not the most exiting of races but still made quite a few spots
First Practice of the season. After so many months out of the kart, I found I had reverted to a beginner again. Half way through the session I realized I was not looking ahead and focusing on the corner I was in instead of the corner ahead. Started feeling much smoother after that. (BTW, I think the sound is out of sync because I see my foot hit the throttle before I hear the engine react.)
How did you feel about it? Also, that’s a different t layout than when I went. It looks like you got progressively more comfy. The one area that struck me as inconsistent was t1. It seemed you were playing around with it, looking for the line. Sometimes it seemed like you were a bit too late-apexy.
If felt like I was making progress once I realized what I was doing wrong. They are in the midst of building a second track, so the original has been shortened in the mean time. That was my third session. First one was short. Second one I dropped a wheel and popped the chain and bent a sprocket halfway into the session.
I was playing around with T1. Different braking points, turn ins, rolling points, throttle points, etc. T3 was the roughest part of the track in this configuration. The apex has a rough surface and if you don’t hit it right it will send you off track on the exit. That’s how I dropped the wheel.
Surprisingly I wasn’t as fatigued as usual. Not saying I am in full race shape, but it was a good day all in all.
Jeez Oliver, you are gonna be the go-to GoPro “pro”. You race there a lot!
its practically my home track even tho its 4 hours away
because i haven’t posted enough videos from gopro
I’ve got a final from Orlando I want to post. Need to see if I can figure out how to do that from my phone or if I need to grab my laptop for it. Do I need to upload the videos to YouTube first?
Nevermind, I figured out how to upload videos to YouTube from my phone.
First half:
Second half:
I’d like to see what some of you guys have to say versus what I noticed and worked on over the weekend. There’s a couple things that stick out to me but I may be missing something as well.
First two min, too timid into 1 on the start but starts making decent moves after that. He locks up so much though, I think he would be better over the long run to not roast the tires immediately.
Memo to self: T1 at okc is a not very defensible passing zone. He makes hay here. @olivier.p sighting at 3:31
Looked like a good drive to me. He was making places the whole way through and seems to have more pace than most of the folks out there.
It was a busy race and he was reasonably aggressive, catching a lot of folks in braking zones. While he made a bunch of passes, t1 and the big turn after the back straight (right 180 headed up to double apex left) seemed to be his go-to spots.
I thought it good and wonder how he qualified. Did he have a bad quali?
We worked on the braking throughout the weekend, I’ll make note to keep on him about it though.
Yeah, he was timid for sure, but considering he made 5 corners in the pre-final I think he just wanted to make sure he actually survived first. Being 40th/40 he could just keep up and not have to worry about being overtaken. His start on Sunday was way better.
@Bimodal_Rocket I think you are confused on where the start/finish line is, turn 1 is the double apex right-hander after the 180 following the chicane, so I’m assuming by turn 1 you mean the hairpin after the back straight. If so, yes he loved passing there and really felt comfident to send it from way too far back on a couple kids.
He got wrecked out of the pre-final in the first lap, so we just barely made it out of the LCQ from last after a bad tuning call, and made it in the show starting 40th. He qualified 8th, so we knew he could make a lot of ground.
Yeah. I was referring to the corner where I hurt my ribs as t1. If you are in the pits looking as far left as possible, that one in the corner which exits into the front straight with hairpin at end. (Where he also made lots of passes). TBH I have no clue where the start finish is but if I had to guess, it’s middle of back straight.
My $0.02 (which I acknowledge may be complete bull 
), is that other than agreeing with the other comments, it was a VERY nice drive.
This may seem a bit nit-picky, and/or there may be other justifiable track/setup reasons for what I’m seeing, but it looks like your driver can occasionally tend to drive with a bit of over the top toss & catch driving, which seems to trigger energy oscillation (oversteer, catch, oversteer catch, etc. in the same corner), which make him work harder, and probably doesn’t do his tires any favors.
I see this at these timestamps; 3:19, 4:08, and 6:41 (if you watch the video at 1/2 speed it’s easier to see). That said, cold tires at the beginning of the race could have been a contributing factor for the first two examples.
I’ve seen this (and done this) over-aggressive turn thing for a few of reasons:
- lack of confidence the kart will turn-in the desired way
- feeling rushed (perhaps due to a small error in braking or realizing a bit too much speed is being carried into the turn)
- Just plain trying too hard
That said, at 5:35, there is a beautiful display of tire load management, and another really nice one at 6:20, so your guy definitely has the intuitive chops!
Perhaps this is too esoteric for a youngster, but he looks to have a very well developed sense of feel for the kart and driving the tires up to (and perhaps a tad beyond) their limits.
A next step might be to show him how his kart/tires respond to rough inputs (how waves of energy are created that he must then manage, and his tires must endure). If he understands this energy movement/tire loading/timing relationship, and drives with the intention of not creating unnecessary waves, perhaps it could help him refine his feel (or understand his feel), and maybe that could open new levels of performance to explore.
There are other times in the video where it almost looks like he is just a millisecond late removing steering input or correction input.(this is VERY subtle, but you can see the micro-energy oscillations (or at least I can, but I may be crazy, and/or it may just be the nature of that kart negotiating that track at that speed).
Anyway, maybe trying a mental shift like driving with the intention of producing specific tire loads (and therefore slip angles) at specific ‘critical’ spots in each turn, might get him mentally ahead of the kart instead of ‘with it’, or ever so slightly reacting to it.
Anyway, just some thoughts. 
I noticed this as well. He works the wheel without much waste. Nice sensitivity mid corner and exit. I could feel his throttle modulation, careful to maintain grip as he felt his way through. Corner entry could be woolier under braking but rarely exceeded what works efficiently.
@E13 instead of spending g 10+mil of hard earned money on a race career, consider this alternative:
The fried egg headlights generation:
Nice tuckus, tho.
Bitcoin accepted. How quickly cars get dated, this isn’t any faster off the line than my 50th anni (GTS) but likely more lethal.
The Strassenversion is a race car for the road, that thing would be so awesome to drive. It weighs like 2500 lbs, I bet it rips corners like no one’s business. Only 20 made in the world, pretty special car.
They made a non-egg headlight version too.
I’ll dig up the Tiff Nedell vid
That thing is insane. Take my money! You think my college tuition is enough to pay for it?
You’re spot on, Austin really likes to pitch the kart into the corner and balance it through the apex. We’ve made a lot of progress in smoothing out that initial input but you can still see it in his driving, especially at the start on cold tires.
Once he’s in his rhythm, though, he can really handle the kart well. Austin has an ability to pull 3 or 4 tenths out of a kart that shouldn’t be there, whether it’s missed gearing, setup not quite right, etc. and it’s very impressive to see.
It’s been a lot of work to get him into this form though, he was a frontrunner in Micro back in 2018 and 2019, then got picked up by a team as a chassis development driver and ran a year and a half on a kart they never could get a setup for, which shot his confidence and he started to lose trust in what he felt from the kart.
He’s an incredibly smart driver, I might try talking to him about some of the energy cycle like you mentioned and see if that gets him in tune with the kart better. If that gets us even a tenth that moves us from competing for a top 10 to competing for a podium, which I think he’ll be able to do pretty soon at the national level anyways.