Remember This When Karting Feels Like a Disaster (Almost Always)
Why do we race when it is always so damned awful most of the time. Because we are badass. Don’t forget it!
There’s a great paradox in racing. We are there for a big picture reason.
BUT… Racing makes us completely myopic (not helped by me telling you to focus on details).
In order to win or even do well by whatever standard you set for yourself, you have to go heavy into detail. Literally with nuts and bolts, but mostly in time.
We work in fractions of a second. We spend day after day planning, building, spending years of income trying to find a tenth of a second.
In karting terms, if after all the profligate spending and heartache - if it doesn’t produce a great man then yes it did come to nothing! That is actually the case with almost all of racing - because everyone is fixated on producing driving skills, not a great man who can choose to become a great driver.
We zoom into data, measured in hundredths and scrutinise what tiny input made a kart hit a point half a tenth earlier than on another occasion. Then, in my case at least, I start to question the accuracy of the instrument (GPS) and try to locate the same instance on video and see if that gain really did happen… A day’s work and a thousand quid’s worth of camera!
This all means we lose the plot regularly. We either shout scream and turn the air blue over a mistake that cost an amount of time that is hard to even imagine, or instead we quietly fall to pieces! I have to sit down on the grass trackside head in hand most weeks.
Why?
Because the vast majority of the time, all this focus on details comes to nothing!
Maybe, ‘comes to nothing’ is actually too positive, very often a lot of analysis and careful consideration, followed by a lot of physical work (changing the axle leads to a cascade of other problems that need to be fixed) actually produces a disaster - we went backwards!
And the mood in the camp is sour, dejection all around, and worse… resentment - everyone resents everyone!
So, the immediate reaction is ‘What the hell am I doing all this for!!??!!’
Isn’t that the daily - on the ground - reality of karting? Horrible! It really is! (and I didn’t mention the costs lol)
Today, I want to answer the question of ‘why am I doing all this?’, because there is a very valid reason - more convincing than: this is what we want to do.
If you remember this on the day it might just redeem all the disasters and keep you focussed, rather than collapsing in a heap!
