Drive with Dom
Week 4 edition:
I’m rather proud of this thumbnail.
A quick look back at Supercharged
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Last week I was playing with braking on the downhill and the results are interesting. In both laps I’m at the exact same spot almost down to the millisecond until that first big downhill on Track 2.
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That is interesting. I wish we could get more practice runs in.
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Is this about the turn down from the straight (the left) to set up the corkscrew down right to mini-straight? Either way you keep the apex up top tight. You lifted as opposed to braking I presume?
In the footage, it seems that both versions look similar in that you appear to head down into right turn middle track. The one where you brake, however, seems to get you to the bottom apex later but more tidy. While for a moment, your no brake line appears to be faster, the less good exit allows the braking one to catch back up. At least that what it seems like.
For that final turn, I was trying a wider line down into the corkscrew right. I was setting up off the left edge:
Then I’d try a full zap run down to laye apex out:
I see you are taking middle ish entry to 2 but you let it pull you wide to left and then do a mid track run round 3. Seems like that’s what most do. I need to mess with that a bit.
I try to use width up top after 2 to get a nice full throttle run up hill, through 3, all the way down to t7. I seem to pull often on folks between 3 and 5. But I may be leaving something on table on the uphill part by not sending it wide up hill.
I am thinking of going to BB after work and getting a hero 360 max and helmet mounting it. What are you using? I see that you are doing something different. I would recommend bumping up the ISO a bit, it seems a touch dark compared to your previous video.
Hero 360 on sale at BB today for $350 down from $499.
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Yeah, pretty much lift for a split second and very sharp turn of the wheel at the last second to force the rear out a bit – exactly the same way as I would if I were to hit the brake, just without hitting the brake. Seems to work nice, just have to clean it up a bit.
Yeah I think the next thing I’m going to try there is exactly what I did here, just a split second later to try to end up on that left side (like you have there) which is pretty much exactly the racing line drawn onto the track diagram (and makes sense).
Hero 11, I’ve been putting all the settings in my video descriptions and trying something different every week. This past week I was playing with HyperView and I feel like I noticed it looked darker too. That’s the only difference this week over last week. I like the view though, so I might play with this+ISO 
.
I like @buzzraces 360 videos (a guy from the Tuesday league). I prefer the chin mounted view overall, but I like the 360 view in passing scenarios and such. It definitely lends itself better to the types of things people are looking for in “Shorts” on YT.
I am inspired by Ryan Norbergs latest. I thought this would look insanely neat (or horrible) at SC.
I jumped on the sale and grabbed a hero max for 350. I bet that means the new one will be released imminently.
Sadly, true. For fun I did another short and it got 1600 views instantly.
If only they allowed horizontal. It’s kind of crap vertical since it zooms in.
Shorts seem pretty terrible for us karters, but we also need traffic. Shorts are massively promoted by YouTube so it seems to be necessary to make some to drive traffic to site.
A short “spike”:
With the 360, I think that the wider fov lends itself to shorts. I may run 2 cams.
@nikspeeds It’s on 10/9/23
Hi everyone,
We will be having pop-up league practices again tonight from 7-9pm. Please remember that these are races that must be purchased but you can use your league discount on them. Also, these races are treated just like a league race, so do keep in mind that bumping or aggressive driving in the practices could lead to being penalized in the league itself.
Lastly, I apologize for these messages coming out late, but that is why they are called pop-up league practices. The decision of these races is made day of once we know that we don’t expect the building to be busy.
Best,
Will Mills
General Manager of Operations
Supercharged Entertainment
978 U.S. Route 1 Edison, NJ 08817
Ed. note: (I could get used to karting 2 nights a week during work week. This is very useful and going to utterly kill my desire to sim.)
It’s late but what a fun session. Got 4 heats in on pop-up practice.
I threw a lot of stuff at the lap and made some progress, though it took a bit to bear fruit. My first 3 heats were eerily similar, 45.327, 45.373, 45,364…Then, bam, 44.851 in h4! Woot! I’m happy, once again, to just squeak by, in the final effort.
Heat 4
Yikes!
Nik’s onboard view
Nik’s Heat:
Congrats on breaking into 44’s, Nik!
Rib protectors are useful for rentals, too. Consider getting one so that you don’t miss any months recovering from impacts.
You had a few turns that really nailed it.
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Speaking of other YouTubers in the series… the Buzzraces fellow does good “shorts”. I like the way he uses them to tell a little story:
If you upload a <1 min video with #shorts in the title, it will pick it up. I tried today out of curiosity seeing if I edit a title of a shorter video if it would pick it up (or, rather, how long it would take to pick it up). It’s been a couple hours and it hasn’t yet.
But this is an example of where it works doing it on upload:
But I agree I hate how the “remix” feature zooms and lowers the quality.
Another thing that works good on the GoPro if you use 5.3K 8:7 you have a lot more vertical pixels to work with. I haven’t posted any shorts like this yet, but I compared the vertical frames of cropped 16:9 vs 8:7 and it looks dramatically better (as it should) I with 8:7 cropped for vertical.
