So I was pleasantly surprised and humbled at the same time yesterday. I had a very experienced driver take my kart out at Orlando Kart Center to see what he thought. I just got back into the sport in early September and have been a couple of seconds off race pace. I wasn’t sure if it was my kart, engine or setup. Welp, I found out it was me, lol. He cut a very impressive 1:05.68 on the long track which is what we’ll be running Dec 4th for the Orlando Cup. He came back in…I asked him what he thought and he replied, “don’t change a thing. This is a podium finishing kart and I could win on it”. So I’m glad I’ve managed to nail the setup and have confidence it’s a very competitive kart for something 7 years old and considered an entry level kart being a Praga Dark that I paid a ridiculously low price for. I only managed a 1:08.32 so I’ve got quite a bit of work to do cleaning up my driving. I know momentum is everything in the 206 class and with the new pointers he gave me yesterday regarding being smooth, I can reflect and realize that I’m actually over driving the track. I had told him I was experiencing a push in some corners and an extremely loose rear in others. He proved that the kart handles great when driven properly and it has plenty of pace. He reminded me I’ve only been back at it a little over 2 months. The Cup will be my first race in over 12 years and I’m not entering it with any other intention but to have fun and enjoy the racing experience again. Hopefully with a lot of seat time, I can work on my driving and find myself on the podium in the future. My kart presented the challenge, I have a ton of motivation now to reach those low lap times.
It’s good to know your kart has pace, even if you don’t, but at least you are not chasing unknowns. I would also be curious about weight. You don’t mention if the experienced driver is of similar weight but if he is even 5-10 pounds lighter that can make a difference making him faster too.
We’re pretty much the same. I’m at 187, I didn’t ask but he’s about 2” taller and built similar to me so we’re not talking a 20 lb difference. I’ll ask him for curiosity but I do know he has 20 lbs of weight on the OTK he runs and I need 25 to get to the 380 SR Heavy minimum so we must be relatively close. I know it’s largely attributed to my driving because I’m drifting the rear on a couple of corners and scrubbing a lot of speed when I do that. I was also braking too much in hindsight because I’m trying to carry too much speed into the tighter corners. I need to become smoother and roll through the corners modulating my throttle inputs. I’ve just been sending it all out, lol.
Whenever possible I always offer to drive my coaching clients’ karts. It can be very useful to have an experienced set of hands tell you how the kart feels and show what the kart is capable of. Combine that with data back-to-back and you get the best possible picture of where you’re missing out.
At my size, I can cram myself into a cadet kart up to a senior kart so that’s pretty helpful. Even if I’m 50 lbs overweight for cadet, it at least will show on the data where our differences in driving are.
Been binging Skusa 25 since yesterday but I’m definitely going to load his session in Race Studio and take a look at his splits compared to mine. We’re planning on going back out on Friday so I’ll continue to pick his brain and get out there and follow him and work on refining my lines. He’s one of those guys that I can tell takes the time to help those around him however he can and lent me a throttle cable my second time at the track. The camaraderie at OKC has been incredible amongst us older guys so far.
Did you happen to have a data logger running whilst he was driving?
Mychron 5 which I’ll load our sessions into RS2 and compare them.