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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Now, if I asked you to picture that in action, you would probably imagine a driver on a simulator, with wires all over them and brain sensors producing charts on an array of monitors - all being observed by a boffin.

And that’s what I reckon you can actually have a crack at - you are the driver AND the boffin, discovering some golden nuggets about yourself that actually can help you get faster.

You can get wired up, have extra screens on the go, and absolutely produce some numbers that are genuinely going to help.

Some more than others. Here’s my experience!

Brain wave measuring device

I think we agree that once you tick the fitness boxes for karting, which is bloody hard but straightforward, all the gains to be made are in your head. Your body has to be strong and incredibly resilient to horrific punishment, but once it is fit all it does is deliver what your brain tells it.

And one super important factor of what your brain does is focus. The ultimate focus is the mysterious ‘flow’ state. To me that just means super-focussed, so focussed it feels a bit weird.

Personally, I think the ‘flow-state’ has to be left alone, to happen when it happens. If you try to force it, it will resist - that’s my theory, but there are always sports scientists trying to crack the code to make the flow state something you can switch on at will.

BUT, certainly you want to put everything you can in place to get as focussed as you can.

So, can you measure focus with a device?

Apparently so, so I laid out the 300 quid or so on a device that claims to be able to tell what your brain state is up to.

After all, if I could measure my focus, then I can find the patterns that got me there. If I can figure that out then I can train myself to increase focus, and repeat it far more often. Then the sky is the limit on how fast and consistent my driving will be!

So I strapped that thing to my head, and used the Mindlyft app to see if I can control my focus….

I can’t.

I couldn’t get any correlation between what was going on in my head and what appeared on the app. The app gives you tasks - the more you can get to a kind of zen meditative and focussed state, the higher the score you get.

It gives you instructions, a calming voice and stuff.

Nothing happened, so I was ready to bin the stupid bloody thing.

But…

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Some lucky buggers actually drive more accurately, and more consistently under pressure. Their mind locks in, they get more of the flow-deep-level focus when the stakes are highest.

But there aren’t many of those freaks!

Most of us either completely lose the plot, or just miss that little edge, because when your lap time counts in qualifying, or you simply must not make a mistake in a race, a safety system kicks in.

Here’s what that safety system sounds like in your head…

Don’t f*** this up…

That’s all you need to completely change the context of your driving from free flowing relaxed magic, to a task of trying not to make mistakes and falling into a spiral of slower and slower laps, combined with more and more effort to get worse results.

It is even worse if you have had a ballistic practice day topping the time sheets, but in qualifying you can just sense the hopes and expectations ebbing away as your lap times turn to shit before your eyes.

To make it even worse, we blame:

• set-ups,

• a duff set of slicks

• they all put on their quick motors,

• suddenly the kart sucks,

• the track went away

And to make it even more impossible, all of the above may be true, there’s no way of knowing!

And on a competition day that is costing a fortune, you won’t be in the mood to properly observe yourself to see the almost imperceptible signs that you are tightening up just a touch, so you can’t feel the tiny and multiple grip changes in the track that you would normally exploit naturally.

So, you’re knackered really. Completely in the dark, changing axles and lasering the kart up again wondering what went wrong.

Here’s where your home driver lab comes in to save the day

People dismiss sims as just not real, not dangerous physically, nothing at stake etc.

But, us drivers have pride and ego. If we have a race, especially with other real drivers and reputation is at stake, then we go into the same mode - hyper competitive.

It might not be quite the same thrill, but for absolute certain heart rates go up, nerves start and drivers who make a mistake on the sim lose the plot just the same as in real racing

When it counts!

What counts in sim racing enough to get performance pressure kicking in?

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Assetto Corsa has been going 12 years and is generally considered the best sim for feel.

I love it.

It looks good, feels good, and like a lot of Italian products, seems to have soul engineered in.

Now, that’s all jolly nice and everything, but the way AC drives also makes it very tempting to jump in and mess around with, rather than using it as a serious experimental - racing driver maximising - piece of lab equipment.

