Mason is an up and coming young driver from the Pacific Northwest, so Davin decided to talk with Mason about what skills are developed by racing in the rain. I’d love for people to share their tips about racing in the rain in the thread below!
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Seems like I’ve always been pretty hit-or-miss in the rain… At Shawano the weekend of this photo, I had the field covered in the wet final, except for one kart who was like .7 faster than me. Which is usually how it goes.
Whenever it rained at the track on a practice day, I was out there as much as I could.
Still, as a Californian, I would fear rain. I agree with Davin on his comment–for me, it was definitely a mental thing, knowing I had almost zero experience in the wet. Rain racing isn’t hard…you just can’t get greedy, and you have to be ok with being a little sideways here or there.
The biggest thing that helped me I suspect was later on in my career I raced on dirt in Focus Midgets. That for a pavement driver was pretty intimidating at first, but the car control I learned from that was stupendous, and now I want to believe I would be better in the rain, given some practice time.
In terms of coaching, I give the usual tips–run off-line, gradual inputs, and look for standing water on the straights, look where you want to run. However, the really fast guys in the rain are smacking curbs, getting the kart sideways, etc…so I would need more practice to be a good advisor for driving in the rain.
I agree with Davin and Mason–if it’s raining on a practice day, you should get your butt out there! Especially when no one else is doing it, imagine if you practiced even a little bit! You would have a massive advantage in those events. As a racer, I want an unfair advantage…
I agree, I feel like there is a definite huge difference in technique between a “good” rain driver and a “great” rain driver. I’ve seen guys crush me in the rain who are super choppy, throwing the kart around, hitting all the curbs… But the usual tips that you gave Eric, will get you above the complete novices in terms of rain pace.
We’ve moved the KartPulse podcast hosting from soundcloud to spreaker and in the process did a little work on the audio. Nothing fancy, but noticed the audio levels were not consistent (Guest loud, host quiet or opposite) I made some corrections (Audio compression) to them.
Of course it’s available in your podcast player of choice too! Despite being recorded a couple of years ago, most of the discussions are pretty evergreen and still relevant.
