Karting Conflicts - The Clear Decisive Way to Treat Tricky Opponents
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How do you deal with a driver who stands between you and progress, but who is behaving in a way, within the rules, that you find to be dumb?
They are unnecessarily provocative, weaving, dive-bombing inappropriately causing you problems that aren’t justified. You know… a numpty; but sometimes quite a quick numpty who usually costs themselves time in the process of destroying your race.
This is why you need to have the principle that your self-respect as a man or a woman, is more important than the results of any race or championship. If you don’t have that principle, drivers and racing folk will take advantage of you.
I reckon this isn’t so much about how a kart driver deals with opponents, but more how a strong and noble character deals with disrespectful behaviour in general. Once you have that answer you can convert that to karting tactics.
For me, racing drivers are great women and men first, they just so happen to discharge that strength of character via karting.
That means that your self-respect comes before a race result or even a world championship.
A noble racing driver means what?
On telly is where we get some good examples of kart drivers kicking off, but in F1 cars.
Most pundits and media folk get jolly upset when drivers behave in a noble manner, because the public and media believe drivers should be ‘professional’ and respect the sport - and place championship considerations and ‘what’s good for the team’ above all else.
Not because that’s high-calibre behaviour but because they want to see drivers put in their place. Conforming to a comfortable model of a professional racing driver is what’s required. Not an independent driver with high self-esteem and superior personal moral values to them, displaying their personal sovereignty.
That’s why people get upset when Verstappen delivers very clear statements on where he stands - and conversely nobody questions what’s going on when Toto Wolff humiliates Antonelli on the radio - telling him to shut up.
Personally I would have loved to see Antonelli park that car immediately, and instruct Wolff to never talk like that again. What an interesting scenario that would produce!
So, just for clarity, I mean that Antonelli’s personal morality and self-respect should immediately trump career, team and money. Being spoken to as an inferior whilst driving an F1 car should create an instinctive ‘I’m not having that’ reaction followed by an unreasonable response.
This is the key to racing clarity and developing a no-messing reputation on the track.
High self-esteem applied to live karting racing scenarios so you are clear, decisive - AND your reputation does the work for you.
When you have a reputation, where your reactions are predictable, then these kinds of silly situations don’t happen. Nobody bothers to try anything.
A reputation is created in the minds of other drivers by consistent behaviour on the track. You become very easy to understand, and the other drivers factor that in when racing with you.
Obviously we don’t want your reputation to be any of the following:
indecisive
weak
naive
vague
We want it to be the opposite with some additions
decisive with immediacy, acts on instinct doesn’t need to think
strong and won’t yield
smart and streetwise
absolutely clear what this driver stands for
NOTICE I didn’t say act like a lunatic and fire everyone off, or give as good as you get and bury drivers. I know that’s the reputation teams have, Facebook is full of stories of teams being overheard telling a driver to launch someone.
That’s not at all the idea.
The first priority is for you to establish a real reputation that is exactly correct to your own nature and character. So, before you begin building your rep, first have a strong idea of what you are about. I have worked with drivers who are quite frankly monsters, and I have also worked on this with drivers who are very ethical and vow never to touch another kart, ever.
Both work and everything in-between, just be definite about what you are about.
What you need is certainty and clarity, so that you can act with immediacy and no counter thoughts and self doubts. Because in the heat of battle with other drivers decisiveness is king.
What you do isn’t as important here as how decisive you are about taking immediate action, whatever that action is.
When you are clear on that, your reputation starts to build itself.
Examples:
An ethical driver getting frustrated by an idiot.
A driver who plays exactly by their own standards of zero contact driving, playing by the rules. They encounter a driver on their way through the pack who is 0.5 a lap slower. Catching the driver fast they pass first chance. That driver immediately re-passes with a dive-bomb move and to add insult to injury taps their helmet and points forwards with the message ‘let’s work together - don’t be stupid!!’. Clearly the driver is an idiot.
Our ethical driver in this case has to start thinking what do I do now. Thinking and driving don’t work well together. We make a slightly hesitant half-move and the idiot turns in on us, our INSTINCTIVE reaction is ‘do not hit them!’. We avoid contact, the rears lock, we half spin…. nightmare!
What to do in this situation and building a reputation so this idiot doesn’t try this again
Rather than waiting for these kinds of situations to arise and half-arsing it and finding yourself losing seconds, figure out exactly how your character deals with it in advance.
Let’s say for our example of the ethical driver:
Base character: Fair, respectful, competent, exact - treat drivers well and they will return the favour.
Reaction to bad driving: ‘I treat drivers fairly and with total respect. If they annoy me, I don’t need to think about it (because I already understand my own character is fully legit). When a driver pushes my button (I don’t care why, I just feel it, that’s enough) then I act with appropriate strong zero hesitation response.’
Here’s what I think you could do ON-TRACK if you are the ethics type driver:
As soon as the idiot driver from earlier makes that dive-bomb and taps their head, an immediate decision has to be made at instinct level. Your buttons have been pushed!
This means you act immediately with a strong response and zero hesitation. You don’t need to think, since you are certain you have thought all this through more than enough.
Appropriate response looks like this: ‘Your stupid little head tap and dive-bomb pissed me off and now we go into strong response mode. You will understand this is more than a re-take of position but it carries a message - make no mistake, you just poked the cobra!’
You know the corner where an overtake is difficult to make and not used without risk. Ethically speaking under normal circumstances, you would choose a different location to pass a reasonable driver. Now you choose to make a strong move that you know will send an idiot type driver wide, since they are too silly to adjust. You also realise the move might cost you time BUT you have to build a reputation that says this:
Mess with me, and I am prepared to pay a cost in order to teach you not to bother
Execute the move with total legal precision, run the driver wide on exit within rules and drop them.
Building a reputation does have a price. Short term you have to assert your character on the world, in your own way.
Long term, drivers learn that you will react strongly and therefore choose not to play that game.
Suddenly you will find that you are free of idiots, because they aren’t that stupid after all.
This is why you need to have the principle that your self-respect as a man or a woman, is more important than the results of any race or championship. If you don’t have that principle, drivers and racing folk will take advantage of you.
Thanks for reading
Terence