Living on the edge, existing at the limits, all that kind of ‘face death - live life’ stuff is what it means to be a racing driver. That’s the attraction of racing, and its what makes every day life appalling in comparison. It is meaning.

It is very easy to find yourself at your own limits when you are new to karting, because everything is completely mental and overwhelming. That’s where you discover yourself, that you are a nutter and get addicted to living on the edge.

But something happens as you get better at controlling your racing machine, you begin to tame it. Comfort creeps into driving and finding the limit becomes a bit of a chore sometimes. Results and lap times start to replace the sheer exhilaration, and so you start searching for technical advantages and reading stuff like my articles on technique and data.

I think most drivers actually lose the desire to reach and hold the limit, because racing life becomes so complicated with finding tenths through every possible avenue.

The ‘feels’ for living on the edge, where magical performance is found, gets replaced with hard facts, science and realities of racing. That means the more mundane aspects of hitting marks, and life in the paddock chasing set-ups and engine power.

Bringing back the magic - feel for the limit and holding it

When a kart is held at the limit through a corner there is a peculiar feeling that comes with it.

Normal quick driving is really like a dot-to-dot, hitting marks procedure - but the feeling is normal and exactly what you expect. You feel grip and g-force.

But the more magical untouchable quick driving does create some weird feelings with a kart. You will recognise this I expect and recall that yeah, it was a special bit of driving…

How does the limit feeeeel…

By limit I mean you go to the very edge of what the kart is capable of producing.

The feel of the kart changes, it can feel like you are floating but on a razor edge.

Or you feel the kart is light and delicate, in a perfection state that if you do anything to upset it, it will turn to shit in an instant.

It’s not the normal heavy load g-force feeling. It feels like something broke but you know it didn’t.

A feeling for delicate rotation of the kart takes over, and very commonly you can feel a disconnection, where it becomes very obvious that your hands and feet are doing their own thing.

A bit of slow motion comes into it, where you become so focussed on holding the kart in this delicate perfection that you feel like time slowed down so you can fit every tiny adjustment needed to stay on the razors edge of perfection.

In this kind of state you can find yourself driving like a god, where steering seems to feel light and central almost all the way through corners, the rear steers itself and your feet do a delicate genius dance that makes the kart magically light and in its own groove.

And also, inexplicably quick. Sustainably quick too, the kind of lap consistency where you take a photo of your mychron.

So all that otherworldly weird stuff is not what we are thinking about at the track. But it’s kind of the point, because we are racing drivers and we are all about living at the very limit, on the edge of glory or disaster.

And staying there…

The limit is your target - how to drive for it

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When drivers are quick, and their kit is up there, this is the most common post-weekend ‘why it all went wrong’ analysis.

Qualifying…

Because if you have a bad qualifying session you are stuck in the pack for all the subsequent races, where things go wrong. Crashes, stupid moves on you or by you and general desperate measures kicking off continuously.

Every driver you are up against is in the same boat as you - they have to roll the dice over and over, make bold moves and take risks. You will be in a pack of ten ‘all-in’ full risk drivers, taking big chances and making lots of mistakes. We call it a shit-fight!

Meanwhile the drivers at the front have it easy looking after their tyres, giving them an even bigger advantage for the finals.

A hero drive from the back is a once in a while treat, we certainly don’t want that to be the norm IF you have the pace to be starting at the front.

So what goes wrong? Why do so many drivers find themselves underperforming in qualifying.

It really boils down to not treating qualifying with due respect. Now, that doesn’t mean you drive in qualifying without taking it with extreme seriousness - what I mean is qualifying demands far more dedication and preparation than we give it.

Qualifying, unless you are acing it, should become the meaning of your life!

The way most of us go about a race weekend is to treat each practise session as an independent run, where we are just trying to go faster. Practise sessions are longer than qualifying and if we hit a good lap near the end, we are happy. Then we try to go quicker in the next run.

We swap stuff, look at data and maybe try a few driving changes… The target is to go a bit quicker.

Normal right? Yes. But not paying enough respect to the most important session of the weekend which is coming up fast.

Here’s why you are about to get hammered in qualifying:

1. The top teams are bloody good at it because they know the tricks

2. Understanding your tyres for qualifying is lacking - Not prioritising the correct laps in practise

3. Qualifying mindset intensity - there isn’t another lap - critical excellence and accuracy straight out the gate

4. Not setting up for qualifying

The Solution: Practise purely for qualifying without compromise

That means have a hard focus on qualifying for every practise session you do.

Here’s how it looks if you are suitably hard on yourself:

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Racing drivers have to be unreasonably optimistic. Absurd optimism is a powerful trait to have if you want to exist in the racing world. If any of us are wise enough to apply rationality and logic to our existence in racing, even in the zenith of racing which is karting, then we are done for.

Logic and rationality will not suffer such profligate waste and glorious celebration of what it means to be mad.

So, with racing drivers I will happily defend their hyper-optimism and rejection of as much negativity as possible. Of course I realise that most of our creed are really very grumpy and barely show signs of life away from the track, but that’s a different issue, (just in case you say the drivers you know are NOT optimistic at all - that’s just a symptom of being in the normal world)

I hope so far I have made a case for you being a very optimistic and positivity oriented individual (despite what people might think from your day-to-day demeanor).

Small driving mistakes get deleted by our optimism, blocking perfect laps!

The optimism is great - well essential really

The anatomy of a regular driving mistake.

A typical session on track where you lose a few tenths just getting things a bit wrong.

1. Mistakes start with the need to be fast, to push harder into a corner out of the blue. A natural instinct of the racing driver of course!

2. Then you find you can’t quite make the apex.

3. Your exit speed is compromised because you wait to get on the power.

4. Frustration kicks in with a big FFS. The slow exit feels like hell and generates a healthy self-loathing and annoyance.

5. The desire to repair the lost time immediately can be enough to over-drive the next corner (mistake hangover). So that’s two bad corners

Next lap. Same corner

Aware of the previous mess you decide to take it easy - keep it tidy. Do it slower- No problem. But slower is well... Slow!

Next lap. I’ll push harder

I’m going wide again... FFS!!

After the session - Pace is ok

This is where a very natural, and unnoticed bit of optimism kills the opportunity to make definite and rapid progress.

After the session the times look kind of ok considering, just a couple of tenths off the leader.

Somebody asks ‘How’s the kart?’

Driver: ‘It could do with a bit more front actually’

Conversation ensues about how to change the kart.

This is the positive thinking and optimistic racing driver avoiding and burying the difficulties in the session, and looking at the kart instead. Here’s the killer thought:

We’ll make some kart changes and everything will be spot on.

That’s pure optimism and illogical. Things won’t just fix themselves, the changes to the kart will amount to nothing and the cycle will just repeat.

You won’t find the couple of tenths you need to win, you will just think that’s the pace of the kart - things are kind of ok.

During the actual driving you are aware and noticing problems. But you can’t think clearly, you are driving at the limit and fully occupied!

But after the drive, nobody wants to self-analyse. We want to chill and talk about the kart.

Kart driving perfection can’t be achieved - I call BS on that!

And why I am often unwelcome at the track

When I see a driver is stuck in this loop, which only really becomes worth confronting once they are close to the front, I ask very unwelcome questions:

“Are you getting turn 1 perfect?”

That goes down like a bag of sick usually, they know I’m asking them to recall a corner and don’t want to!

The standard deflection is a well learned cliche that is plastered all over performance literature:

No corner is ever perfect - we chase perfection but never reach it, it is always the goal but blah blah

Whatever mate.

The answer should either be

1. Actually pretty damn close or…

2. No, not at all - I don’t actually know what I am doing there.

Those answers are acceptable because answer (1) means we can move on to corner 2 and answer 2 means we can say right, let’s get to work on it.

Now, as a full hypocrite I will say you really don’t want to be doing this with a ‘coach’.

It can foster dependence on them watching and asking that question for you so you don’t really develop fully - or you get really tired of having your driving questioned all the time and you just want to knock their block off! I fall into the latter category, making my life a bit complex!

So here’s what you really should do.

FORCE yourself to dig out your buried memories of the session you just drove

Time to get rational…

After a session ask yourself: Am I getting corner X perfect?

It’s a good question because it’s confrontational. You know you’ve hidden something about what went on out there. This will dig it out.

The word ‘perfect’ stops you fobbing off the question and giving yourself margins.

“Are you getting turn x perfect or not?!?!”

For the corner where the answer is no, the full answer is I haven’t got a clue!

That’s probably what no driver wants to own up to: “I do not know”

Now you have to define what is perfect for that corner

The only way to assess how perfect a corner went is to compare it with your own definition of perfect.

And if you don’t know where to start, make a bloody good guess at the following:

1. Where you want to apex

2. What exit point to hit

3. From those, what the braking priorities are

Create a picture of what makes that corner work, decide how you want to hit a bunch of references and hit that plan PERFECTLY when you drive. Since you created the plan, we can guarantee it is possible.

So instead of trying to get a corner perfect without any standard at all, instead get the corner perfect according to what points you say you are going to hit.

If that is ‘wrong’ then hit it wrong, but perfect by your own strict definition at least 10 laps in a row.

Now you are getting somewhere, because you can now say what seems wrong about the way you are hitting the corner perfectly!

So change the plan, then execute that perfectly.

You will home in on eliminating all the messing about that you forgot you were doing.

This is how I help drivers push themselves from quick… to wins. If you can do it yourself then you don’t have to hire me, then fall out with me!

Thanks for reading

Terence

There’s a great paradox in racing. We are there for a big picture reason.

BUT… Racing makes us completely myopic (not helped by me telling you to focus on details).

In order to win or even do well by whatever standard you set for yourself, you have to go heavy into detail. Literally with nuts and bolts, but mostly in time.

We work in fractions of a second. We spend day after day planning, building, spending years of income trying to find a tenth of a second.

We zoom into data, measured in hundredths and scrutinise what tiny input made a kart hit a point half a tenth earlier than on another occasion. Then, in my case at least, I start to question the accuracy of the instrument (GPS) and try to locate the same instance on video and see if that gain really did happen… A day’s work and a thousand quid’s worth of camera!

This all means we lose the plot regularly. We either shout scream and turn the air blue over a mistake that cost an amount of time that is hard to even imagine, or instead we quietly fall to pieces! I have to sit down on the grass trackside head in hand most weeks.

Why?

Because the vast majority of the time, all this focus on details comes to nothing!

Maybe, ‘comes to nothing’ is actually too positive, very often a lot of analysis and careful consideration, followed by a lot of physical work (changing the axle leads to a cascade of other problems that need to be fixed) actually produces a disaster - we went backwards!

And the mood in the camp is sour, dejection all around, and worse… resentment - everyone resents everyone!

So, the immediate reaction is ‘What the hell am I doing all this for!!??!!’

Isn’t that the daily - on the ground - reality of karting? Horrible! It really is! (and I didn’t mention the costs lol)

Today, I want to answer the question of ‘why am I doing all this?’, because there is a very valid reason - more convincing than: this is what we want to do.

If you remember this on the day it might just redeem all the disasters and keep you focussed, rather than collapsing in a heap!

You go racing because you are a developing hero - where else is there to go?

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You don’t prepare, you just get in and light it up. You get magic moments of catching slides that come from nowhere and you get to experience your natural driving talents taking over as you dance your way around the track.

Because that is so lovely an experience, pure enjoyment…

…who wants to sour that with ‘schoolifying’ the whole thing!

By ‘schoolifying’ I mean turning joy into a system, a chore.

Data, track notes, controlling where you look exactly, planning starts etc. Miserable.

Well, the answer to that question is:

WINNERS do, winners go into details.

They ruined it for everyone!! If you want to operate at your limit, you can’t just wing it.

Now I do hear dissent from the ranks ‘I know such and such a driver and I never saw them do any of that notes stuff, or data crap - and they win!’.

I have a rebuttal. That means your driver x should find tougher opponents, they need to stretch themselves. Eventually they will find their ‘winging it’ limit, where they need to up their game. I reckon they are leaving performance on the table, which might be a good way to enjoy racing! But they can move up a level by stepping out of their current comfort level.

BUT who cares about those natural freaks.

We are here to push your limits. So, what can work for you? Does pushing the limits necessarily turn everything into a systematic, sucking the life out of racing kind of discipline.

I think not. I think we can keep the magic and add a bit of professionalism - and go faster.

Impetus and detail vs winging it and dead-flow

I have written a ton on track notes. Different ways to squeeze the life out of every corner so that you can make yourself cheat-level fast. They tend to work on logical progression, where you keep refining over and over.

Fine, but really deep down I don’t think it is the logic of the process that works the magic.

I believe it is having something specific, ready in your mind, for each corner that makes all the difference because it drives your focus through the roof. With increased focus everything gets better. It almost doesn’t matter what the focus is so long as it makes some good sense.

What you need is detail PLUS impetus for every corner. It flashes up in your mind of how you do the corner and how you want to nail it a bit better.

That means you are primed, clear and focussed on every corner, every lap.

Dead-Flow. A flow-state driving dead end.

The opposite state to ‘detail plus impetus’ driving is what most of like to drive in. A pressure free, enjoyable ‘just driving’ kind of immersion flow feeling.

I’m calling that dead-flow. Flow state is something sports psychologists hype, and I do too, as the holy grail of performance. I think we all have been there.

But I don’t believe ‘flow’ is always peak performance. I think it is often a quite mediocre performance where happiness and freedom in driving feels great. The vast majority of drivers are satisfied if performance is good enough, at a ‘that will do level’ (for most drivers a couple of tenths off, top 10 but could be top 5 if we had a tow kind of thing). You probably recognise that sentiment, right? You were happy driving, kind of flowing - the result is good so happy days.

That’s where most drivers are happy to stay - I say F**k that!

I’m calling it dead-flow because it isn’t it isn't maximising performance, but settling for 'good enough'. It’s a dead end.

I want you to risk losing that happiness because you want to push for more…

So, a standard confrontation I will have with a driver happy with p4 in qualifying goes like this:

Me: Do you think Senna was a proper driver?

Driver: Well, I pray to him every night!

Me: Do you think he would be happy with p4 in qualifying and put his feet up, saying that will do?

I’m a bit cruel to be honest - but obviously Senna, a freak genius driving god, didn’t just rely on the fact he was fast AF. He wanted to go to the limit and meet God again in his hyper-flow-state, and he certainly invested his time in creating track notes that worked for him in order to get there.

Drivers usually sack me at that point of the conversation!!

But the point stands nonetheless. Do you want to wing it, or do you want to push yourself to new limits?

Did Senna Solve it? Are his track notes alive?

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This week is my favourite demonstration of elite level braking in a kart, all on video with an 11 minute analysis. So you can be sure of what we mean exactly by braking hard, going in on the nose and keeping the front planted using the brake. No audio this week because its all on the video.

I love braking, and I love hard braking because, well, it looks beautiful. A kart with a bit of sideways action on the brakes cannot be beaten as a driving spectacle. But its wasted unless you can take hard braking deep into a corner.

The ultimate form is taking the braking deep because:

1. You can brake even later if you carry on braking to the apex

2. The kart leans onto the front tyres giving better steering response

3. The kart lifts the rear giving better jacking and turn in

4. The better front grip preserves front tyres

5. Eliminates mid corner understeer giving a crisp exit response

How to perform on the nose deep braking

This week is a follow up from last weeks steering masterclass - and this is the real gold from that lap. Nathan Chafer is sublime on the brakes, going hard on the brake and as deep into the corner as possible.

Deep braking is usually hard to spot, but fortunately for us he gives the game away because you can see his left foot and you can feel how he is taking the braking hard all the way into the corner.

I write about going in on the nose a lot, but this video makes it so much more evident.

Here is what spectacularly good ‘going in on the nose’ looks like without me yapping over it:

The analysis Video

1. Fast feet. Firm hit on the brake

2. Threshold limit of tyres braking creates small amount of opposite lock and controlled rotation

3. As kart begins turn in, braking is still hard. Pressure regulation and feel has to be magic level to do this without losing the rear.

4. The corner arc. After rotation is done steering goes to neutral then slight turn in angle as kart tracks a perfect arc toward the late apex.

5. Left foot comes off brake pedal very late! Then immediately right foot rolls onto the power.

6. Zero rear slide as kart makes perfect arc and through the apex, delivers drag free exit.

Here’s the analysis vid:

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Occasionally I watch a kart onboard video and exclaim expletives at the skills on display.

Here’s an example of one such video - it’s that good I’ll spend two articles examining it so you can use it as a target for excellence in a kart.

Today we can go into the steering inputs, next week the braking into the hairpin.

The driver behind the wheel is Nathan Chafer. I know him because I coached him as a cadet almost 20 years ago. He was good then, now he’s a master craftsman - quite a big one! He enjoys life and so runs in Rotax 177, with the higher weight limit.

Is he quick? Yes, I’d put him up against anyone in the world and expect a result. He’s my kind of driver, if he doesn’t win, he probably won’t finish! That means he’s a bit controversial, but Christ can he drive a kart!

Here’s the lap clean so you can just watch without any commentary:

Here’s my video analysis, all about how he’s guiding the steering whilst being fully lit. If you absorb what I talk about you are going to be fast!:

What I want you to take away from the video:

1. The absolute angles - how little he turns the wheel. Very simple, he uses very little steering input to get through very tight corners

2. Holding steering steady through gnarly corners. Nathan is bloody strong so it looks effortless, but target to hold steering as steady as Nathan even through very uneven parts of the track (remember dropping off the bridge especially)

3. Transition corners and rotation. He will let the kart rotate a bit further than usual, because the counter steering angle becomes the turn in steering angle for the next part. For a left then right ‘s’ bend, Nathan allows the kart to slide out a little at the rear. The counter-steering angle to hold that tiny slide becomes the correct turn in angle for the right hand part of the track. Therefore he doesn’t have to add a steering input to go through the second part of the ‘s’ - the kart is prepped in advance.

4. Hairpins - rotate then straight wheel. Focus on the second of the hairpins, once the kart jacks and rotates, the steering is straight ahead in a neutral setting, and it’s a matter of guiding the kart out of the corner with as little steering angle as possible.

Find more about Nathan and his team, and the Kali Kart.

Thanks for watching!

Terence

I promised I would give you a fully fleshed out approach to starts, so you have some real options on how to fully defeat nerves - if you know everything you can do, and you know for sure you can execute it, nerves disappear.

If you are still nervous, it means you either don’t quite have it figured out and your gut is calling you out for not preparing, or you just have a healthy dose of adrenaline ready to go. You’ll know the answer to that!

The basis of start plans and execution

These are rules that will help you get good solid starts. Once you get super-confident and cocky, then be creative and do what the hell you like, it can’t really go wrong!

I have two absolutes about racing starts

1. Look for opportunities. This is opposed to looking for problems to avoid. The same situation can make a driver abort, or pounce. It doesn’t come down to making a decision in the moment weighing up pros and cons. That takes too long. The decision has to be made in advance, and you carry that into the start as an attitude. That attitude is ‘I’m having it’.

2. NO. The word no is the easiest way to remember that nobody, not one driver is going to get a sniff at passing you at the start or during the first lap. It’s a totally stubborn, ‘there is no way on earth that anyone will even be given a hint of an opportunity’ mindset. Your lines on lap one will clearly communicate that - ‘Don’t even think about it mate’

The skills and the plans, tricks etc will all be in service of ‘having it’ and ‘don’t even think about it mate’. Remember those two attitudes - convert them into your own language that has base, organism level, meaning to you. My own would be using language unsuitable for writing!!!

The NO side of Racing Starts

These are stubborn refusals to give in to various kinds of pressure. Some of these pressures are ones you will exert on other drivers, so for god’s sake don’t give in to them yourself!

No I will NOT give up the inside line to anyone

If you start the race on the inside of the first corner, or by determination or luck you take the inside line approach to turn 1 , you need total stubborn refusal to give it up - come what may.

This sounds so obvious, but drivers succumb to this evil temptation:

‘If I just move over a little I can take a wider line and be faster’

You need to translate that to the reality statement:

‘If I take a wider line I am deliberately opening the door and giving away the race result and I deserve to lose ten places’

This counts for every corner on lap one where you can be overtaken.

You cannot move me! haha

Everybody wants that inside line from you and they will resort to everything they can including contact. So expect to be hit, and find it humorous. If you can adopt the attitude that trying to move you offline is a joke, then you are truly rock solid.

This might start with little taps on the rolling lap, all the way up to big old thumps entering the big braking zones. Be ready and be immovable, even when you take a hit so hard you are looking skyward.

Say no to your desire for the nice open outside line - Do not BS yourself!

Unless you are a hero having a bad day and are prepared to win it or bin it at turn one, don’t allow yourself to escape into the ‘outside line scenario’.

Going to the outside is a lie. That means, you are lying to yourself that the big move for the outside at the start is your big bold approach, when really you go there because it’s far less cramped, and it feels much nicer. It is opting out of the fight.

And then you get wiped out.

If you go outside, you better make up ten spots, or don’t bother. That means going completely berserk. And that’s not the intention of a driver who needs to read this article :)

The ‘have it’ side of the equation. Looking for opportunities

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I caught the end of an interview between Peter Windsor and Jock Clear (currently Ferrari driver development). Now, he said something I found to be quite astonishing:

"I think a lot of drivers struggle with being told how to by someone else... I don't think Federer sees [his coach] as someone who's telling him how to play tennis; he's helping him to develop his skill sets…”

Like what???

Racing drivers, who risk their lives, blow all their money and often sacrifice everything, to compete in what is essentially a blood sport, should be more like tennis players?!?!

Mate…

Tennis is a game, and quite a nice game. Racing is an all encompassing complete human warfare life - it is NOT a game!

Racing drivers are meant to be stubborn, arrogant, belligerent and an absolute nightmare to deal with. They are borderline killers!

Why would anyone want to change racing drivers to be more like tennis players?!? To make their own life easier?

Well, that’s the answer of course, they want to sterilise racing drivers so that they are easier to handle. Good luck to them and their academies fixing racing drivers lol. And of course its the fault of their upbringing in karting blah blah…

Anyway, once I calmed down from that youtube clip, I decided how to lay out what I’ve learned about dealing with racing drivers. The hardest thing in the world, as you know!

Why racing drivers should be un-coachable.

1. If racing drivers listened to good advice they wouldn’t be doing racing in the first place. It’s stupid and dangerous.

2. It is an individual pursuit of total loneliness, part of what we fall in love with as drivers is shutting out the world entirely and being completely alone to decide how to drive.

3. The racing driver is a self-reliance creature, a lone predator. They want to be in total control. Like cats they will totally take the piss out of you, let you feed them etc. But they will not be told what to do! That is in their nature.

4. In order to survive in a world as insane, corrupt, wasteful, expensive and shark infested - they need to develop incredible levels of self-reliance and stubbornness. Everything in racing says quit, this is stupid. If they listened they would!

That’s just part of why they are un-coachable nightmares. Whatever it is about drivers that makes them how they are, it also makes them superb.

So, we have to work with it, lest we want to neuter them and have nice compliant domestic drivers. What for I have no idea!

How to work with a kart driver

Drivers have a very strong sense of self. They want to become materially what they are deep down. A kind of monster/artist behind the wheel.

Nice psychologists call it self-actualisation, less nice philosophers call it the will to power.

Either way, there is a strong drive in them to become what they want to become, in their own way and on their terms. And, correctly they defend that very hard, because in general the world around them wants them to become; like my careers officer at school said:

‘why not aim for something sensible - what about a prosthetic limb engineer?’.

Madness…

Anyway, with a strong tendency in a creature to grow how it wants to grow, it needs to shut out a lot of outside influencers, who want it to grow their way instead. Especially in motor racing, there are a lot of big egos about, who want to impose their own will on drivers.

So, correctly racing drivers learn to close off influence. It makes a lot of sense when you understand how they operate in a racing machine.

Every move they make has to be generated without interference in order to be fast and decisive. If they allow influence (well meaning advice included), they are being slowed down because they have to process it.

Unfortunately for us, that means that you and I get shut down very quickly if we try to influence a driver, even though we are trying to help them achieve what they want!

So…

Tip 1 to dealing with racing drivers.

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I have a real admiration for drivers who suffer like hell from fear and nerves. It could be from the sensation and realities of physical danger in karting, confrontation with psycho drivers, general performance anxieties (If I’m slow I’m crap) or a heady mix of the whole lot.

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If that’s you, you get my admiration because if you feel like you are going to die and still head ‘once more into the breach’, then by my own definition you are heroic. Especially because you choose to do it, through the love of racing and knowing you simply must race - but you still hate it too and it is horrific!

Hero or not - nerves will mess you up

Nerves are disabling, making the whole day a struggle, ruining concentration and focus in the pits, because all the brain says is ‘screw this, we are gonna die’ and it wants out of the situation altogether - regardless of your love for racing!

Drivers shut down and become very self absorbed with nerves. They come across as rude and entitled . It’s not really the case, their brain is in a high alert survival state.

In the tent looking at data for example, where someone is showing you how to go faster - which you know you must absorb and execute on - deep inside, your gut says ‘faster? STFU! - we need to survive!’.

You absorb nothing, like you are underwater and you just hear noise.

Then something happens just as you feel you are beginning to settle down with the nerves. Rain.

‘Oh god no’. You look to the sky. ‘Why have you forsaken me?’

So you become more ignorant, over dramatic and self-obsessed. Not your fault, but it makes life very difficult at the track, and attracts a lot of criticism that isn’t your fault, or relevant. You are stuck in a trap.

Dealing with nervous drivers who hide it well is like dealing with a narcissist, who is also hell-bent on self-defeat and obsessed with doing the exact opposite of anything performance enhancing.

I was a nervous driver in juniors - the dummy grid was purgatory

When I started karting, the dummy grid wait was a nightmare. I would be constantly checking my front wheel nuts, fiddling around with my St Christopher pendant and trying to not feel so sick.

I was NOT running through mental plans, sizing up the weaknesses of opponents or trying to mess with their heads.

I was worried, and that was all I could deal with. Sitting on the dummy grid is supposed to be good prep time. Instead it becomes clutching-at-straws time, trying to calm oneself, thinking up superstitions.

I was also starved, sleep deprived and dehydrated, because I wouldn’t eat, sleep or drink.

I was already ignorant, still am, but I was even more distant than usual and not in any respect on the ball, at all.

I get along with nervous drivers, scared drivers, very well because I am one really.

What changed for me to kill the crippling nerves

The difference for myself when all those nerves disappeared was massive.

I went from all consuming fear and nerves - to just not giving a damn and looking forward to bringing all hell on the opposition whatever the situation. The experience became entirely different.

The source of my own nerves: I didn’t really know what I was doing

I also didn’t know that it was possible to know what I was doing. Not properly.

Clue Number 1 to discovering I needed to know more

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Your kart, how it drives, looks and feels should be a magnificent expression of what it means to be a pure racing creature.

The way you tune a kart to speak for you when you drive creates nothing less than a work of art, great art. When you bring a kart closer to what you want from it, by tuning it, the more clear and frankly beautiful, that expression and art becomes.

BUT this does depend on you becoming deeply engaged with your kart.

Compared to when I raced you are up against serious barriers to creating that kind of kart and driver symbiosis. The attempts to make karting fit various agendas about fairness and convenience are trying to take karting in a direction that adds weight and deliberately separates the kart from the driver.

So you have my sympathy. There’s a lot of crap added to karts that is against the principle of the kart - and they are adding weight and complexity all the time, making it so hard to run one without paying staff and running in a team situation.

This means the temptation to leave the mechanic to it, and ignore the kart like everyone else is irresistible really. If you want to turn yourself into a half driver, that’s fine.

If however, you have the drive to make of yourself a great driver, then you need to step-up and get stuck into working on your kart with real commitment.

The job of the racing kart is to connect the driver to the road with the fewest barriers possible. It is the simplest, lightest and most perfect way to drive and race.

This is what makes it peak driving, and the pinnacle of motor racing. F1 can’t touch it in that regard!

Point is, YOU as a kart driver are really, truly at the top of the racing pile.

And in accordance with your art, for which we all suffer, you should be maximising your relationship with the kart and tuning it to perfection, because tuning a racing kart is tuning the ultimate racing machine. It’s peak driving and peak man and machine harmony - what more can you want?

And by perfection, I mean perfection between you and the kart reached by you, not someone else’s idea of a good set-up.

Before we get into kart tuning - a couple of boxes need ticking

1. Fitness - If your physical limit is below that of the kart, then you won’t be in any position to feel your kart and properly dance with it.

2. The kart needs love - You have to get really familiar with all of the kart. This is one advantage a kart has over all other vehicles. It’s possible at almost any level of experience to strip one down and rebuild it. When you put a kart together, every part of the kart is yours.

And by the way, even if you do indeed love your kart, when you race you have to be utterly disinterested in its survival! It’s a bit weird but your kart is something you should cherish and not give a damn about at the same time.

What you gain in the swings you lose on the roundabouts

Everything on a kart tends to be a compensated change. That means add a tooth, you gain acceleration and lose top speed. Increase tyre pressure and the tyre performs earlier in a run, and gives up earlier.

So many changes make no real difference to your lap time. Even when you make lap time gains, very often can’t be separated from mysterious track changes, air temperature and weird atmospherics - and you doing something different as the driver.

Develop your own theories - all of them are dodgy anyway

You should be trying to develop your feel and balance, the target being to have less resistance from the kart, possibly making it a bit harder to drive but have less drag.

To predict changes with physics theories is borderline impossible. Ask around about what different grade axles do, and you’ll be drowned in theories about material science and wheel lift, all completely different.

Instead I say, get intimate with your kart and feel for yourself. Intimacy with your kart does require you to look after it, work on it, fix it, improve it, make it lighter, make it a pet project and an expression of what you want.

Making mistakes deepens that relationship, so don’t worry about that.

Tuning - Tyre pressure is a great place to start

If you have a sensible kart set-up, i.e. no weird settings, then the place to start with tuning fun is tyre pressures.

That’s because they are extremely simple to set and complex in the extreme, making this a deeply involving exercise.

If you develop an understanding for tyres, that might only work in your head and nobody else’s you have a distinct advantage.

Some standard starter tips on tyre pressures.

Ask around to get a starting point for pressures and be ready to totally discard what you hear. This stops you putting in 40psi when 6 is the typical pressure.