So, if you already have a copy, I reckon you should be done with the messing around part. If you only just started with it, exhaust the novelty of sliding around, then commit to using it seriously. There are big benefits waiting to be had.

Assetto Corsa - Instinct driving and advanced (forced) instinct driving

Here’s one way to experiment with Assetto Corsa that I think will pay off big time for your kart driving.

The goal - for you to experience a magic moment where you can justifiably say ‘wow, I’m a driving God - did that just happen!?!’

The great joy of Assetto Corsa is that you can throw a car into a corner and balance an oversteer slide on the exit using feel. Last week was about iRacing, where if you get into that condition you are much more likely to lose the car, and lose patience with the software altogether

But with Assetto, you can hold a car in oversteer without it becoming a major drama. You can play with the angle of the cars in a way that feels instinctive, especially for karters who take for granted how karts are so responsive and controllable.

Of course that’s a lot of fun, but it also means you can really accelerate your confidence in your driving instincts.

Here’s how

Stage 1. Get dialled into competent driving

1. Choose a simple to understand car with rear wheel drive. The Giulia is well developed, or the Ferrari 458, which was the in the very early access works really well for this. The F40 is fun. Road cars are better for this one.

2. Go to a track you like, I use Mugello.

3. Run fast laps in a normal mode of driving without asking too much of the rear tyres. You could go for an iRacing style approach just to ensure you get clean laps in.

4. Once you have a set of consistent clean laps done, get into asking the car to lose traction on the rear, just a little. Resist the urge to drift, just go beyond the limits a bit and get dialled in with your throttle control and counter-steering for that car.

At this point you are able to put in solid quick laps, and go past the limit and play with the car at the limit. This establishes competency needed to move to the next stage.

Stage 2. Look ahead then experience what feels like magic

Practice some ‘look ahead’ driving. Set your apex points and exit markers for every corner with exact points. Fix your eyes on apex points well in advance, long before braking. Switch your eyes to your exit points way before you hit the apex. Get into the full details here if you need to:

Your eyes should always either be on an apex point, or an exit point, locked-on like guided weapon systems - the straight at Mugello is long so you can have a break there, but the rest of the time you should either be locked-on to a mark you can see, or where you believe that mark is hiding.

The Magic Part - Controlling an oversteer with your eyes remaining locked to your target.

This may happen naturally, but perhaps you are so focussed you don’t even notice. But either way I want you stay on your ‘look ahead’ driving technique, and introduce some of the oversteer driving you did in stage 1.

What you really want is the kind of oversteer that begins before the apex that you can carry through to the exit under control, without a massive drama or time loss.

BUT

Be ready for your eyes to betray you!

The easiest way to fall out of ‘look ahead’ driving, is when you slide and your brain switches modes.

Instead of saying:

‘My eyes command the car, we will head for that apex target’

Suddenly, when you slide you can switch to:

‘Oh god, where is this car taking me now, let me see where we are likely to end up here!’

It makes perfect sense, a slide represents a less predictable scenario with dangers involved. So our eyes can abandon our intentions, and go into a rescue mode.

So, if you experience your eyes looking for where you think you might be taken by the car OR even noticing where you hands are or anything else, other than the original and correct targets, then have a little word with yourself and make this resolution.

“I will keep my eyes fixed on my apex, then exit targets, with perfect timing when I slide”

OK, so….

1. Deliberately induce an entry slide, keep your eyes glued to your apex target despite the temptation to give up on that target.

2. Before you hit the apex, no matter how crossed up your arms are, switch your eyes to your exit point target with total commitment.

You might bin it! It doesn’t matter. Stick at it until your feet and hands start to work on their own to make sure you still hit your apex and exit points despite the fact your hands are steering left when your eyes are remaining fixed on a target to the right.

