Hi all. I’ll try to get video next time I bring this up, but I didn’t have my camera on this time, so I’ll have to use my words.
I had a practice session Saturday against 5 faster drivers from my class. I tried to follow them and see where they were beating me, and it was mid corner speed. They were braking at the same markers as me, but getting off the brakes and diving into the corner at speeds I didn’t think were possible and their karts were sticking. We both had used tires on, so no advantage there.
I tried getting off the brakes and sending it into corners at the same speeds they were going. I followed a couple kart lengths back and got off the brakes when they did. I couldn’t make the kart stick. As soon as I cranked on more steering lock to approach the apex, the rear would step out and I’d catch a slide and lose a kart length or more by corner exit. This happened in multiple different turns. I tried gentle trail braking (maybe 20% brake pressure) to settle the kart, but this made me slower at mid corner and they gapped me. I asked one of them if he was trail braking into one of the corners, and he said no (just rolling through).
I’ll make a separate thread about the axle hop I was getting in some corners both on and off throttle, but I don’t want to fall into the trap of blaming the kart to protect my ego.
From a purely driving perspective, what can I do differently to roll more speed through mid corner? So far, I have two ideas:
Body position: I was able to shave off 3 tenths by pressing my weight into the seat back harder on turn in (when turning right, I focused on pushing the wheel with my left arm completely straight, legs pushing my body into the left side of the seat back to get weight on left rear wheel). This seemed to help, but I was still much too slow through mid corners. Is there more I could do here?
Rate/timing of steering input: am I turning in too aggressively? Do I need to turn in MORE aggressively to jack weight? Wait longer to start turning in (later apex wouldn’t be the same line that the other drivers were driving)?
Funny enough, I was following a national level driver (only followed for a short distance, haha), and we went through a turn I struggled with. I noticed how comically he leaned out away from the turn, and sure enough, I was able to feel the kart instantly stick and turn when I mimicked him. I don’t typically struggle with hop though. That being said, there is one turn where I get hop sometimes, and leaning out also can help certain flavors of hop. Hop happens when grip builds and then releases and then repeats, so getting it to hold longer in the “grip” phase of that cycle and eliminate certain flavors of hop.
I assumed this means I have too little rear weight; have you scaled your kart? That’s a critical starting point that I have hypocritically been bad about.
Video is kind of necessary in this sort of thing. Because if you are following faster drivers and they are able to make the kart stick and you aren’t, we need to see if your line is correct, if the steering input is too aggressive, if the timing and rhythm of everything is correct, and THEN we can determine if it’s chassis or driving technique.
If you’re feeling immediate oversteer or hop, which are two opposite problems generally, then that would indicate to me that the issue is more driving than chassis. A kart that is hopping won’t generally tend toward oversteer in half the track. Both those issues COULD come from over-aggressive steering input though. If you’re giving the kart too much weight-jacking initially or turning the wheel too quickly, obviously it will load up and overload the rear tire, causing slide or hop depending on the corner profile.
One thing I see fairly often with drivers is this same situation; they are trying to drive the kart in harder and faster to keep up with a faster driver, but they don’t have the finesse and delicate feeling of the tire’s limit yet. So they end up being out of rhythm, initiating turn-in without confidence and over-committing the kart on entry. What tends to happen is they start getting sloppy with all the transitions of inputs (feet, hands, body posture) because they aren’t comfortable taking the corner at that speed yet, and they kind of feed the kart too much input from all those sources trying to keep up with the kart. Reacting to the kart rather than flowing with the kart. In these situations I often advise trying the opposite technique; back the braking point up a lot and ease into the corner and just see how much apex speed you can achieve. This gets rid of a lot of the messy inputs because your focus is just specifically apex speed, not braking late or aggressive steering input. Then you can really see how fast you can apex a corner. From there you can start building up to it and braking a bit later, giving a bit more aggressive steering input, until you find that point where the kart can’t take anymore.
