On this picture, when would karts be rotating?
I would think the rotation would begin a bit earlier. Unless thats the point where it sort of settles, maybe? Also its hard for me to relate because we’d be braking so much later and shorter. Here, there’s this huge trail down.
Cars have a much greater variation in how they need to attack the turn. That picture is more about showing the zones and less about where they are or their extent. Remember, some cars have the engines in the front, some drive the front wheels (entirely or partially), and cars also front brakes. Some cars have 60% rear weight, others 60% front weight. I occasionally track my Elise (60%+ rear weight), and it needs to trail brake to ‘set’ the front tires. Other cars can go unstable with trailbraking and require point-and-shoot driving. You also have bigger differences between min and max speeds with cars since you have gear ratios, decent drag, and relatively low grip (on streetable tires). A 206, for example, can take turns at vmax because vmax is low and grip is high. The braking zone is much shorter because the vmax is lower and the min speed is higher. A kart is also narrower, so it can take the same turn faster due to the larger radius. Still, all those zones in the picture of above are still present in kart turns, you just have to mentally adjust them
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That’s a good explanation, thanks!
Hey Fellas, hope y’all are well.
Just a quick question on the topic of looking ahead. Is there any sort of training that can be done to improve one’s ability ‘slow down’ time to process better what is happening on track even at full speed? And if so please let me know.
Reducing the sensation of speed (or slowing down time) is all about efficient mental processing of sensory information. And efficient mental processing is all about letting go of top-down intellectual ‘manipulation’ of the driving process. Or put another way, it’s about letting yourself relax enough that you can let yourself (your intellect) delegate the actual driving tasks to the appropriate level (e.g. the subconscious processes that actually controls our complex physical movements), so your intellect is free to do what it does best: timing, navigation, observation, interpretation of sensations, subtle influencing of subconscious processing. This is all influenced by the intertwining of your mental approach and your concentration style/level, and if done well, this can positively influence your sensation of speed, confidence, and sensitivity.
Here is some detailed reading on the subject:
Reducing the Sensation of Speed
Concentration for Racers
Confidence for Racers
One thing that I feel is often overlooked is that forcing yourself to look farther down the track is a brute-force hack for dealing with an underlying information processing issue. Maybe it can magically start a cascading realignment of your information processing systems, but it seems much more likely that it will become just another thing your intellect needs to remember to be doing when it’s already busy driving. 
As far as training goes, I think think of ‘novelty’ and unpredictability as the assassins of speed and confidence. So if you want to reduce your sensation of speed, use repetition (laps, video, imagery, sim, whatever) to reduce or eliminate novelty in your driving. We drive on closed circuits, but it seems like some (maybe many) drivers set off on each lap ready to relearn that which they already know. It’s like they manufacture novelty so they (their intellect) has something to do (or be in charge of) instead of relaxing into what they could actually do with little or no conscious thought because of a great deal of confidence gleaned from extensive experience.
There are a couple of training ideas here.
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I think getting used to SOS just comes from familiarity. Part of making it happen is allowing yourself to look around more freely when driving. People have a tendency to focus on their immediate surroundings and don’t realize that your brain doesn’t need that constant attention.
for me the key is to remain active visually. To not let myself just stare at anything for too long. I try to look through the guys ahead. I try to observe something different constantly, and don’t let myself get tunnel vision.
One of the things I was taught when learning to autocross then road race is that you go where you’re looking. Like Dom said, look through the drivers ahead of you to where you want to go, not necessarily where the driver ahead of you is going. It’s easy to follow the driver ahead of you off the track if they make a mistake when you’re focusing on their bumper instead of your line.
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Yeah this is a good one, I concur. I also find it very useful in highway driving.
I guess if I had one piece of advice it would be “eyes moving”. The mind does a great job of remembering where a thing is so you can go look at something else for a moment. Look around a lot, and never dwell on anything for long.
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Or, try to dwell on everything simultaneously (using awareness instead of attention) as much as possible, and only ‘look’ at specific things (like reference points, competitors, etc.) when necessary.
I heard a trick from an auto-X instructor, obscure the bottom half of your windshield to force you to look up and ahead
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I love how wildly impractical yet effective this idea is.
This is what I have been tempted to do. Place a piece of tape on the middle/upper part of the visor and force myself to look around that area.
I’ve been meaning to do it in practice but have yet to try it. I think it would help greatly. Just got to make sure the Marshals are ok with it.
Thank you for the golden wisdom gentlemen. 
The thing is that I have been familiar with the speed of my kart but it’s like Warren said I have to think about my driving.
I seriously owe you guys a coffee 
Well I don’t have any tips but read some good stuff in this thread.
I have raced karts, motocross, supermoto and mountain bikes and I will tell you for a fact the kart is the easiest of those disciplines to look ahead. The reason I say this is that the two wheeled racing I have done all have many obstacles to deal with constantly and it is very hard commit to a line or rut or whatever it is and just trust yourself to hit that line without keep looking at it.
I prefer to think of it as Widening Your Field of View. It is not so much that you are looking ahead, but that you are not staring down your nose. Maybe I am just stating the same thing in different words. Think of it like you are a quarter back in football, you are aware of your position and that of those around you and you go through your check downs of receivers to pass the ball to. You may have to move around to avoid getting tackled while simultaneously finding a receiver to pass the ball to. In racing, your focus may shift from point to point, but your awareness encompasses a broader view of where you are and where you want to go. You do this with a glance here or there, then hold that in your situational memory while focusing on where you want to go next.
You achieve this by not feeling like you are driving the kart, but rather you are the kart or it is an extension of you and you are willing it to go where you want it to. When you walk you don’t think about picking up your foot and setting it back down ahead of you, no, you just do it because you body remembers the motions and executes the actions. When your driving is less about the motions and more about the actions it frees up those mental processes to broaden your field of view to comprehend more. Where am I on track? Who is around me? Where do I want to be? The driving becomes automatic or second nature to the racing.
“The machine becomes weightless, just disappears. All that’s left, a body moving through space and time.”
- Carrol Shelby
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Good analogy Greg! Nails it.
I think in other sports this is called being “in the zone”. You are aware of what is happening around you without consciously processing the info. You act on what is happening and what you see and hear around you without thinking “they did this so I need to do that”. It’s a great feeling when you get there!
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I personally think that the zone is simply an elevated version of this baseline. All mental processes are firing autonomously, you are abstracted from the process. Earlier on for me the zone felt like I wasn’t driving or even there in some ways, the Stig shows up and takes the wheel and I observe.
Stig is long gone now, however, replaced by perhaps a higher level of sensitivity/understanding that makes him redundant. He still drives better than me but he’s not around. I don’t mean that he’s lost, just that I outgrew him I think.
That’s one of the cool zone things… actions that precede events. Seeing the future, kinda, and making an input that, in the moment, makes no sense, but turns out to be prescient. Always a bit surprising when it happens.
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