When this happens you might feel a strange disconnect between your physical hand and feet doing their thing, while your mind and eyes say ‘whatever! get us to that target’

At some point, if you keep the car in a nice subtle slide with your hands counter-steering, but your eyes and focus ignoring that fact you are going to glide through the apex and hit the exit point and feel this:

‘Oh YES! I am a driving god!’

And you kind of are!

The god-like feeling comes from two things:

1. The handing over of all driving to your subconscious and your body, because it’s that good you have total trust. Something else does the driving that you don’t even need to be aware of (feels like it might be a god!)

2. When you keep your eyes on the target, and despite feeling that you may have blown it, the will-power of your eyes and your focus on your target point, somehow give your now magical hands and feet the freedom to get you to those targets. And you feel like ‘how the hell did I just get away with that?!?’

So you get a lot of benefits from using Assetto Corsa strictly as a self-training device.

1. Greater understanding of the benefits of looking ahead

2. Massive confidence boost of your natural ability to do things you didn’t know were possible

3. Higher ability to rescue a vehicle that you thought was a lost cause scenario

All these are directly applicable to karting.

Takeaways from Home Driver’s Lab Part 2

1. Assetto Corsa’s forgiving oversteer physics let you experiment with slides without the frustration of constant spins, making it ideal for instinct training.

2. Establish baseline competency first by running clean, consistent laps before introducing any limit-testing.

3. Lock your eyes onto apex points well before braking, then switch to exit points before you reach the apex. The timing of eye movement matters as much as the targets themselves.

4. Slides trigger a survival response where your eyes abandon your intended target and start searching for where the car might take you. This is the instinct you need to override.

5. Deliberately induce entry oversteer while keeping your eyes fixed on the apex target, then switch to the exit point regardless of how crossed-up your steering becomes.

6. The “driving god” sensation occurs when your hands and feet solve the slide problem without conscious input because your visual focus refused to release the target.

7. The disconnect between what your body is doing and what your eyes are commanding is the goal, not a problem. That separation means you’ve handed control to trained instinct.

8. These skills transfer directly to karting.

Thanks for reading

Terence

For my money the ultimate racing driver considers themselves a living experiment in the development of driving excellence.

That means they are obsessed with finding speed in themselves continuously. They don’t just go racing and testing, or join a few sim races and trust in their current level of performance to do the business.

That’s boring

They seek to advance the art of peak driving performance by discovering new principles of driving at the limit.

To that end they systematically experiment, evaluate and refine in every possible way they can.

Now, there are a lot of professional coaching centres that understand this…

BUT, they don’t supply anything significantly more advanced than what you can do at home. They do have a major disadvantage though - they charge by the hour.

The driver committed to their own apotheosis needs days at a time of intense focus - not an hour or two a month. So the real-deal driver needs their own home racing driver lab.

Fortunately it’s totally possible to equip yourself with your own personal driving laboratory!

So, starting now I’m going to do a series of articles, on how to turn yourself into a living experiment in driving excellence, at home in your own fully equipped racing driver research facility.

You’ve got most of the gear already I bet!

Simulators - Brain training not messing around

Everyone else will use simulators for fun, sometimes serious fun, but essentially they are messing around. That’s how most real racing is done too, you get in the seat and you have a steering wheel - you go!

But in a driver’s home lab context, that’s basically pissing into the wind. You will be burning hours of time going through an extremely slow and inefficient learning process.

The temptation to get on a sim and ‘just drive’ is almost insurmountable - so be ready for that. If you get into your favourite driving software, set a time and get into the time-sink of trying to beat that time, you are dead in the water.

This whole approach is aimed at getting into serious self research, not playing around.

What the different simulator titles are actually good for when looking to make yourself an elite driver

This week I’ll start with iRacing.

iRacing - I think the iRacing driving is awful.

You can’t feel your way to the limit of the car, or go just beyond the limit and then dial back. It does my head in.

BUT…

That is the great strength of iRacing and why it’s worth the expense.

To be quick on iRacing you have to develop predictive instincts to be fast. You can’t just rely on your instincts to control the car. You have to KNOW what the car needs, prepare the car skilfully for corners and not upset it - or you will be off.

