Racing Basics
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SAFETY EQUIPMENT. There are three main pieces of safety equipment: The seat belts, your helmet, and what you put inside your helmet. The seat belts are addressed in greater detail below. Get a helmet that fits tight and doesn’t slosh around on your head. Use your chinstrap. The most overlooked piece of safety equipment is the drivers head. Use it. Make good decisions. In the event of a rollover, keep both hands on the steering wheel and let the seat belts do their job. Do not try to stop the kart with an arm or leg. If you come to a stop and you are not on your wheels, shut the motor off as soon as possible and wait for help.
SEAT BELTS. Get your belts as tight as you can. The steering wheel is used for steering, not holding you in the seat when centrifugal forces are trying to relocate you to the passenger side. Tight belts will keep your weight on the left side of the kart where it’s needed for optimal cornering. The proper way to tighten your belts is to start with your lap belts. Push yourself back into the seat with your legs and tighten the lap belts. Once tight across your lap, press your upper back into the seat and tighten your shoulder belts. You don’t want any slack in the belts. Make them as tight as you can stand or as tight as you can get them. In addition to this being the best way to protect your body, it will allow you to get better feedback from your kart through the seat of your pants. With tight seat belts, you can “lean” on them, allowing you to maintain a proper grip on the steering wheel and reduce fatigue at the end of the races. You may even need to re-tighten your shoulder belts during a race. Reach up and grab one strap at a time while on a straightaway and pull it back tight.
LOOK. First off, you must always be conscious of where the other competitors are; to your inside (your left on an oval track), outside (to your right) or directly behind you. Secondly, where you look on the track is key. Some drivers use points around the track as references to brake, turn-in and accelerate. Fixed reference points are good to use getting started. There’s a problem with utilizing fixed reference points as your primary driving practice once you are familiar with the kart and the track. The problem is that you focus and drive to that point, then execute. After that, you look (focus) to the next point, then execute and so on. In essence, you are chopping the track into little tasks and are only focusing on one task at a time. Chopping is not fluid. To be fast, you have to be fluid. How many times have you looked at something off to the side of the road and then had to correct your driving line to keep from going into the on-coming lane or into the ditch? Where you look is where you go. Therefore, its best that you look further ahead than you normally would and look at key points on the track; the apex of a corner, for example. The further ahead you focus your attention the better you will drive. If you are focusing on where you need to be on the track way ahead of time, you will force your subconscious mind to deal with whatever is going on right now, like small steering adjustments or releasing throttle pressure because you’re sliding too much. Your subconscious thought process is considerably faster than conscious thought, so you will be making faster adjustments to steering, throttle and braking, and that translates to faster lap times. Look where you want to go, not at what you want to avoid. For example, if someone spins in front of you, focus on the gap that you want to drive through, and ignore the spinning kart.
RHYTHM. Being able to establish a rhythm quickly is what will make your lap times consistent and make it easier to catch the kart in front of you or maintain the lead. With enough seat-time, you will be able to set a rhythm rather quickly. After the start of the race, you will quickly want to get single file and get into a rhythm. When you are turning laps, your mind gets into a pace and rhythm; on the gas, off the gas, turn the steering wheel left, on the gas, straighten the steering wheel and repeat. If any of these action points are off, for even a fraction of a second, your lap times obviously won’t be your best. Continually doing these action points at the same points on the track will set your rhythm incorrectly. To complicate things, as the track changes, you will need to change when and where you execute those action points and “re-set” your rhythm. Seat-time is the best way to learn how to set your rhythm.
