Why Your Driving Always Needs to be Bit Wrong

If you are over-driving someone like me is going to have a moan at you for it.

I would say ‘If you can calm down your inputs you are going to find a lot of time’

A team might say ‘Stop driving like you are on Tokyo drift FFS’

Equally, if you are under-driving someone is going to come at you.

Me ‘All your techniques look correct, we just need to keep those and add more speed because the kart will happily accept it’

Another approach ‘Any reason you are doing a Driving Miss Daisy impression???’

It’s also quite likely that you have been told both, one right after the other and felt like you just can’t win.

Like:

“stop sliding around like an absolute bandit”…. So you stop pushing and calm everything down.

…followed by:

“why the hell are you suddenly taking it so easy, what are you waiting for!?!”…. I’m just doing what you asked, I’ll push a bit harder

next session:

“Hey, what the hell are you doing you used to be so smooth!!!!”

This can go on forever, in some cases it does!

Escape the Over-driving vs Under-driving Loop

First of all here’s what I mean by over-driving:

• Generally too much sliding.

• Not enough consideration of how a kart wants to be driven.

• Exit drifts with rear hanging out.

• Excessive drag coming from the kart killing speed.

• Too much steering input, sliding through apex, careless burying throttle

• Lazy wheelspins in the wet

Sometimes it comes from frustration leading to pushing too hard. Other times it is a driver prioritising fun over laptime.

Under-driving is the opposite:

• Basically not getting anywhere near the limit of grip.

• Braking a bit early, everything is too easy.

• Just driving round, no chance of mistakes, other than the general mistake of not asking any questions of the kart.

• Common symptoms, tyres never get up to temp, often running a pound or two higher in pressure to compensate.

Now when you are getting bollocked left, right and centre for pushing too hard, then not pushing hard enough you are very quickly going to lose motivation or get sick to death of being damned if you do and damned if you don’t.

BUT don’t despair, there is gold in them thar hills!

If you haven’t noticed already this site is packed full of contradictions. Brake hard, brake soft, know your marks down to the finest detail vs forget marks and just look.

I do my best to avoid being hypocritical by saying these things are a matter of style, and you get to choose how to build yours.

However, if you really want to become a full on master of going faster you can use the contradictions in driving to force constant improvements out of yourself.

This means getting out of a loop of opposites and into iteration.

Over-driving and under-driving both contain bits of gold, and if you keep the gold and discard the crap when you switch between them, you will find yourself getting faster and faster, even if you can’t escape the bollockings which are always a part of the racing driver life - either self-administered or from outside.