This makes iRacing invaluable for developing supreme understanding of driving:

You have to know what is going to happen, you can’t wing it and react to a car sliding, you have already blown it.

And that fact correlates very closely with a lot of real world motor-racing. There’s no time for feeling your way in, sliding around and enjoying a car. You have to be on it, correct and clean from the word go.

How does iRacing actually help with karting?

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There is driving talent spread all the way through the whole of karting.

You can go to an indoor league, an outdoor arrive and drive series or a local club racing event and see seriously fast and experienced drivers.

Then there are club races that are populated by drivers who win at national and world level, doing well to stay in the top 5.

The point is perceived levels of hierarchy are mostly illusory. What goes up when the level increases is spending.

So, if you want to turn yourself into an excellent driver, you should apply yourself to a level you can afford. You will still be faced with opposition of a high enough standard that you have to get super-serious about maximising yourself.

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Pretty colours and cosplayers

‘Top level’ karting does indeed have a lot of very quick drivers, but it also has a hell of a lot of drivers who are there for all the pretty colours and to wonder around the pits cosplaying as racing drivers.

There used to be proper racing development going on at the world level with factories trying to beat each other, in order to sell their kit. It’s not like that now, it’s mostly a very expensive day-rate babysitting service for the hyper-wealthy.

Now, there is a worthy challenge there if you want it, to raise the finance to get in there and attract an engine builder willing to give you the kit. I’m all for that kind of challenge which is enough to validate the existence of FIA karting for my purposes.

But you don’t have to do anything like that if you want to work hard on making a racing driver of yourself.

Fulbeck will do

Fulbeck is my go-to when making this point because it’s a very basic club racing venue in the UK, where nobody takes their articulated trucks. It’s mostly regular folk racing because they love racing. And enough of them are bloody quick, and very experienced. You will have an equivalent venue in mind I bet, where there’s no superficiality just hard racing.

To beat them you have to become really excellent.

Of course, the FIA and Formula 1 want to claim that the talent system works, whilst simultaneously claiming they are fixing grass-roots karting with a 4-thousand-a-weekend series.

Don’t be fooled by their absurd nonsense, there are fast drivers everywhere, the F1 crowd just don’t know where to look and what to look for - thankfully because it would be ruined if they did!

Everywhere I go, which includes indoor karting, there are a few drivers to pick out and wonder ‘how the hell are we going to beat them’. It’s the same everywhere.

You can’t lose if you do all of these

If you choose where to race wisely, you will be facing the kind of challenge that can force you towards racing excellence.

The level of opposition will be there to facilitate that, if you set yourself the challenge of winning. If you don’t think that’s possible because they all have better kit, find somewhere where the opposition are not spending that kind of money!

These 3 principles, if you go full commitment, will deliver wins:

Get mega with braking, sprinkle with smoothness

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Stirling Moss said this after driving for the first time, post-coma, which led to him deciding he should quit. Later he questioned the validity of the reasoning…

.. and another thing, I used to look at the rev counter without taking my eyes off the road, not only that, I could see the rev counter and the road and a friend waving to me, all at the same time... I‘ve lost that.

Sir Stirling Moss - My Cars, My Career

Now I think we all relate to the bit where he notices his friend waving, but not so much how he looks at the rev counter without really looking at it - ‘without taking my eyes off the road’.

That part seems super-human to me!

Nevertheless, that’s exactly what I’m going to be asking you to do.

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Personally when I first read that I thought ‘I bet I can do that too’. But when I raced karts there was no rev counter, not for me anyway! I also found that when I first drove a car, I couldn’t really watch the revs and drive with any accuracy.

BUT

There’s a difference between trying to casually observe your revs whilst driving, and desperately needing to observe you revs when driving.

When you really need to see your revs, because you have a drive in you that demands you meet a target, suddenly you find the ability.

So, I’m confident you can do what Moss considered an ability that separated him from the crowd, if you are convinced that you need to.