Rule of thumb - higher pressure gives you early race pace and early drop off of performance. Lower pressures take more laps to get to pace but will be good later on.

That rule of thumb isn’t gospel though!

What to play with when you try to learn the ‘way of the tyre’.

Tyre stiffness and rubber temperature

When you change tyre pressure, you are messing with two very important variables, which makes things weird. Pressure increases the stiffness of the tyre making a massive difference to kart behaviour, and it also changes how the temperature of the tyre when driving - which dictates the surface adhesion.

Cold pressures and hot pressures

This makes everything a bit mental. The cold pressure of the tyre doesn’t tell you much about what pressure the tyre will run at when up to operating temperature.

You can only find that out by taking the tyre pressure the moment you come in from the track. But, generally speaking you set your pressures before you go out, which is kind of a shot in the dark! You don’t know how much they cooled down and therefore how much air is actually in there.

Work with hot pressures and make your guesses

The fun thing with pressures is you don’t really know what you have until you measure them after. It’s kinda like a quantum physics thing, you don’t know what’s there until you look.

Your aim should be to find the tyre pressure that gives you the right feel when hot.

Now to mess with your head - think about tyres as individuals

If you can drive thinking about one tyre and trying to feel for what it is telling you then you are getting into real smart territory.

Let’s take a quick refresh as to why - Mostly, people ask someone what pressure to put in the tyres and go. That’s it!

You are now thinking about each tyre, to maximise the capability of the whole kart.

So, take the tyre that does most of the hard work, the rear tyre on the outside of most corners.

Can you dedicate a percentage of your mind to feel that tyre doing its work?

And can you ignore the rest for now?

I suggest you drive, feel the tyre and measure the hot pressure the moment you stop. Then mid-session drop that pressure and go out again and FEEL what changes. Now you are getting super familiar with that tyre and what it likes. You are starting to create a target hot pressure.

If you have a portable air pump you can add pressure too. Go out and feel it. For now forget the other tyres.

Once you find a number you can take a break and let that tyre cool as much as you can and measure a cold pressure. This just serves as an estimate start point, a ball-park cold pressure to start the day on in the future.

The peak optimum pressure for you becomes a target pressure for the other tyres

You can now set about finding out how much air needs to go in to each tyre to bring it up to the same pressure as that outside rear tyre.

Now, this is one approach.

But you may find that the front tyres don’t like what the rear tyres like. You may also find that you prefer an imbalance between tyres. I have no idea

BUT - I want you to get into the habit of:

• Working out one tyre at a time

• Setting and measuring the pressures yourself

• Carry the mental load of finding the best pressures

• Make the adjustments and feeling the difference yourself of YOUR pressures

• Getting very complicated and involved in the life of each tyre

So, without a bit of mechanical knowledge, no spanners and no particular skills and knowledge of mechanics, you can get advanced AF.

Come on, have a crack at that. You’ll be the smartest driver on the grid fast.

Thanks for reading

Terence

The idea that there is a talent spotting in karting is quite hilarious but the F1 crowd do claim to support and identify talent. Now, this article is going to be about driving a kart with skill and beauty, I’m just using my annoyance at the organisations running motor racing and their gross claims to fuel me, it adds some spice!

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So, I promise the ranting part of this article will be short, and serve to produce usable information for you, the karter.

This all kicks off in my mind when I see advertisements by the FIA that they solved all the problems, karting for all costs 5 grand a weekend. Talent now has a frictionless pathway!

That 5 grand a weekend nonsense only serves one purpose:

The real-world ‘talent pathway’

I know for this sure, because I have witnessed it and been questioned by the sales guy at a famous formula 4 team whilst he held said paperwork.

All that the FIA karting classes are used for is to produce cold call lists that identify very wealthy drivers. We usually call these cold call lists results sheets! The car teams just call everyone on that list and try to sell them a 300 grand base package plus testing and damage.

I was actually asked this question by the f4 chap: ‘Do you know any drivers with money?’. Straight up, without caveats about being fast or anything else.

That is how talent spotting is done, aside from the ‘academies’ which is another sales pitch.

If there were real talent spotters worth their salt, you would see them at the end of long straights, watching braking.

If there were talent spotters what would they actually look for

So aside from looking at proven spending history and asking some mates ‘which driver is loaded?’, how would a theoretical talent scout appraise a driver just by standing at the side of the track.

I’ll give my opinions just based on spotting drivers doing stuff at a very early stage, on old kit, in and around the back of the grid. I notice them and wonder ‘hmm, why are they back there? That’s a bloody good driver’.

Then a few months later they are doing the same at the front, maybe on better equipment. Anyway for me it is a confirmation of the original observation, that I like to think is not confirmation bias!

Special feel for friction, exploitation of angles, nonchalance, exaggeration for enjoyment

There is a combination of dancing a kart, sliding and managing a kart at the limit of braking capacity, whilst giving a vibe of total control and an extra bit of exuberance thrown in purely for enjoyment that sets off my senses.

You can hear it from the tyres, and you can see it in the way a driver holds themselves during those braking slides that just says ‘I am on another level’.

It all has to be tidied up perfectly just in time to make a perfect apex and deliver a top notch exit in order to confirm that everything is under control and produces the performance too.

Special feel for friction

Initial hit on the brake

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The racing world is getting very strange. It feels weird.

It should be inhabited by, basically, heroes. We like to make life worth living by doing something so magical that it is worth losing life for (statistically maybe not, but it feels like it very often). We like to advertise that fact too, by displaying what we do in the most flamboyant ways we can - why? because for many people, they need to see racing being done so they can experience some hope and aspiration.

We know some of our racing kin are out there who need to see that, for without it they are facing nothingness.

But something is happening where the racing world is joining the daily grind of nothingness.

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F1 is leading the way to nothingness, and I think they just passed a tipping point.

Because F1 is so important, I like to have a moan about it - a lot. That’s because like it or not they have a great heritage. They aren’t the pinnacle of motor racing, that accolade belongs to karting, but F1 is still important and I’m attached to it.

My first memories of racing are F1 on the telly, it gave me my first self-aware conscious thought that said ‘oh, that’s what it’s all about!’. Grainy footage of a black and gold JPS Lotus at Brands hatch late seventies is what I have locked in to my mind - being 4 years old, yawning and waiting for spectacular crash.

If I play Fleetwood Mac the Chain, I get goosebumps.

That’s because that song, that memory and the feel of F1 is a touchpoint, it says life can be magical when you live at the edge. The whole heady mix of beauty, romance, heroes, villains, death, fire, cars and racetracks.

F1 is there every year, still singing that song. If you have the ears of a racing type, you can hear it even when its muddied by a lot of the nonsense F1 gets involved with.

BUT never before did I hear what I hear now, like a whisper that says ‘we don’t like you racing lot - go away’.

For a long time you could hear hints of that in various ways, like overtaking rules that don’t make sense, or white line rules and commentators saying dumb stuff like ‘they have lines in tennis, why not racing’. Those were understandable misjudgements.

But the current rules are designed, deliberated over with priorities set that mean; what racing IS does not matter.

The most basic racing instinct - we are both pushing to the maximum of man and machine in an honest contest of nerve, will, bravery, sacrifice, risk - is gone as of 2026. That is replaced by priorities set by the motoring industry during a giant self-esteem crisis.

F1 has become very confused, sharing the motoring industry’s fear of being found out for it’s original sin, it has scrambled to get with the narrative in the most clumsy, unconvincing and fear based and weak ways. And from that weakness I believe the 2026 rule set is born.

Now, that may have been forgivable until...

