I am new to the sport and having a lot of fun learning and tuning up my LO206 Kosmic Kart! My local track is Pat’s Acres which is a tight-ish old school track with a lot of history! I have made it to three practice days and my goal each time is to improve some aspect of my day.
I set my personal best time of 43.6 in a previous practice session which had more moderate temps (70F) compared to last weekend (85+). Last weekend I was running about a second off of that pace, but looking at the Mychron data, I do think I should have made a carb adjustment due to the heat. RPMs were lower on average across every lap compared to the more moderate temp day.
So while I did not improve my times, the area I did improve upon was chassis setup and balance. Prior to this session (video below), I have been struggling with a lot of oversteer on entry and at apex. I adjusted ride height, front width, rear width, etc which improved things slightly. But, the thing I adjusted this session was unbolting my third bearing! This immediately improved things! The kart feels much more balanced through the corner. I now think that my oversteer issues were due to a lack of jacking.
Anyway, I have been filming and posting my practice sessions for my own reference and improvement. Figured I would link to my latest video of my final practice session last weekend. I am a 29 year old rookie and have not made any connections to the local kart community yet so I don’t have many people to bounce ideas off of. Happy to have found these forums! Let me know what you think and if you have any notes for me!
Pat’s Acres is really nice looking. It’s one of the few tracks that’s aesthetically pleasing and doesn’t feel like an afterthought.
What’s your Motorsport background, if any? You seem to have some previous knowledge as you are using track width and getting down to apexes.
One thing I noticed is that you seem to be charging into the turn at 1:44 a bit too hard. It feels like you go in fast and use the tire to scrub speed. Maybe this is one of those turns where taking a bit off up front on entry makes sense, so that you can drive through the corner building throttle earlier.
I’ve never driven there and am of limited skill so I may be incorrect. But, that’s my observation.
Maybe there’s a hot shoe that has footage of pats acre you can look at to compare
I was staing beheind him for a time beacuse i wanted to see his racing line but i realized that he was like 1 second off pace so i overtook. I would say im pretty comfy in trafic especially starts not really sceared of the push back bumper in the start of the race it was rain and i started p 30 beacuse this was my last black rectangle race and gained 12 positions in 1 lap i had the fastest lap overall in the finals and 5th in time trail. And who is oliver🤣
Oliver Piatek is one of the young drivers that hangs around here. He’s been racing a lot for the past several years and is racing well at the national level now. He has come a long way.
My motorsport background as a fan/enthusiast began at a young age. I grew up going to the Watsonville speedway (dirt track) with my dad to watch sprint cars, super modified, legends, and goofy things like demo derbies! I have deep racing roots on both sides of my family. I grew up hearing my parents and extended family tell many stories of their day’s racing. My grandfather was a part of a rather successful drag racing team back in the 50’s and 60’s. He became my Uncle’s “mechanic” as my uncle grew up racing quarter midgets. They traveled around the West Coast as a family supporting my uncle’s racing. On my Dad’s side, I am related to Tom Sneva (1983 Indy 500 winner and multiple-time runner up). So, I grew up hearing stories of Tom and his brother’s racing over the years and even caught a race or two of his brother Blaine racing ovals in the Northwest.
Despite motorsport being around me my whole life, I never got the chance to actually race myself as a kid. My wife and I have been F1 fans for years and one rainy Saturday this May, we decided to look up what the nearest indoor track was and try it out! We have been hooked ever since! I raced this summer’s season of Pat’s rental league (narrowly missed out on 3rd place in the rookie championship due to bad luck of the “kart draw” in the final race). I bought a used 2019 Kosmic Kart with a LO206 setup from a local kart shop in August. It is a former RPG team kart and was previously raced by one of the fastest guys around here. Right now, I am just doing practice days and learning as much as I possible can! The goal is to use this offseason to slowly build up the gear, tools, parts and experience in order to set myself up for the local series next year.
As for your comments on the final corner, yeah that corner is tricky. There is adequate space on the exit to carry a lot of speed through there. But the banking makes the line pretty tricky to hook up. I think you are right though, I could probably brake a bit more into there. I just try to keep the revs up as much as I can because of the long front straight right after there.
