Learning New Circuits

Let’s look at why it’s so important to not just drive at the one circuit. For some people, they don't have the luxury of having a circuit close to them. So, they might have to travel one or two hours away and be forced to just drive at the one circuit. If you are fortunate enough to have a couple of circuits within a reasonable drive, we want to look at the key advantages of experiencing new circuits.

The first advantage is you can get stuck in a rut by just being at the one circuit. Now it feels comfortable, you hit your certain lap times, but after quite a few thousand at the one track, it's hard to then just push yourself out of that comfort zone.

Then suddenly you go to a new circuit, you might be experiencing tighter hairpins or some curbs that you can use, where at your local track, you might not be able to use. They might be a lot more aggressive or rougher. The drop-off in the circuit might be a lot more aggressive, where you're a bit nervous to get to the edge of the track. It could be different camber. It's always very important to learn a positive cambered corner, which is for our readers, like a NASCAR circuit where it's banked.

Then you've got a negative cambered corner where it's off camber. So, as you're going around the corner, it's starting to drop away. Having those experiences of different camber, different circumference corners, curbs, track surfaces.

We’re noticing these days that some of the mixtures they've been using to lay the tarmac down for the circuits, a lot less grip is on the track. So, with that becomes a change of grip.

Do you have to change your driving style to suit that grip? Do you have to change the kart set up to get the balance right? Do I have to adjust my braking? Can I lock my brakes? I've already got no grip, it might not be the best way to drive a corner. At least then what happens is, you can start to bounce from track to track, and rather than it is taking you one, two, three days to get a track right, it might take you one, two, or three sessions to get right. When you start to go to different races and different race events, you can start to pick up circuits a lot faster.

Then with that, we go to race events, and you might only get three or four sessions before qualifying, or maybe even sometimes only two sessions. Kids as young as seven, eight, nine years of age, they need repetition. They need visualization. They need to drive laps to get familiar with their surroundings, to find their braking markers, their accelerating points, their apexes. So, by learning different tracks where it's possible, this then starts to open their horizon.

They go, you know what? I can relate that corner back to such and such track. I can relate this corner to my local track. I can relate that corner to a different track that I've been to before. Then all of a sudden, you can start to piece the track that you are driving at, but you can piece it together as different corners that you've experienced. Then with that comes a lot faster learning as well.

These are the key benefits as to, if it's possible, drive new circuits to experience new corners, camber, track surface & grip levels. See then if you can start to tune your kart around different conditions, so that you're always on top of the set up.

If you need to know more about your kart racing needs, then visit us at check out our kart set up program, which gives you the adjustments to make in the changing conditions across a race weekend.