CRT files usually just hold the certificate part. The tool let me split and convert them in a way that made them usable for different purposes. That process made me think about how I could take inspiration from that and rethink how I store my kart data — not changing the data itself, but how it’s formatted or structured for easier use across different tools or situations.
So now I’m thinking, how do other racers handle this? Do you guys have a preferred format for keeping your setup changes organized? Is it just Excel sheets with tabs for each day or session? Or something else? I’m not a developer or anything like that, just a guy trying to keep clean, useful records. I’ve also been wondering if it makes sense to break down each day into sessions, then list changes made before and after each one, maybe even assign them some kind of label or timestamp. But then I run into the issue of making that easy to search through when I’ve got notes from several weekends.
I’m also curious if anyone uses templates for this kind of thing. Like maybe a default layout for each race weekend that includes expected weather, baseline setup, and a checklist of possible changes to make. It would help me spot trends — like whether adjusting front width always helped understeer at a specific track. I’ve seen a few guys use basic text files and even physical journals with diagrams, and I’m wondering if I’m overcomplicating it or missing something simple that just works.
Would be great to know what others are doing — whether you’re just tracking basic stuff or going deep into session data and kart behavior changes. What tools or formats make it easier for you to stay organized and learn from previous runs?