Qualifying Dictates Your Karting Weekend
The 5 minute session that makes or breaks the whole event.
“We were quick all Friday in practise, top of the time sheets all day actually… Then on went the new tyres for qualifying and we were nowhere!!”
When drivers are quick, and their kit is up there, this is the most common post-weekend ‘why it all went wrong’ analysis.
Qualifying…
Because if you have a bad qualifying session you are stuck in the pack for all the subsequent races, where things go wrong. Crashes, stupid moves on you or by you and general desperate measures kicking off continuously.
Every driver you are up against is in the same boat as you - they have to roll the dice over and over, make bold moves and take risks. You will be in a pack of ten ‘all-in’ full risk drivers, taking big chances and making lots of mistakes. We call it a shit-fight!
Meanwhile the drivers at the front have it easy looking after their tyres, giving them an even bigger advantage for the finals.
A hero drive from the back is a once in a while treat, we certainly don’t want that to be the norm IF you have the pace to be starting at the front.
So what goes wrong? Why do so many drivers find themselves underperforming in qualifying.
It really boils down to not treating qualifying with due respect. Now, that doesn’t mean you drive in qualifying without taking it with extreme seriousness - what I mean is qualifying demands far more dedication and preparation than we give it.
Qualifying, unless you are acing it, should become the meaning of your life!
The way most of us go about a race weekend is to treat each practise session as an independent run, where we are just trying to go faster. Practise sessions are longer than qualifying and if we hit a good lap near the end, we are happy. Then we try to go quicker in the next run.
We swap stuff, look at data and maybe try a few driving changes… The target is to go a bit quicker.
Normal right? Yes. But not paying enough respect to the most important session of the weekend which is coming up fast.
Here’s why you are about to get hammered in qualifying:
The top teams are bloody good at it because they know the tricks
Understanding your tyres for qualifying is lacking - Not prioritising the correct laps in practise
Qualifying mindset intensity - there isn’t another lap - critical excellence and accuracy straight out the gate
Not setting up for qualifying
The Solution: Practise purely for qualifying without compromise
That means have a hard focus on qualifying for every practise session you do.
Here’s how it looks if you are suitably hard on yourself:
