Karting Starts - Skills, Tricks and Plans
Killing nerves at starts comes down to knowing how you are going to do it.
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
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’.
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 :)