How do you think my hands look? I’ve been trying to smooth them out and have been working on only turning them as little as possible to make the corner. From indoor karting, I had a bad habit of “flicking” the kart into corners and then catching the slide through countersteering. I am trying to break that!
Hands look pretty good to me. I’m not seeing secondary inputs to correct/modify intital input. You seem to keep the kart well in the rubber and let it track out. Nice use of width on entry. The coaches who actually coach might feel differently but it looks pretty good for a day 3 karting enthusiast!
The background story was interesting and thanks for sharing. I guess all of that exposure/interest means you come to the game armed with a better understanding of “how it’s done” than most.
Well another way to think about it is that you are losing rpm decelerating to the apex via scrub and the motor isn’t breathing well. Maybe try some earlier braking so that you can literally scoot through rather than into the turn. Seems that would ensure a better launch to the long straight bit. I could be way off.
Thanks for those photos! Yup, I am fortunate to have years of hearing F1 broadcast talk about racing line, braking points and race craft in general. I also am a huge nerd and have been devouring technique videos, blogs, posts and other sources of theory. So, I know (generally) what I should be doing and just need track time and experience to train my muscle memory and feel how doing it all “right” actually feels.
I’ll post future videos here as well! You have been a great help Dom!
Sure thing. If budget permits, consider some video coaching from TJ as you get going. Probably better to have potentially bad habits beaten out of you before they take hold.
Here is some video from our night final from the final round of the Texas Sprint Race Series. The track is SpeedSportz Racing Park in New Caney, TX. This is the KA100 Sr. final.
For sure the top speed of the 250’s are way up there (140-150mph). Also when you drive a shifter you can always stay in the powerband if you drive correctly and your gearing is right. Acceleration on the 250 is crazy!
I had never driven a non shifter kart until the other day and I had a tough time getting used to only have a rear brake. Four wheel braking is night and day different!
Seems like a good event. Big fields are big fun, imho, particularly in longer races like enduros. It’s cool because over the course of the hours, you get different packs of pace so everyone gets a race and you get to have constant passing action as you pass each group (or be passed). Newcastle looks like a must do.
Heat 3 seemed to go pretty well despite the earlier setback. How did you feel about it? What do you think went well and what needs work? How did you fare vis a vis Scott and his bro? You did very well recovering.
It looks like to me your giving an initial input that is quick and from the apex out you are counter steering too much. When you are a little slower or careful with that initial input you don’t seem to be chasing it as much. As your run went on this did mellow at bit, so is it you or the kart coming in?
Kart-wise, not sure. I didn’t feel bogged down in corners, so I’ll probably keep roughly the same setup next season when I race their series. As for that race and layout, specifically, I’d probably gear just a bit taller, since I got better at the turns as the weekend went on, and was able to carry more speed through them.
As for Scott and Dan, Scott was a little faster pretty much all weekend, he finished the final with a fast lap about 3/10 faster than mine. Dan was similar times as mine, mainly depended on the race and whatever he got caught up in. He didn’t have the best luck on the track.
Final had its downs, and then it had its ups. I really had no time in no man’s land in the final, there was always someone in front of me to chase down, making it a pretty fun race. I would have liked it to be a few laps longer, lol, so I could get a few more dudes.
Thanks for the feedback Robert. So, I am not sure if my initial inputs are too quick. I am not experienced enough to really have a frame of reference. What I was feeling on track is that at the initial turn in, I would immediately get oversteer that I had to correct for. Because it took awhile to figure out a chassis tuning adjustment that would help with this, I think I started to adjust my driving style to compensate because I agree, I am basically catching the oversteer through the apex of the corner to make the turn rather than steering in and out.
I felt like in this session, I was getting less of that initial oversteer and “catch” once I loosened the third axle bearing. I do think you are right though, I need to take carry a bit less speed into some of the corners. Particularly the first two corners (double apex essentially) and turn 7 (slow left hander in the back portion of the track).
I’ll keep focusing on smooth hands and play around with the entry speed next time I am out!