READ. When it’s dry, at the start of the first race, the track will be loose. The top layer of dirt does not stick and will cause the kart to be loose, meaning the rear end will kick out. As laps are turned, the top layer of loose dirt will get pushed to the outside groove. With every lap the ideal line will get cleaned off. The cleaner it is, the more grip the tires will have on the surface. The amount of grip determines when and how much throttle you can apply. The faster you can get to the throttle and not lose grip, the faster you will go. As with anything, there are always exceptions. Some loss of grip is not all bad. However, you want to keep as much front grip as you can so you can steer the kart where you want it. Where some loss of grip is acceptable, is in the rear. Too much and you will spin the tires too fast and spin out, too little and you could bog down the motor. Both result in slower lap times. Good feeling in the seat of your pants, an attentive ear to what the motor is doing and good old fashioned trial and error will help you develop this feel for the kart. As the track tightens up (less loose dirt in the racing groove), the throttle and braking points change. Look for the least amount of loose dirt and try that racing line. Experiment with the line you take, experiment with throttle pick-up, turn-in and corner exit points. If you feel like you ran a fast lap, check your timer to see the results. My best practice is to check the timer once I am off turn 2 when I have a second to glace down. If you glance down before turn 1 you will miss your turn-in point. After glancing at your timer, be sure to maintain your concentration and get your eyes back up on your next focus point. The driving line and ideal points will not be the same on lap 1 as they are on lap 30. You must almost constantly hunt for them.
CORNERING. So far, what has been discussed will allow you to make huge gains in lowering your lap times at Shake n Bake Speedway. For this section on cornering, you should assume that your competitors are nowhere near you and you have full use of every inch of track. The basic idea of the fast line is to make your corner entries as wide as possible, and your exit as wide as possible. Use the whole track. Stay out against the outer wall on the straightaways, then turn into the corners so that you are running a low line and are at the lowest part of the track in the exact middle of the corner, this is called the apex. From there you straighten the steering wheel and fade back out to the outside wall again. The reason this is faster is because it does not “scrub off” speed as the kart goes through the turn. To optimize the corner, you want to maintain as much of the speed you built up on the straighaway as possible and “re-apply” into the opposite direction. In short, you want to minimize how much speed you scrub off in the corner and maximize the grip of all 4 tires. For all these reasons the fastest way to change directions is to spread the rotation evenly over as wide an arc as possible. This means the minimum amount of friction is being used to rotate the kart. The effect of this widening of the corner means that the tires have less work to do, and the engine will have less work to do. The less you have to turn the steering wheel, the more you will maintain your momentum. Here is where having your seat belts, mentioned earlier, as tight as possible will help your handling. Keep in mind you want to “feel” the tires by how much grip they have on the track. The tighter the belts, the more you feel what the kart is doing. Typically, the fastest way around a track is to be at or just past the point where the tires lose traction. Spinning the tires or just barely drifting through the corners can be fast. Depending on the track conditions, it may be the fastest. Always have the tires’ grip level on your mind as you race. The more grip in the track, the less drift you’ll want to do.
MATHEMATICS OF CORNERING. Break out your calculators…..You may recall, the circumference of a circle is (2 x pi x radius). Consider that you turn your kart on a radius of 10 feet, at either end of the racetrack (180 degree turn), then you actually travel (2 x (3.14) x 10 ft)/2 = 31.4 feet. If your competitor turns on a 12 foot radius then he travels 37.68 feet. If you can shorten your turning radius and find a way to hold traction and carry the same speed as the other driver who is taking the wider line, then you can shave 6.28 feet off, as shown in the example above, in just one end of the track. That’s nearly the full length of the kart! However, the ability to get a 2 foot radius advantage where you can maintain the same speed at Shake n Bake is not very likely. Let’s says you were able to travel just 3 inches tighter over each corner; (2 x (3.14) x 3 inches)/2 = 9.42 inches per corner. That’s a gain of 18.84 inches per lap. Multiply that by a 30 lap race, and in a perfect world you have more than a 47 foot lead. The cost of doing this though is that you will have to place more load on the tires as they’re going to need to rotate the kart over a shorter distance, and this carries a friction and energy load. If you are smooth enough, and don’t lose much grip, you can do this once you’ve had enough practice. The idea is to shorten your turn by an inch or two over your opponent, and thus gain a few inches or so per turn, per lap. Now another way to gain ground, which works on turns with a particularly wide entry point and a narrow exit point, (like long track turns 1 & 2) is to lengthen the entry by staying out wide and turning in later and achieving your rotation earlier in the turn, I call this an late apex. The important thing is to first master the basic line. The straighter your wheels are, the faster you will go. Then you can examine the racing line to see if there are opportunities to improve that line by either driving a tighter radius on the entry or the exit or by just hitting a tighter apex. All that will depend on how much grip is available on the track on any given lap.