Like the most disconcerting organisations when a terrible scandal occurs, where they abandon their reasons for existing and principles in order to defend their personal interests, everyone in and around F1 closed ranks and went on the attack - in advance with pre-emptive strikes against racing people.

I watched Melbourne on UK CH4, where before the season even started, they put together a little hit-piece with a comedian accusing naysayers of being scared of change. Clearly, so badly judged was this piece of fan vilification, telling people to get lost if you don’t like it, that it must have been decided at boardroom level with a memo going round to hold the line, and gaslight the audience.

The message being, if you think racing is about actual racing, you are not who we are looking for.

My estrangement from F1 got confirmed right there.

That’s exhibit A.

Next, the media around F1 taking the policy ‘don’t bite the hand that feeds you’ making them intolerable to a racing oriented audience. Kind of understandable, but would James Hunt have that? Or would we hear something like this:

What’s next? Oh, of course - F1 taking the policy to hide comments on x that express disapproval. My God that’s projecting frailty on an industrial scale.

Weakness is not a value of motor racing.

So, suddenly I feel a very strange detachment and estrangement towards F1, because F1 did stand for something, which it now stands against - racing.

Karting - Solidly the only surefire path to greatness

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If you could choose tyres, you would ask the obvious question - “how much grip has it got?”. Right?

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What is the maximum grip this tyre can take, and what settings do I need to get the maximum grip that tyre can ever possibly produce. And when the tyre does provide grip, you want the tyre to hold that grip, not collapse and suddenly lose it.

You want maximum grip, and you want to hold that grip.

The right tyre is made from the best compound of rubber to provide the grip, and the best engineering and structure to deliver all the grip in a stable predictable manner.

My argument here is - so should you!

That means as a driver, you need the raw material that provides the opportunity for grip to happen which is the right technique plus...

The right physical construction to be able to hold that grip through a corner.

That is skill + excess fitness.

You need to know how to hold a kart as stable as you can through a corner, and be physically strong enough with the accompanying stamina to do it, and then some.

Tyres don’t like to be messed about

Tyres like to deliver their maximum grip for a sustained period, BUT they don’t like surprises and they don’t like indecisive drivers. They want a strong steady build up, a hold, and then a gradual release. For that they will deliver everything they’ve got to get you round a corner fast af.

They don’t want you to piss them about with a lot of yes no, wait, oh now give me grip, now slide, oops I didn’t mean that - kind of crap. So if you have to adjust your steering a lot, lose the rear suddenly and randomly - or if you like sliding about improvising your way around a track in a playful way, your tyres will quickly fall out with you.

‘Don’t f**k me about mate’

That’s how tyres speak. They like to deliver top level performance in a professional environment, where everything is just so, bish bash bosh.

In practical terms this means you hold your kart steady through a corner, literally holding the steering wheel in as constant a steering angle as you can, adjusting it as slowly as you can manage. Your level of skill at doing that determines at what speed you can maintain that kind of steady state steering through a corner, and then your feel for grip determines how close to the edge of upsetting your tyre you can get, which is dancing at the limit, before you start to lose time.

Unfortunately, especially for physically lazy folk like me, this means you have to be bloody strong to drive a kart fast, and you need serious stamina to keep it up for full 10 minute sessions, without degrading.

What kind of strength is needed

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Don’t forget the audio is not just a read through, in fact this week’s audio I think is better than what I have written - so give it a listen!

Has the novelty of data systems on karts disappeared? Are they boring now that everyone has one?

A data system used to feel like a real advantage, and drivers would be all over the screen in wonder. The attitude was ‘this is pure gold and nobody else has it!’.

Now when the laptop comes out the standard reaction is:

“Oh here we go, you’re gunna have a go at my driving now”

Data has become like the obligatory track walk - something that you just do. And just like anything else that is just something you do, nobody gives a damn. The morning track walk is done with a coffee and by rote, and data is done as a box to tick.

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Indicators that data lost its shine

• The driver has to be shown the data.

• The driver doesn’t rush back to the van to download their own data and disappear with the laptop.

• The driver doesn’t point at the laptop screen declaring ‘holy shit!’ because a new 2 tenths jumped out of the screen at them

Of course I’m being a bit sarky here, because I know nobody is looking at their data that way.

Why, because it has become clinical and stripped of meaning and therefore power. It doesn’t engage the racer’s brain any longer - quite the opposite!!

So, a device that can tell every single driver how to go faster sits there redundant, whilst everyone prefers to scratch their heads and pretend that there isn’t much left to do.

How to reignite data passion and get back on it.

Here are 3 golden rules to get yourself back on the data so that every session is full of drive, purpose and deep focus - IF you have been neglecting it.

1. Data is for setting targets you know are achievable, and are based on what you can actually do.

2. Data should be used to give you a lift, a goal, in support of the possibility you can in fact hit those lap times.

3. Targets from data are far more important than objective facts!

The third rule there is the one that will raise eyebrows, because it says let the data tell you lies if it helps you drive faster.

Data is a wonderful artist for painting goals that objectively speaking aren’t bulletproof. BUT goals convincing enough that they give us the ‘feels’ necessary to actually hunt them down and find the time.

The connection with the data must make you hope, must give you positive goals and must make you look forward to getting on the track and delivering on what is promised.

All racing is based on optimism despite a lot of facts, that’s why it is a pursuit for the brave and crazy. So data just needs to tell a good enough story to do what is needed.

That’s a lot different to looking at the data with someone who wants to prove you are full of shit, or just in a performative manner to prove you are doing what you should.

Example data tricks I use to get drivers fired up

In a nutshell, anything I can find that is verifiable and convincing enough to prove that a driver has already driven a part of the track fast enough, to make their fastest lap even quicker.

Drivers look at the fastest driver in a session, or whatever benchmark they have and feel like they need something to bolt on the kart to find that time. Faster engine, better tyres, magic set-up.

That’s a very hard mindset to crack. Plenty of people around the paddock will say no, you are driving crap - but that doesn’t do much except depress them.

I use the data to show them the time is there, they have already driven fast enough on particular corners to get that time - it just needs to happen all on the same lap.

In other words YOU have the speed, YOU have the kit and you just need to put this together. you have already done it, you ARE fast enough.

1. Time difference lines - identify gains, add them up

Using the time difference or delta chart is the most reliable way to find where you are faster than you think. All the dashes have this in the software.

The delta chart shows time gains explained here and those little orange lines I drew on show a one tenth absolute gain, and a speculative tenth. So, I can speculate with reasonable confidence that the fastest lap should have been 2 tenths faster, and absolute confidence one tenth.

When you say to a driver one tenth, maybe two - the word ‘one’ is deleted, they accept two tenths. In their mind they did that lap time.

You have to reverse engineer how those gains were made - so long as those ideas are feasible a driver feels the possibilities and very often delivers.

Now, gps is kinda sketchy on how those deltas are created - if you go deep into it like I do you might find some anomalies let’s say. Don’t bother! My experience is that drivers go faster when they focus on finding time they believe is there. So believe and go faster (what a book title!)

Theoretical best - run with it!

This is a bit more sketchy than the delta chart, but when your faith has been rocked get on the theoretical table! It’s not fabricating anything and it does its best to show where you aced a split. Use my rule of thumb and you will be within reason.

Theoretical best adds all your fastest splits together, and says what your fastest lap would be if it was all the fastest splits only. With the MyChron software it divides every corner so you get a lot of splits and it produces a very optimistic time.

Now we all know you can cheat that easily by going way too fast into a corner, and fluffing the exit. The theoretical best will include that.

BUT do you often do that? Not really…

Who cares anyway, look at the number. As a driver, your instinct will see that number and want to see it on your dash during the next run, because you know that number is constituted of your driving and nothing else.

Rule of thumb. Theoretical plus 2 tenths is a sensible target. More accurate updates of Race studio 3 may even give a sensible target.

