If You Do All These - How Can You Lose Another Race?
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.
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:
