Karting tips: Top 5 ways to improve your karting quickly (Part 1)

To be competitive in karting it takes a lot of time to learn and develop as a driver and mostly you will learn this through experience, but there are one or two things that I have tried and they have had an immediate effect.

1 - Are you sitting comfortably?

-Comfort may be the last thing on your mind but perhaps it should be the first, seat position is very influential on how to kart behaves, it houses the heaviest component of the kart, you and it doesn't matter how light you are your weight will have an impact on the way the kart steers.
-So how can we take full advantage of this? well the more forward you put the seat the greater the turn in you have coming into the corner, yet more a more nervous rear end coming out. Putting the seat too far forward could be both unconformable and compromise lap time as you're loosing time on the straight, also for tracks that have long sweeping corners such as Three sisters you will loose a lot of time in opposite lock due to that nervous rear end.


-Too far backwards and the opposite happens, you gain a lot of time in the exit and the sweeping corners but you lose a lot of time as you have to slow down a considerable amount more for the corner entry. A good balance depends on your driving style and this could be fine tuned over time so a good starting point I found was rather than exactly in the middle perhaps a little towards the back.
-A good way to judge this is that your knees shouldn't be within 20cm of the steering wheel and they should also NEVER be flat as you press down on a pedal.

2 - Look up

Monarto Karting Complex

Now I'm not talking about the people who dip their heads on the straight like this, I'm talking about the head being constantly down whilst driving, just slightly dipped but makes a difference, you go where you look, if your looking at the perfect racing line your body will try its best to follow that, now if you block your field of view with you kart by looking down its a lot harder to picture that perfect racing line.




That's all for now people of the inter-web this is only part one and there are 3 more tips to come in the next part so eyes peeled!.

Be Well ----------------------- Mustafa S. Wandi