Summary

If you have let the data slip, or it has become a performative meaningless exercise then it’s useless.

You need to use the data as a way to feed your positivity and your imagination. If you see that there’s a tenth or two going begging - you have to recreate in your mind how you did it (just not on your fastest lap).

People go nuts about visualising, but this is real use of mental imagery to find real time rather than a party trick.

So, get back on the data, use it to find positivity and specific parts of the track to focus on - whether or not it’s accurate isn’t really the thing. It gets you thinking and it gets you focussed, whilst everyone else is messing around.

Thanks for reading

Terence

I’m buzzing off the back of a few drivers landing hits with sponsors over the last few days. In each case the magic ingredient is personality and character that sponsors feel compelled to back, align with, and support.

Now, if you feel like you don’t have a particularly impactful personality or character - you are wrong. If you are a racing type then you have it. You’ll see what I mean as this article unfolds.

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It’s Lonely at the Top

Entrepreneurs, who are your targets (especially local ones) are usually very single-minded and driven individuals. They handle risk and pressure every day - but for our purposes the most important thing is that they are lonely.

They might not be suffering from it, because they are flat-out on their mission, but they are always despairing about the lack of like-minded people around them.

They look at their employees and see a lack of drive, lack of focus and ambition.

Instead what they see every day is lots of entitlement mentality and mild to overt hostility toward them. If you are a successful entrepreneur, generally people feel like you owe them something because it’s not fair that you have it all.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of it, that’s the situation they are in. Bitterness and resentment towards them is normal, and the entrepreneurs start to feel disdain towards just about everyone they deal with.

This loneliness and feeling of disdain for everyone around them makes them very vulnerable to you!

When I first accelerated down the straight at Rye House on my first day in a kart I felt like I was transformed into a god. I didn’t quite realise that transformation also made me look at non-driver types as an altogether lower species. At age ten I became a very particular kind of snob - I don’t think I have recovered.

To You, I am Sacred

That’s how I approached the idea of sponsorship. I felt like I really was a saint-like figure, and anyone who was honoured by my blessing needs to put their hand in their pocket and fund my racing - especially the loaded among the flock!

Now, full disclosure, deep down I still do think that drivers are indeed a higher type, but with very important modifications.

Anyway, the raw aristocratic mindset I had got me nowhere of course.

If I could have been honest with the letter I wrote they would have said this, and I suspect it’s what we all want to say, really:

Dear Rich Bastard,
You have money that you don't need because you are a loser, I am a god and need it. The money is nothing to you anyway, you’ve got so much - what is twenty grand to you, my god what is wrong with you?!! I can put stickers on, Jeeez, what else do you want, jam on it?!?!
Cheque or bank transfer is fine.

And that’s how 99.9% of sponsorship proposals read to business owners when they translate the actual intent. That’s because they are treated like that every day, by almost everyone - and they need that like they need a hole in the head. Straight in the bin, or more likely a fob off.

BUT let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater here. Drop the entitlement and keep the driver magic and you are in business

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I used to spend a bit of time with some F1 types scouting around for prospects ( I was the karting tour guide!). They weren’t naïve obviously, so ‘prospect’ mostly meant loaded driver - but they were still racing people with the right instincts.

One memory that sticks with me is the reaction from this old F1 PR guru gentlemen. We were supposed to be watching a ‘prospect’ but he had his eye on another driver, who pulled off a divebomb lunge for the lead where nobody passes (last corner at Rye House):

Jesus! Now THAT’S a driver!

It was an involuntary outburst in front of everyone, one of those ‘elephant in the room’ moments. I spat my coffee, more at the outburst than the driving on display!

But the point is that when a driver throws themselves into a high risk move, it hits us all hard. So hard that someone who knows better than to lose the plot about the wrong driver, can’t help himself.

We love to see the aggression and the risking it all on the roll of a dice. Well, ‘love to see’ is an understatement - we go into an ecstatic hero worshipping frenzy is more like it.

But from the driver’s perspective, is it actually aggression towards the opponent?

If I ask what a driver needs to make the next big step, aggression is usually the answer.

From the outside, we see aggression and dominance. But thinking back to driving myself, I don’t think I needed to feel aggression towards any driver - yet we ask drivers for it all the time.

What kind of aggression is really needed for bold overtaking?

If any aggression is needed at all it is the kind that you would direct at yourself. If overtaking doesn’t come easy then you have to exert some enforcement over your instincts that create the resistance and hesitation that makes overtaking impossible.

Clarity and decisiveness count first. So that you actually start making moves. Successful overtaking is something you learn by perfecting it, but you have to start with imperfect moves. Either way, you gots to make those moves!

Control your eyes, they decide the target. Eyes on apex means go - eyes on driver means retreat

Our eyes are really a bit naughty. We can consciously direct them, but generally they do what the hell they want, and we don’t worry because it usually works a treat.

But when we are driving, eyes can cause serious problems. We need them to pick our targets and direct us to them, but our eyes also want to find dangers and make us avoid them.

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The beautiful bit of driving for me is corner entry.

The limit-braking and sliding, creating angles. Synchronising brakes, steering, kart rotation - watching a driver end a slight slide gently, overlapping that with initiating a turn in, orchestrated by hand and feet compensating and balancing.

All mixed with aggression, determination, yet intelligence and fine sensitivity.

Wonderful!

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I love all that, it’s a lot to admire and be entertained by. The artfulness, skill, bravery of a driver all happening in one moment.

BUT

Then things get serious. I can watch a corner entry with all ‘oooo’ and ‘ahhh lovely’, then the exit becomes:

Because the exit phase is the business end of the corner.

If that isn’t right the displays of skill and prowess on entry become a distant and bitter memory!

Corner exits. The critical eye. No more admiration, it’s spreadsheet time.

When we watch drivers, (by we I mean coaches, teams, anyone who cares about you winning) we watch your exits like a hawk. It gets serious, this is the profit side of the business of driving. Whatever you did on the way in has to pay off via an inch perfect exit.

We are looking for an exit that bags all the profit, has no cost, no mistakes, no drag.

Show me the exit speed!

When I watch a driver exit, it’s all business. Like show me the money… I don’t see sublime skills any longer - I see potential to steer too much and drop the profit from the corner. The exit is about bagging your gains, and not dropping what you’ve worked for.

What we look for with a sweet exit

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Some drivers have weird talents that don't get noticed at all. You only discover them when you listen to drivers going on about a lap - exactly how they do it, what they look for, the feedback they get from the kart, all the considerations they make.

These talents feel normal to them, so when they mention how they do something, it gets blurted out and largely ignored.

But these are things that set them apart, that are rare - proof they are rare is found when you ask lots of drivers to do the same, they can’t.

I think everyone has something like that, some weird way of perceiving, or a level of feel for things the kart does, some depth perception thing or special awareness - some capacity that is different and needs to be exploited heavily.

I’ll go through some ones that stick in my mind, maybe you can say ‘hey that’s me - I do that!’. Or they might trigger something in your mind that registers the fact that you have a few tricks up your sleeve that you need to lean into heavily yourself.

Either way, the point is that there is something there in you as a driver that is waiting for discovery or exploitation that sets you apart.

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Here are some examples of driver weirdness that made them bloody fast:

Weird Braking Feel

I love flamboyant braking, it’s something that makes a kart look and feel spectacular.

The technical point about it though, is that it is important to get to the limit of the rear tyre’s capacity for grip, by overstepping it. It’s a great way to measure the grip available and from then on, you can demand that from the tyre and ensure you always get everything from the grip available.

However, one driver who later went to the top of British karting and actually just bagged a world title, had an uncanny ability to brake later than everyone else, deeper into the apex with zero drama, no locking or even any protest from the tyres.

