Near the end of an effort to figure out ‘what happened’ during a recent track session compared to my personal-best time, I also started to wondering a lot more about, ‘What on earth are the guys who have set even faster times doing, and where is it happening at’? This is a very pertinent question since I don’t race, and so rarely if ever do I get to drive with someone directly in front of me on the track who is faster, and that I can gauge/pace myself against. Which I suppose, is a big handicap to not racing, and which falls into the category of ‘not knowing, what I don’t know’.
But thinking about it, this is the same situation most racers will find themselves in any time they are at the track and it’s not a race weekend (or even on a race weekend if they’re in different parts of the track than the best benchmarks during practice and qualifying). Bottom line is that nearly all drivers spend a good amount of time turning laps without an on-track benchmark to gauge themselves against, which in turn, leaves the door open for them to misinterpret their own relative performance in any given area. Just some food for thought, but let’s move on.
For my own purposes I came up with doing the next best thing, which is grabbing video of the fastest lap I’ve seen someone in a single-speed kart do on this track and fastidiously plotting it against Mychron data for both my personal best as well as the disappointing day’s sessions. (though you’ll notice there is a margin of error of ‘wonkiness’ of the plot placements from interval to interval - I’m simply not as accurate as a Mychron )
It ended up being a great decision. Combined conclusions from video analysis and the exercise of plotting it all left a clear picture (a mix of improper gearing, line choices related to a few curbs, a little under-braking in a couple corners), and indeed re-enforced observations I’d already made when comparing my personal best to the disappointing lap within RaceStudio 3 alone.
I feel you. This gets even harder to do without any data other than laptimes in rentals. I find myself trying to visually and with audio, trying to understand where Im over-extending and slightly losing time. Its been an interesting process because it gets really subtle at pace. Little changes have an effect that affect kart position down the line. It’s also really hard to override your instinct/habit in pursuit of a slightly different turn in or input amount/point.
Honestly, if I didn’t have the data I have, I’d have not known where to even begin in terms of figuring out why the one session was so off the other session, or have anything accurate enough to compare withthe video I found of the track record’ish lap. I would go so far to say, imo, that in 99% of cases I don’t think anyone (including myself) will be able to identify the source of the last few tenths missing from their driving/setup without data. I was completely and utterly without a clue when I left the track that day as to why, where, how, and by how-much I was slower and it took me a while working with the data in a number of ways before a really full picture, which was made up of a few factors came into view.
If someone wore something like these (see below, small dataloggers) in a jacket pocket the usable data they would get would definitely be enough to do useful analysis with. (they would get position data and speed data, the only thing missing vs what I used would be rpm data, which frankly if you’re unable to change gearing anyway isn’t the end of the world)
Also, using video software that gives fine-grained control over playback and ability to edit was tremendously useful as well. After a lot of looking, I found DaVinci Resolve which offers a free version that does what I need and is a massive step up from many other tools for analysis playback.
Definitely a hurdle when you don’t have direct data to compare to. Could save yourself a lot of time and effort and hire a coach to take a look at your GoPro video and tell you what you’re doing wrong.
I’m all for some video coaching , but in this case my issues were 50% gearing, 30% line selection over a few curbs (as in I was not going over some curbs the GOAT was just smashing), and 20% under-braking in a couple spots. With video alone and no other data and/or specific track knowledge I believe a coach would have a hard time picking these things out, no? (though still may have other areas of useful feedback)
I have done a lot of remote coaching with drivers globally on tracks I obviously have never seen or driven on.
I like to emphasize fundamental lessons of driving a kart that apply across the board rather than just trying to point you to a specific braking or apex point for a given track. I don’t want my drivers simply memorizing a series of reference points, I want them to understand how, why, and when we use techniques and for what reason.
Thanks, TJ. I’ll gratefully take you up on that . I haven’t taken any video of my driving for several years because my old GoPro 3 didn’t have stabilization features, but as my luck would have it I just got the new GoPro 13 I ordered this week, so hopefully within the next week or two I’ll have something I can share with you.
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