Why?

This week is part 2 of the boring marginal gains stuff. That’s not in the title because it seems statistically, the word boring in the title puts people off!

Reading your RPM, or speed live, is going to open up so many small gains through corners, that the cumulative effect will become impossible to beat.

It is the cornerstone of the more brutal, numbers driven, approach to marginal gains. Last week was the more ‘holistic’ approach - this week is about:

Pounding the track with sheer force of numbers

Here’s 3 numbers to know, that you can use to little-by-little crush the resistance any race track has against you smashing lap records.

1. Apex speed/rpm

2. Exit speed/rpm

3. Top speed/rpm - where you reach it - earlier the better

Knowing those numbers can set you off chipping away at multiple tiny improvements every lap. It’s like slowly but relentlessly tightening a vice, the pressure gently builds until it crushes the object - or the vice breaks!

1. Apex speed. This is the big one, increase it and you will produce a faster lap.

2. …so long as your exit speed is still the same OR faster. If not then you cheated your apex speed at the cost of getting the corner right.

3. Top speed is a vanity number yes, but we like it! But it’s also objectively valuable as confirmation of improvement from cornering when you hit it ten metres earlier.

I reckon currently you probably only know two numbers for your whole session, which you might look at on your dash, you might not bother.

You’ll know the maximum rpm for the whole run, and you might know your minimum rpm for the whole run. this might be a very rough guide to what gearing changes you need.

But that’s not anything like the level of detail needed to hammer the resistance out of a track.

Task 1 in track crushing, irresistible relentless accumulative gains

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1. Where driving at the limit becomes a discipline and quite frankly, boring!

2. The reason why some drivers look like they’re cheating like f*** when they aren’t.

What are marginal gains in karting, and what accumulates exactly?

A driver able to accumulate marginal gains is not just trying to take corners fast and accurately, they are finding tiny bits of time in 10 ways for each corner.

The key is, when they find a tiny gain, they notice and lock it in.

Each time they find a tiny improvement they are able to keep repeating it. They then find another tiny improvement and keep repeating both.

For example a driver would say:

‘There’s a tiny bump before the apex, when I hit that right it tucks the front in for me and I can get on the power and the kart takes it’

Now, this gain is too small for the data to pick up, it’s like a hundredth of a second. Other drivers listening in are thinking ‘what bloody bump???’.

In the same corner, the driver also found that when the kart tucked in like that and they got on the power earlier, they were also straightening the wheel earlier. That’s another fraction of a second.

They lock those in.

Every lap they hit that bump, kart tucks in, earlier on power, straighten wheel earlier.

Total gain, half a tenth.

But that’s one corner of 12.

If they find those kinds of details on 4 more corners - they are two tenths down the road EVERY SINGLE LAP.

They are on another level. Nobody can see why. So their engine builder makes another 50 grand a year because it must be that!!

So, quick reiteration.

These tiny gains accumulate not because the driver has magic hands. It is because they:

• Notice the effect of hitting that bump just right (kart tucks in).

• Exploit it (get on power early).

• Remember what happened.

• Can repeat it forever onward.

Most drivers instead will hit that bump, and maybe make the gain - but just on that lap.

But they forget why it happened and just think:

Oh that was a good lap… I’m great!

And that’s it, the moment that caused the improvement is lost forever.

Whilst the ‘accumulation of marginal gains’ driver is burying everyone, because each gain stays and gets repeated. The gains keep adding slowly, building up this terrific pressure, under which the regular driver is crushed!

And remember, each gain is tiny - something stupid like a bump nobody else even feels. But they hit 20 or 30 of these micro-gains every lap. If they told you exactly what they found, you probably wouldn’t have a clue what they are on about.

How to get your marginal gains - two approaches - choose one or combine!

I know of two ways where drivers have successfully created this impossible to beat system.