For fun, he could stick the thing sideways and wave if he wanted, but when pushing he just had a feel for the absolute limit without having to test it.

Now, there is a great danger here of course, lots of us will say me too!. I don’t brake hard… OK, but it has to be combined with having two gifts:

1. You can feel and predict, without testing the limit, exactly how much grip the track has to give within one corner of leaving the pit, and drive to that limit and produce leading times.

2. When you hit the brake, you need to instinctively know how to make that brake, with all the nuances of the particular braking set-up, to get the exact right braking pressure needed to deliver the braking performance needed.

In this particular case, the driver was running a kart that had been welded up multiple times, with a shoddy old set of brakes.

This is why I couldn’t really believe what I was looking at. There was no feeling his way in. From the moment he left the pits, he’s out-braking good drivers, never going wide, never missing an apex.

Weird.

Weird Speed Awareness

Obviously we all know we are going fast, and we can feel that we are around the limit and stepping over it. We can feel all kinds of actual feedback from the machinery.

But some freak drivers have a sense for speed, like they’ve got a damn speedo organ somewhere. I say damn because I find it annoying that I have no hint of this weird ability.

It’s something I first noticed working with drivers on a sim. One or two can take this instruction and execute on it.

‘On the data, you can do 2kmph faster through t3’

So, they go and do it! Consistently. You can tell them drop a mph with apex speed. Same thing.

Obviously, there is no physical speed going on with a sim, it’s some sense they have, a perception.

So the same drivers in a real kart are extremely easy to work with. You can tell them they need to go a certain amount faster or slower. They deliver it.

You give them the keys to a fast lap over a few sessions, they nail it. You choose a couple of corners where you suspect there is a pole lap time, ‘if we find 1kmph there, and another there, we get pole’. They try it, exactly as - if it works, they get pole position.

If you have that, you are unbeatable really - if you can work with data.

Rotation Freaks

One of the most strangely talented drivers I know talks about a lap and points on the lap, not by the location of points, but by how rotated the kart is.

So, if he explains a corner to another driver, he will say ‘when you feel the kart turn a bit more, then you can get on the power’

In response, trying to translate for the kid he’s advising, I say ‘yeah but where is that, exactly.’ I mean, a mark on the track or something…

‘No, you just feel it’

Christ!! What’s he on about!

If you dig further with this kid, he drives a track constantly feeling for, inducing and reducing, rotation.

We all do that to some degree, but he thinks rotation.

The upshot of this is he is, conservatively, half a second or more faster than anyone else alive in a kart if it rains mid race. He’s a bona fide freak of nature.

He can do things with a kart, that nobody else can do…. He does fly a bit too close to the sun occasionally but whatever. He’s unique.

So, if you think in terms of rotation, and talk in terms of rotation (yaw angle) then maybe you are one of that strange species!

Special Ignorance

‘You will feel the kart go light there, like you are going to crash into the wall - ignore that’

Eh?

‘You just have to know when to ignore what the kart is telling you there, stay on it.’

But you don’t always ignore what the kart is telling you - right?

‘Of course not, otherwise I’d bin it!’

Now, with these ‘special ignorance drivers’ if you continue to pursue a rational breakdown of what constitutes ‘what you need to ignore from the kart’, and ‘what you need to pay deep attention to’, you will find the answer is arbitrary….

It’s another, well you just know job.

These drivers are always very sensitive and able to keep the kart right on the limit, yet at certain points where they feel the kart telling them ‘lift a bit or we are off’ they don’t - when normally they would.

So they get the benefit of being super sensitive PLUS they know when to be a brute, and just force their way through a moment.

That’s a talent. It’s not pushing through fear, it’s pushing through genuine reliable sensations that tell you no, and somehow you know when to say ‘whatever’.

One way a driver explained it to me is that he knew when the kart was lying to him! So if you can discern when your kart is deceiving you with its feedback, and forge ahead anyway because your confidence over-rides everything else - then you may be a super-ignorer driver.

Takeaways

I can’t give you instructions on these talents, they are abilities some drivers have, that I certainly don’t. I kind of understand them and see how they work, but in truth I’m just jealous!

They are just there in some drivers, it’s extremely cool to find them - and when you do, you can go all-in and miracles happen.

BUT…

I haven’t worked with a driver yet where there is no unique attribute, and they can all be developed and used effectively. Every driver has got something going on!

Thanks for reading

Terence

Wheel to wheel racing on a sim, especially iRacing is weird.

It feels not very ‘racing driver’. It’s like racing but domesticated, and made polite. People kick off with the slightest bit of aggression, that in a real race is considered normal and expected - by kart racing standards anyway!

Yet at the same time, random and pointless take-outs are the norm too…

The racing is strange, random stuff happens and the rules of engagement on a sim aren’t transferable to a real kart race.

BUT…

What is transferable to real racing is that your live decision making on making moves has to be fast and clear.

The best route to high clarity, decisive and clean strong moves is to have your decisions made in advance. By advanced, I mean before you even hit the track!

Your overtaking rules of engagement really need to be in your blood, then they just happen with deadly certainty, without thinking.

Crap overtaking and half-moves on the kart track are almost always the result of thinking about the pros and cons of making a move, or ‘how can I overtake without risking a crash?’. Tentative overtaking is always a recipe for disaster.

If you are a bit hesitant against a high quality driver, they will run rings around you - if you are tentative against a less able driver, you are likely to take each other out, probably with the age-old complaint ‘they turned in on me!’.

Of course you cannot foresee every actual overtaking move before you drive, but you don’t need to. What you need is to have your policy of how you will overtake fully prepared.

I say in your blood, because it needs to be a part of you, your racing demeanour.

Drivers know when and where they will make their moves, well in advance they feel it. That’s not a magic cognition, that’s just them knowing and trusting themselves, no doubts about how appropriate it is - also knowing it has a risk, not pre-regretting the mistakes, they just have it.... that’s why they can shape up a move well in advance, but also why they can force a move to happen that looks impossible, they won’t be denied.

I get the feel for it watching a driver, you know they are going to go in, you know exactly what will happen, and they always do. It’s a nice experience from the outside too... clarity is contagious!

‘Find out who you are as a driver’ sounds a bit airy fairy, but it isn’t.

If you ever made eye contact with a driver on a dummy grid who is totally wired, the deadly intent in their eyes is one of total self-understanding, not at all airy fairy because they understand they are demonic and mean harm.

That’s one driver configuration that you might relate to. Or you might be a more strategic driver, who may in fact feel no intimidation from a nutter because you have them sussed-out.

What counts is the strength of your conviction. That strength comes from your intent being aligned with the truth about your character, which isn’t all that easy to align, at all!

Wouldn’t it be lovely if we could just say:

‘I’m a ruthless psycho driver who takes on every move - I execute and win’

And off we go racing doubt free pulling off bold moves never to be defeated again!

But if your character is not aligned with that intention, you will be in even more of a mess than ever before. You get a perfect recipe for half-moves that end in a big incident, initiating an overtake with aggression, then when push comes to shove a true part of your character interrupts and hits the panic button with ‘wtf am I doing!!’ followed by an impossible attempt to abort the move, locked brakes and contact.

Driver lab method to clear, decisive and in advance overtaking decisions

Nobody dedicates real world practice and racing to ‘find out who you are’ on a real track where time is short.

But on a sim you can do it. Well, I would say you really must do it, because the difference it makes is so huge!

Recommended procedure for sim driving

Quick reminder: What we want is to give you a racing driver demeanour that matches your core character enough that it flows out on track, resulting in clear committed decisions without doubts.

Your character is complex so we won’t hit that alignment first time - you will know when you get it right - you’ll feel tremendous.

Prepare your attitude with your feet up on the sofa!

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