I will try that with the crash vid. Re-upload using #shorts.
With shorts it will likely get 100x views.
I am also picking up that 360 cam which lends itself to shorts well.
@nikspeeds re your crash: my bengio is too big. I may be getting another smaller one. If interested, I can sell the old one to you for cheap. I may try one of these:
Throttle as brake
Just wanted to bring up a little thing that’s sorta unique to these e-karts that is a bit different than gas karts.
E-karts have no chill. They literally cannot coast, it appears. I suspect this is because the karts must use some sort of regenerative system that uses the oomph of the kart to harvest power.
What seems to happen with the karts is that the power is very linear and very quick, and throttle reduction produces the equivalent of braking, but with abs, essentially. (You aren’t braking, the axle is turning, but the axle appears to have some sort of mechanical resistance).
So, I have found that the kart likes to be driven right foot only with no braking. You drive down to the apex, reducing power in a sort of inverse trail. Since you aren’t ever braking, it’s not like turning while braking, which results in a spin. It’s more like you have abs.
Anyways, I find this interesting. I’m also wondering how the folks who are learning to kart on these e-karts will adapt to regular gas karts that coast.
Also:
Video 
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I’d probably be interested if it fits! I tried to use one of the inserts today just because I’m still pretty sore but I couldn’t squeeze into it at all 
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Racing week 7 tonight
Here’s my best from practice.
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I’ll bring nicks freem and you can try the bengio. It might be too small but worth a try.
Eh, they are a bit slow, is it speed 4 ?
Yes. This is what we got. They are plenty fun. The top end gets reached pretty quick. You can see me on limiter as I close out the lap, going down the little ramp under the bridge before s/f. Having raced with you plenty, these are quite a bit more exciting feeling on bottom/mid than the gx290s and I think you’d find them very fun.
I would like an additional 15-20% top end but that’s not gonna happen. I mean, they had to walk someone off track in general session because they drove against traffic. That’s the world we drive in, folks!
Week 5: Races 9 and 10
Another fine evening of racing at Edison Supercharged. We return for the penultimate evening of racing, one in which I had hoped to do well enough in to try to finish top ten. I was definitely not the only driver with ambition, this evening, as all sorts of fast laps were forged! We had the benefit of being the 2nd shift (D1-D4). Our later start meant we had good grip from the get-go. Time to abuse the tires!
Race 9
Me and Andres decided to spend the race playing follow the leader, swapping back and forth. We managed to post the exact same laptime for heat 9, which was truly fun. 44.445!
If you listen carefully, you can hear Andres hooting at me as we go down to s/f each lap. At first I wasn’t sure what the deal was as our pace so similar and we were getting constant flags. Ultimately we figured it out and just worked together.
Race 10
Again, Andres and I spend a good number of laps egging each other on. This time Andres drops into the 43s and I just barely miss it, landing a 44.03!
I am content with 5th in final race of night which puts me in 7th through week 5. I also ran a new fastest lap for T1, as well, though I felt I could have landed a sub 44. Still, I am happy with the racing and its results.
I was pleased to see that we ended up behind Marc Coltelli, in our final laps. This means we were doing something right as Marc is the fastest old guy and is bringing it to the young skinnies with a vengeance.
Bonus speed 3 rentals with Brandon
Non-league Speed 3 sessions feel glacially slow. A good time, nonetheless. Time to make precise lines!
Racing Brandon is somewhat futile as he’s quite a bit quicker than me, but often I can surf his wake as we make our way through the general public. Sometimes, he just runs off. Then I try to chase him down, trying to be as efficient as I can in the slow karts.
It’s pretty fun, despite how slow it is. You get to nerd out a bit, at speed 3, drawing precise lines with perfect grip. I was thinking that this forced “slowdown” is a nice place to visit, should you be thinking about your racing lines at speed 4.
We had a bunch of racers have good nights! Kahliel won his heat, breaking into 44’s for first time with a 44.981! Congratulations, Kahliel!
I got a 360 cam and didn’t use it correctly. Here is attempt one:
Race 9 wide
Race 10 wide
Rentals with Brandon wide
Weekly Results:
Supercharged Edison Wednesday League (Y1S1 Week 5).xlsx (128.0 KB)
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44.038! Congrats!
I set my best at 44.295 in the first race, and was excited for the 2nd race to see if I could touch 43s, but they let us out in reverse order! It was a mess!
I eventually tried dropping way back and letting the whole world pass which worked to at least get a decent lap. I was disappointed bc this is our last week at speed 4 on this track. I really wanted to see if I could get it.
I asked Will if they’re going to do something between next week and the start of the next League in January, even if it’s just like the pop up speed 4 practices, and he said he’s been working on something, so we’ll see!
Also they’re going to host a party to close out the league with catering and such. Should be nice! He’ll send an email soon.