CLOSING THE GAP. This is the mode that truly shows a racer’s ability. Your main focus is getting to the rear bumper of the competitor in front of you. You need to be paying as much attention to what they are doing as to what you are doing. It is this mode that you can hurt yourself more than help. The reason is because you are watching the driver in front of you and you may miss a corner entry or exit. It is in this mode that you want to be as consistent as possible. The less your lap times fluctuate, the more likely that you will gain on your competitor. And in just a handful of laps, you could be ready to switch to passing mode. However, against experienced competitors, just being consistent may not get you to their rear bumper. You will have to abandon consistency and search for the best grip in the corners as well as experiment with where you let off and pick back up on the throttle. Should you cut as low as possible at the apex, or be a foot or two off the apex? Should I roll out of the throttle earlier so I can get to the throttle sooner coming off the corner? What about vice versa? Trying different combinations of corner entry, corner exit, throttle roll out and pick up are just some of the variables that drivers can try to catch their competitors. You should also consider the technique described in the Mathematics of Cornering above. As you may recall, you want to focus on shaving inches off your corner entry and/or exit to shorten the distance traveled without scrubbing off speed. Recall from the Look section above, that you tend to drive in the direction that you look. When following a competitor, the tendency is to follow their line. It is here that you want to make every effort to run a slightly different line. If you are following and they miss their corner entry, there is a good chance that you will too. The goal is to be aware of the gap between you and the leader but not watching them so intently that you end up just following them and mimicking their entry points and roll out points. Doing the same thing as the leader will not get you in front of them.
PASSING. Eventually you will find yourself behind someone you want to pass. You will never complete a pass doing the same thing the driver in front of you is doing. You will have to change your line to make a pass. This is not to say that following them to see what line they are taking is wrong. The tip here is that if you are struggling to make a pass, follow them and learn their line. One of two things should happen within the next few laps. One, your presence behind them will pressure them to drive into the corner deeper than they should and will develop a push, leaving the door open for you to blow by them on the low line. Second, take what you have learned from following them and modify it to get a run off the corner. Most passing is going to be done by getting under (to the left) of a competitor coming off a corner and get the front end of your kart in their peripheral vision before the next corner entry. Doing this requires some restraint and common sense since your competitor may not see you. The idea is to get partially beside them and see how they react. This will do one of two things: One is that it will break their concentration and miss their corner entry. Two is that they may give you the line if they think you have position, even though you may not. If they give you room going into the corner, take it. If they don’t see you and enter the corner as they have been, you need to back off and fall back in line behind them. One attempt may not be successful so keep trying. Not as easy as option one, but the difficulty makes it very rewarding when you are successful. Confidence is the key to everything on the track. Something to keep in mind is your approach angle. If you are going down the straightaway on the inside with a competitor on the outside, your approach angle to the corner will be much sharper, causing you to take the corner at a slower speed. A good practice is to have your left foot ready at the brake pedal in case you need to slow/stop. I do this any time I am near another competitor.
FOOTWORK. Yet another aspect you need to pay close attention to is what your feet are doing. Seldom, if ever, is it fast to be braking and accelerating at the same time. The primary reason is that it will upset the balance of the kart. Balance is best described by transfer of the karts weight. In the corners you want more weight being shifted to the front to maximize traction. When accelerating, you want more weight on the rear to minimize wheel spin and maximize forward bite or grip. Partially rolling out of the throttle, (not completely, to keep the engine RPM’s up) while easing on the brake pedal to get the kart pointed through the corner is not considered double pedaling since you are not on the throttle to increase engine speed. A soft touch on the pedals is a necessary component to going fast and being fluid. There’s a reason that racers have shoes that are very flexible and have a thin soles. It should be mentioned again that tight seatbelts will allow you to lean on them and not the throttle pedal, allowing you to ease-off the throttle even when the g-forces are at their highest point. Once many drivers reach their acceleration point in the corners, they employ the brute force method by slamming the throttle back down and motor off the corner and down the straightaway. Depending on track conditions and the drivers’ experience, this may be the fastest way. But, does slamming the throttle sound fluid? One technique that can be considered is taking the acceleration point and back it up through the corner by accelerating at an earlier point, but do it with gradual pressure on the pedal. Instead of getting the pedal to the floor instantaneously, try taking 2 or 3 seconds to get the pedal to the floor, just start accelerating sooner than you normally would with the brute force method.
