Working the crowd, Col is!
He pivoted to corporate clients. Probably more reliable than a bunch of karting enthusiasts.
Maybe we should be thinking about ways you could make $ Elias, which solves your karting problems.
I 100% agree with Zach that if you really want to get better at karting, spending the money on some real practice days where you have a plan and agenda so youâre practicing the right things (setup changes, driving style experiments, braking technique), that will be more beneficial than a sim setup.
Sim racing has benefits, but not all of them are directly correlated to karting. To get better at karting, I would recommend doing karting. 
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I wonder if you set a goal within certain boundaries;
Ie: 10 race season with 10 practice days.
You know going into the season exactly how much practice time you will have. You can maybe plan to them go practice those 10 days with specific objective: today I work on braking, eg.
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Iâd love to do this, but Iâm not sure how well it would work. There would be a lot of upfront costs that would make everything difficult, and I donât know if my parents would be pleased with me going about this solo with a bunch of kart parts and kart tools in our basement. I donât even own the kart actually, just the engine. Maybe I could pay for the chassis, and just pay the team for transportation and rent space and not a mechanic? I just donât know how reasonable soloing this would be while also going to school and having 2 jobs
Iâll give a practice day a shot, are there any series that have good bang for buck and have full practice days? Preferably within 4 hours of Boston
My current schedule is 9 races and 2 practice days. Thatâs just what the series offers.
Bummer they donât have more practice days. What do the other folks do for practice?
Around here you can go to NJMP and pay I think 75 bucks to use track? I think ovrp has similar but is membership.
Are there no tracks that offer open practice during the week? Most places that have a good club series are open for free practice when there arenât races going on.
I wouldnât register for a full-on race series just to do the practice day.
I agree with TJ.
Many folks spend their time looking for pace âwhile racingâ or on race day. Unfortunately, this is a very inefficient way of finding speed. On an average race day with my club, I get a 5 minute warm up, a heat race, and a feature. On the best day, this adds up to about 35-40 laps. Not to mention, I am trying to race which is different than finding speed (setting up passes, for example). While there is plenty to learn on a race day, there is nothing to replace seat time.
On an âopen practice dayâ, I can get 35-40 laps over an hour or two (instead of over an 8 hour race day). I also donât have to worry about as many other karts on the track or trying to set up passes/racecraft.
In my opinion, if you are at a point where you dont have the speed you want, whether mid pack or pack of pack (or even 2nd place for some folks), then you should spend your time practicing what and finding that speed. Too many people get focused on racing and spend the whole season going the same speed. This can be disheartening and cause a slower learning curve compared to the people who are practicing more often. If you can do both (practice lots and race a whole season), then great! Do it! If you canât, focus on what will make you better.
Practice days are not as fun as race days. But race days winning are more fun than race days mid pack.
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Quick question,
On practice / pace days, do you guys run harder tires just to run more laps?
No, always run the same compound you race on. Doing unlimited laps isnât the goal, the goal is driving and tuning to the conditions youâre likely to see on raceday. If you practice on other tires, whatever youâre trying in driving or tuning may not translate to your raceday if youâre on a different tire.
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Key word is good club series⌠closest I can get to that is renting out the entire track for a day. Which some have done, as someone is hosting an entire 3 day race event this weekend after renting the track. Only like $1200 for the entire track for a day. (1.4 mile car track)
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I believe we have to run the same tire, I am pretty much on the hardest compound anyways (Lecont red)
Definitely donât want to rent a whole track for a day. Thereâs gotta be a track that offers open practice during the week somewhere near you.
If there isnât, maybe thereâs a place that has rental karts that you could go drive just to get some experience on a different track/kart combo and try stuff with no pressure of a race.
I was wondering wether there would be any value in getting in a rental and really trying to threshold for a session.
How often are you practicing? No substitute for laps. Are you pulling data off a mychron or similar? If not you are giving up some there. How good is your setup? When was the last time you tried changing something to see if it helped/hurt performance?
9 races and 2 practices a year, just downloaded my first piece of data yesterday, and I donât change much on the kart, but do report any handling issues to my mechanic
Is F1 Outdoor still closed up? I understood that was a member track that had open practice available to members.
My wifeâs family lives 20 minutes from there on the South Coast near New Bedford. We talked about the possibility of moving there. After three years of living in Germanyâs Bavarian Alps, I was not keen on the idea of moving to New England, but having a Kart Track close by eased some of my anxiety.
Well man do I have some news for you, itâs being turned into luxury apartments. I saw blueprints suggesting that as well.
Maybe you should move back to the alps
I have a few thoughts;
If you have access to a mechanic, I would assume he has some karting experience. Can you work with him instead of watching? Explain you want to learn and do the work if you are allowed, or at least shadow him, ask questions, etc.
What are your expectations for karting? Is it a hobby or do you have bigger aspirations? If its a hobby, keep it fun, you havenât been at very long, maybe readjust your expectations a little to keep it fun.
I am also going to make a suggestion since practice time outside of race day doesnât look like a plentiful option, focus on one turn or area each race weekend. You identified the turn before the longest stretch as a possible weakness. Just focus on that area and allow âmuscle memoryâ to get you through the rest of the track. As an example, maybe do 5 laps early braking, 5 laps late-braking/trail braking and see what works better. The tricky part of this you may have to not focus on âracingâ which might be tough to do. You might even start at the back of the back or even gap the field so you have the track somewhat open. This would be a short-term loss for hopefully a longer-term gain.
You have had a lot of input on this topic, ultimately you have to decide what will work for you.
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