How to Take Over the Set Up of Your Kart

If you aren't leading the set-up of your kart then you are putting yourself into a weak position. Here's how to take over and get good at setting up your kart and lead your crew!

Drivers are more and more leaving the kart settings up to everyone else in the team, and its becoming a big deal as a differentiator between drivers. So many drivers are hiring a team or a mechanic and then leaving it up to them. Mechanics are very often ex-very-quick drivers who know what they're doing, so it gets left up to them.

Big mistake, big big mistake.

If you aren't leading your team, you're not going to have any real power over your destiny. You are then a customer, not a racing driver. You become dependent and leave 50 percent of your development behind. It creates major problems with drivers, especially with this:

When it comes to difficult times with the kart, nobody gives a damn what you say about anything! Your opinion on the kart, the power of your engine is all seen as excuse-making. You can't give an opinion that has power.

Everything gets blamed on your driving, and if you don't know how to talk kart in detail, you have no voice. You will flounder, and everyone else will have power over you.

Then you just have to back down and take what you are given... And that feels miserable.

If you get to that point, it's actually your own fault because you let it get to that stage.

Taking Back Control of Your Setup

One power move: download the kart setups app, put it on YOUR phone. Record every setup—it's your app, take charge of it. Within a short time, you will have more than anyone else on the setup. That's a great way to start taking over control.

Setting up is about feel and self-knowledge. You need great feel for what the kart is doing, and you need to know what you want.

Avoiding Compensation Driving

Compensation driving is a real problem. Naturally, as drivers, we adapt to circumstances—in a race, you have to, or you lose performance. But setting up a kart is completely different.

When testing, you don’t want to compensate for handling issues and then forget about them because you’ve adapted your driving to suit the kart rather than fixing the root problem.

Even worse—and something I used to do myself—is resorting to aggressive responses, like frustrated turn-in, where you jab the steering wheel in irritation.

If you start forcing the kart to behave, such as by using overly hard turn-ins, you lose the sensitivity required to really understand what’s going on.

The goal is to let the handling issue reveal itself fully.

It’s better to underdrive and keep your senses sharp. You need to feel—really feel—what the kart is doing to achieve a beautiful setup.

Here’s what I’m advocating: aim for super-consistent driving where you don’t have to think hard, so you can purely focus on feeling the kart.

• Become very clean and smooth with your driving before making any setup changes.

• Avoid pushing too hard; stay relaxed and focus on feeling what the kart is doing.

• Let the kart tell you what’s wrong with the balance.

• Resist the urge to compensate for the kart’s issues with your driving adjustments.

A Step-by-Step Process for Setup