I think most people, when trying to find max apex speed, they are focusing on what they are doing and what the kart is doing at APEX. In reality, your entire corner is based on what happens on ENTRY. If you have the kart unsettled on entry because you’re trying to push harder and you aren’t achieving a good rhythm with your inputs to get the kart settled down before getting it to max load at apex, it won’t react consistently and you’ll constantly be catching the kart mid-corner. In most corners, whatever you are feeling at apex/exit was caused by what you were doing on entry.
But all that being said, make sure your weight distribution is correct first as Caleb noted.
Thanks guys. I’ll get it scaled and try to get a video when I’m back on track in two weeks. The track is hosting several national races in a row over the next few weeks, so I should be able to get good references from these drivers on a practice day.
@tjkoyen and @dodo really covered what there is to cover. The only thing I’ll add is that what TJ is describing in terms of being out of rhythm is largely tied to waiting for the kart to ‘take a set’.
When a car has “taken a set,” it’s finished with the weight transfer that comes during the corner entry or exit phases. The weight transfer from braking and turning into the corner is complete, and there isn’t much weight transfer to the rear from accelerating, yet. It’s that point in between where the car is at or close to steady state, and it has maximum grip.
When a car is in the state where a change in weight transfer is occurring, the driver has a harder time sensing how much grip the tires have because that grip level is changing. Since weight transfer changes the amount of traction a tire has, when it’s in transition, it’s a moving target for the driver to sense/read it. That’s why a car that has taken a set is easier to drive at the limit. SpeedSecrets
This is why “smoothness” is so often prescribed to be fast. If your inputs are causing the kart to jerk around right at the time you’re asking it to provide the most traction, probably not going to go well versus having the kart settled.
Exactly. Any input you give the kart when it is not settled will result in another unsettled reaction. This is one of the big things that separates the great drivers from merely good ones. For example, you see the best guys braking absolutely on the limit and the kart is dancing around. But they get the kart settled before they start putting in steering, otherwise that rear end dancing around will only get worse as you give the kart MORE inputs like steering. Any decent driver can get the kart to the braking limit and fling the kart sideways into the apex, scrubbing speed and rolling off the corner slower, but the really great drivers are feeling the tires perfectly for every input they put in, and are never letting the kart stay out of control for too long, exploiting maximum grip through each input and phase of the corner.
They are driving the kart. The kart is not driving them. And often I see drivers struggling to push harder because they are ‘behind’ the kart and reacting too it. They are being led around the track by the kart, not giving the kart commands and taming it.
What @tjkoyen is explaining is so very common. Wasn’t until we had been karting for 2 years that I started to see this really click with my son. He was quick from the start, but when he started pushing to run with regional talent he was always off and always wanting to chase the kart setup because it lacked grip. Truth was that he was asking too much too quickly and upsetting the kart. It was subtle, but it enough to cause issues middle-off, especially in gripped up conditions. As the hands calmed, it opened up more kart tuning options and he started to see/feel chassis changes that before he could not.
We had been racing RC cars off-road dirt and dirt oval since the boy was 5. Tracks closed during COVID and got him on iRacing. Had 2 years of iRacing before we ever hit the kart track. He started late compared to his peers, was 1 month shy of 15 his first time on track. The RC cars and iRacing helped him get up to speed pretty quick, but you just can’t replace seat time!!!
Now he is more than capable on a green or wet track. The challenge now is learning the high grip rubbered up track that only happens at big race weekends and the step up in race craft when fighting among the fast drivers in a regional series.
There will always be more speed to find somewhere!!!
This is the hardest part about karting. I see plenty of new people come and go quickly. If you embrace the learning and focus on continuing personal improvement, the results will come. But unfortunately, it takes time. Even now, as a 15 year karting veteran, I find I still need to keep grinding as the competition never stops getting better (and younger).
It is kinda fun to be on the back-end and having to learn more and focus on little things to stay as close to the younger drivers as possible. In the beginning, we knew nothing, lots of potential, then at some point we reach our peak and the learning slows down a bit. Then, you start to lose some of your sharpness and you need to dig back in and figure out ways to keep up again.
Around the 7 year mark I noticed total agency. But then again, I am scrub.
Yep. Always. So much to keep learning. Little things start to become more visible/understood. I don’t even tune, so I have less to learn than you guys also.