STEERING. Be smooth! A death grip on the steering wheel will not allow you to be smooth. Jerky movements and sawing back and forth on the steering wheel is not smooth. Pay attention to how much you turn the wheel. Only turn it enough to make the corrections you want to make. Turn the wheel too much and you will slow the kart more than necessary (unless you are avoiding a potential accident).
COMPETITORS. Now that you understand where to look, how to break down a corner, and what changing your line can do for your lap times, we can now consider the other competitors. They will be all around you, employing these same methods while trying to get or maintain the lead position. You must pay attention to where the other competitors are and how each one races in close situations. Personalities are very easy to read on the track. Keep in mind that their level of aggressiveness may be higher at the end of a race than in the early laps; less willing to give up a spot and charge the corner. (Hopefully they will not over-charge the corner on the inside, greatly increasing the chance of running into you.) As a driver you have to be able to assess and anticipate the possibilities by considering all the variables, and drive smart. It becomes a game of give and take. In order to finish first, you first must finish.
LEADING. So you’ve found yourself in front of your competitors and you want to keep them behind you. What do you focus on? First, consider your mindset. Be calm. It’s great to be excited and get the benefit of adrenalin, but you must stay focused on your corner entry so you don’t overdrive it and open the door for someone to take the lead away from you. Second, if a competitor is getting close, try to take away his racing line. DO NOT mistake this for cutting him off. That will create an accident. Taking away a competitor’s line is changing your line to match what you think they will run to try to pass you. You may already be running this line. If so, then you don’t need to change, just focus on holding that line. Your competitor will have to hunt around to find a line that works. In doing this, they may run a slower lap allowing you to put some distance on them. The number of laps left in the race will tell you what your competitor may be thinking. If it’s early, he may be waiting for you to mess up and make an easy pass. Late in the race will usually mean that the driver running behind you may try to make a pass by driving more aggressively.
MINDSET. Racing at Shake n Bake Speedway is meant to be fun. Getting some adrenalin from racing side-by-side and setting personal best times and track records adds to the experience. But does setting a personal best lap time affect your concentration so the next lap is three tenths slower and you just negated the ground you gained on the previous lap? What about missing a corner entry? What about missing more than one corner entry in a row? Does that throw off your concentration? Even the best racer’s make mistakes but are able maintain their concentration during green flag racing. Stay focused and don’t get frustrated. There is also a falsehood that all things related to racing means doing everything fast. You can often improve some facets as a racer by doing them at a slower pace. There is a common saying in racing, “Sometimes you have to slow down to go fast”. This was best illustrated during a training session with Bonebreak. He was making laps by not letting off the throttle going into the corner. Even though the engine was maintaining RPM’s, he was experiencing no rear traction and no forward bite at the apex of the corner and then developed a push coming off the corner. Once he began rolling out of the throttle at corner entry, his rear traction and forward bite came back and was not pushing off the corner and his lap times dropped by over half a second.
Many topics have been covered here to help you run faster and smarter at Shake n Bake Speedway. Hopefully, you have a better understanding and a better appreciation for what it takes to be a good racer. There is an immense amount of information available to every driver. The trick is how you interpret and employ that information. Regardless of your experience level, the primary goal of Shake n Bake Speedway is for all drivers to have fun. Vado Veloci, Verto Sinestro!
-The Stig
