Beating Karting Divas

Something is going on, a misunderstanding developing in the world of karting.

• If you are in a team this might be you.

• If not in a team, this might still be you BUT you have an opportunity to avoid it.

• If in a team, you might need even more of a wake up call to escape this.

• Either way, once you figure this out, watch everyone else make this massive error while you forge ahead and clean up!

I think the source of the trouble is everyone seeing F1 drivers swanning about with an entourage of personal assistants, then believing that is necessary for a developing driver. It’s not, but you might say it is necessary if you want to create a diva though!

The problem being, the over-specialising of drivers into machines that purely steer and press pedals, while everything else has to be taken over by an outside specialist. Which drivers mostly interpret as status symbols that make them look like a pro, plus, more deadly, ‘I don’t have to do anything at all, I’ve got a person for that!’

This should only apply to minted drivers playing dress-up as racing drivers (another rapidly expanding symptom of modern racing), but it is bleeding out into ‘lad-and-dad’ outfits leading to underdeveloped drivers and completely knackered parents.

Stop out-sourcing and do the opposite - In-source everything you can!

I had a client who was a very successful business person, a bit of a guru in the making too, talented. He was into outsourcing as much as possible, and focussing on what you do best.

Very cool.

But I had an opinion on his driving that ran counter to that, I said he needs to do way more ‘in-sourcing’ because in racing nobody is as fully committed as yourself, and if you outsource too much you start to lose performance.

In karting every responsibility you take on makes you a better driver.

He did it, and in fact he became a great driver, a great bloke too. He took on as much responsibility as he could. That means data, set-up, turning spanners etc. On top of a very severe fitness and nutrition regime that transformed him into a machine. All that on top of a career, which benefitted too.

But the current trend is the opposite. Young drivers walking into a team and delegating, or even passing on delegation duties for someone else to delegate for them. That’s a great business model for a team because the more a team can lay on, the more dependent a customer becomes.

It is the norm now to hardly see a driver at all between sessions, they show up with 5 minutes to go. Have a performative chat with the mechanic, have a fun drive, followed by another performative chat with the mechanic and data coach, then disappear again.

Thing is, the teams don’t really love those customers, those customers are what’s called ‘payers’. That means they are necessary for business but not what racing is all about.

You don’t want to be just another ‘payer’.

Now, this also often happens outside of a team set up, where a parent actually really loves doing all the work with the kart, the driver twigs on, and actually leaves as much as they can get away with to the parents, who run around like blue-arsed-flies.

The more complete drivers are the ones who can’t afford all that and do everything themselves. Hats off to you....

But you are probably knackered because the whole of karting is adapting away from being doable on your own.

Steadily, the whole of karting is adapting to drivers who have staff, and expecting more and more unnecessary stuff to get done, filling in forms and tyre barcodes, and adding more and more crap to karts, timing people out...

The job load of getting through a day of karting increases every year to a point that karting is becoming something impossible to do without experienced help. Happy days for the teams!

So, yes I think now you do need help to race. But the new norm of a driver with a PT playing catch, a smoothie maker, mind-guru, data-engineer, mechanics, PR etc is not even an aspiration a driver should have.

DO NOT FALL FOR IT - THE NORM IS NOT THE OPTIMUM PATH.

The norm: The new norm is the optimum path for turnover for the team, which means they provide as much as possible for drivers and charge for it.

They don’t want drivers to be like that, but they have to be pragmatic.

So your job is to become the driver a team wants but not the one who pays all the bills. They want a complete driver - usually that means how the team boss was at your age plus a bit more drive to win.

So, what is the optimum way forward?

How to get out of being a customer with servants, and being a racing driver with collaborators.