We assume that most kart drivers already know how to give feedback on their handling issues. If we expect feedback from a driver, we assume that they already know how to sense a kart's handling issues. Equating the learning of driving ‘feel’ to learning to walk is not as far-fetched as many would think. Any driver who races in adverse conditions can confirm this.
The following tips apply to all drivers, no matter their experience level. After intentional practice, you will describe the kart's behavior more precisely. Top drivers aim for this level of detail.
Chassis Dynamics
To develop a better feel for a kart, understand it must flex and bend to perform well. It is vital for a kart's peak performance. Understanding that this behavior is normal can make racers more comfortable driving.
Here is a great exercise for anyone unfamiliar with the sensation of chassis flex. Before you start driving each day, locate a section of the paddock that appears even, but has a few small bumps.
Have someone push you in a straight line through this area. The kart should come alive. It will warp and twist subtly over slight bumps in the pavement. The driven surface causes the chassis to bend. As a result, your torso, legs, and arms move independently.
You will learn that a kart can flex and react with remarkable speed and ability.
Now that you know how flexible your kart is, let's discuss two fundamental chassis behaviors in motorsports: understeer and oversteer.
Sensing Basic Handling Behaviors
Developing an advanced feel or skillset in any activity requires intentional practice. For example, if you decided you wanted to learn to fly a plane, within your first few hours of training, the instructor would compel you to force the plane into a stall. New pilots are forced to experience stalls because it pushes them to develop a sense of their surroundings.
Just like flying, driving a kart well requires the development of a sense for the handling of the vehicle. For most drivers, the development of this sense will begin to develop when they are placed in moderate to extreme handling conditions.
Intentional practice to understand basic handling dynamics can shorten your learning curve and improve your sense of vehicle behavior. Without a progressive build-up of learning, it often takes extreme occurrences, such as a spin or a small off-track experience, to cement in a driver’s mind that a line was crossed in driving, in the form of extreme oversteer, or extreme understeer.
With this in mind, a great place to start when learning to enhance your driving feel is working with your kart near the realm of one of these conditions. Now, to be clear, I don’t advise endangering yourself or others by adjusting chassis settings to make your kart impossible to control. However, moderate adjustments can give you a sense of understeer and oversteer conditions.
A controlled practice day is a great environment to perform this learning. Once at the track, take careful stock of your kart’s chassis settings. Make note of key areas of the chassis, such as front track width, rear track width, tire pressure, etc. Following this, make a change to one of these settings, making note of it so that you can re-adjust after driving.
For most drivers, erring on the side of experiencing severe understeer is a safer bet than extreme oversteer at first. If you’re unsure of what to adjust at first, don’t worry. Most chassis have great basic factory tuning guides. And you can always talk to other racers for advice. Document all your changes!
If you can’t find a list of tuning options for your kart, many options that will commonly produce a noticeable handling effect are:
- Adjusting the front track width (narrowing to induce understeer, widening to produce oversteer).
- Manipulating rear track width (narrowing to make chassis gain grip, widening to produce more oversteer).
- Altering tire pressures (higher typically increases grip, less lowers).
- Adjusting your caster/camber eccentrics (add and remove caster).
The number of adjustments you can make to your kart is more numerous than we have time to discuss in this article. Choose a simple, easy one, and take it to various ends of extreme in a progressive manner.
For your first few days at the track, I’d recommend sticking to the basic understeer and oversteer. At first, these two conditions will form the basic ingredients for most handling issues a kart will develop.
The more experience you gain with these two conditions, the easier you will be able to sense them coming on. This makes you react quicker in the future. Soon you will begin to feel within the kart when a corner is being taken too fast, or too slow.
The ‘feel’ of the kart will begin to come to you.
Processing and Storing Handling Behaviors
Before you head out onto the track after making chassis changes, think through what the kart may do.
Is it likely to turn better in the corners, or worse? Will the front slide, or will the rear?
If you’re unsure, consider asking more experienced drivers. Asking yourself these questions allows you to develop an automatic habit of evaluating the kart’s behaviors in the corners. And you can store this feedback away in your brain.
Depending on the chassis adjustments you have made, the kart is likely to change its behavior significantly from what you may be used to. Do your best to notice where the kart slides, and where it grips. Most importantly, make sure to work up to your top speed. After all, you could be approaching a realm of new handling characteristics yet unknown to you.
As you begin to inch ever closer to the edge of your driving abilities in a session, your responsibilities as a driver increase. The kart will become more and more responsive, giving you greater and greater feedback. The information you gather will be invaluable to you off track.
Here are some tips to get you started with storing detailed handling information:
- Have a plan before each session. Even the simple act of deciding how many laps to run and at what pace does wonders to engage your new-found hyper-sensitive-kart-handling brain.
- Work up to the limit of the kart. As mentioned before, often chassis changes can make the kart behave differently than you have experienced before.
- As you drive, make note of where the kart exhibits each behavior you experience. For example, if a kart oversteers in the rear as soon as you turn into a corner, it is crucial to note this, rather than to recall it as sliding through the entire corner later. Top-level drivers often will break down a corner into three segments—corner entry, middle, and exit.
- Pay attention to general trends in handling. Does a handling issue get worse as you continue to drive, or does it get better? Sometimes, this answer can be complicated due to external factors. Still, in an ideal case, a driver’s lap times will match the state of the kart’s handling, which can be another rough metric to keep track of.
- If you are following another driver with a similar kart, make note of where you appear to be stronger, and where they seem to pull away. How does their kart behave compared to yours?
Once you have completed each session, make a habit of taking a moment to visualize in your mind your best lap, and then contrast this with your slowest lap. What differences do you notice? Visualize a lap in your mind and determine where the biggest areas of struggle are.
For many drivers, decompressing can take several minutes while sitting in the kart. Once you are done with this decompression time. If you’re up for it, take a moment to write down your impressions of the session in a notebook.
Conclusion
It is unlikely that using the ‘factory’ settings on your kart will yield the best result at every track all the time. Your ‘factory’ level of driving comfort is not going to be enough to get the best out of every race. Working to get out of your comfort zone is often the most straightforward way to experience handling maladies.
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