**Warning - This can take driving from sheer pleasure, to sheer self-torture with occasional elation. It’s hardcore discipline really :(

Natural instinct driven marginal gains

Don’t be fooled by the words instinct and natural - they don’t mean easy and it all happens by itself. I say that because I’m lazy and would immediately be drawn to this approach thinking it’s a silver bullet, but it’s not, it’s a real headache!

For some drivers the detailed analysis of every lump and bump of the track doesn’t quite align with them. Instead you have to get really serious about triggering and guiding your instincts to focus. And you also need to bring your memory into play every corner.

Stage 1. Create Trigger words or images for every corner

Start by understanding the character of every corner on the track. You need to create a word that reminds you before you hit that corner what the key is to nailing it.

Already you will be frowning, running the corner through your mind. Most drivers who are honest would shrug with something like ‘get the braking right, late apex’ none of which they particularly recall behind the wheel. They just enjoy driving.

That’s not specific enough, at all. You need to be able to write an essay on that corner, then think of a word that triggers the essence of that whole essay.

When on the track, you tell yourself that magic word, then you should FEEL exactly how to run that corner.

That’s the start - not the end of it! See what I mean that it’s a headache?. All we did so far was establish a base.

In the example earlier, the corner depended on hitting a particular bump correct. There’s detail about it, but I bet if you say the word bump in your head, you automatically know the rest.

So you have a trigger word BUMP. That must be said every damn lap, so you have it locked in.

Stage 2. Make marginal gains by error elimination

Oh god, errors…. Here we go. I don’t make errors.

I bet you do!

Almost all small errors through a corner get ignored. You notice them in the moment, maybe make a small internal complaint then forget it.

These errors are random, and are different every lap but they average out to about the same every lap. You can be super-consistent by the clock, but those errors come up on the data in different places.

When you begin to eliminate these multiple small errors, you start to go quicker. It looks like you are finding time when really you are just fixing the leaks from where you were losing time before.

But who cares!?!

So, what’s the process to eliminate tiny errors.

Back to the bump. If the word bump is doing its job you won’t have to think too much about this corner. You should be executing it quite well instinctively.

Running by instinct frees up some of your attention for noticing little annoyances. If when you get on the power early, which was your bump benefit, sometimes you might feel you got on too early - you got too greedy.

The kart slides a tiny bit, and you correct the slide and the corner looks perfect from the outside, but you know it wasn’t perfect.

That could be a quarter of a tenth down the drain.

It won’t be every lap, but there will be these errors somewhere every lap. Let’s kill this one.

So far we know - the bump works for you - it’s quick

You occasionally go early in the power, lose a bit of traction.

You want to keep everything and eliminate that micro-slide

Quick recap… Remember that the bump and the benefits of the bump are normally forgotten. Now we are adding this micro-slide that is almost always put down to ‘no big deal’ and forgotten, then repeated! This is the rather boring step-by-step drudgery of ‘accumulating marginal gains’.

Modify the trigger word to keep the bump-benefits, and eliminate the micro-slide

You have all this information in your head now about how to get the corner good, plus things that go a tiny bit wrong. You need that information to be live, guiding your instincts in anger, i.e. when actually driving.

So, create a new trigger word that is a short-cut to what you know has to be right.

Something like BUMP-TRACTION.

We both know exactly what that means. You bring up that word before the corner, it makes you alert to exactly what to get right.

You are now running that one corner better every lap than ever before. All you did was keep what was good once - the bump - and eliminate what was bad, a tiny slide.

You are in the process of ‘accumulating marginal gains’

No changes to the kart, no style changes. This is all stuff you have been doing but pissing it down the drain.

Multiply this effect by the number of corners on the track.

Then understand that each time you eliminate one tiny error, you find 3 new, but smaller ones.

It goes on forever like this

Ever and ever more frustrating, as you become tormented and tyrannised by these little errors that come to take over all your thought!

The upside - If you have good kit you are down the road, very hard to beat. If you don’t have the gear, you might be tangling with big spenders and becoming a far better pilot!

Next week: Approach 2. Marginal gains the brutal way!

Thanks for reading
Terence