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[thstone]

Practice day at Willow Springs!

Perfect weather. Perfect track conditions. Quickly reminded me why I love doing this.

[jaykay]

Originally Posted by thstone

Practice day at Willow Springs!

Perfect weather. Perfect track conditions. Quickly reminded me why I love doing this.

Like the gold wheels!! Is the karting helping you? If so how..?...don't mean to put you on the spot or anything.

[thstone]

Originally Posted by jaykay

Is the karting helping you? If so how..?...don't mean to put you on the spot or anything.

Yes, I believe so.

The goal of karting, losing weight, and physical training was to get faster in the car.

Yes, I have vastly improved in a kart. I have spent hours and hours in the kart and gotten professional instruction with the goal of working on skills in the kart that will transfer to the car.

I have gained better skills in vision, handling/balance, and can reliably drive a kart at the limit in every corner. I have also done a series of 1 hr kart races to improve the ability to remain highly focused for a long period of time.

Running, weight lifting, and hiking has put me in excellent physical shape and I have a ton more physical strength and stamina. I've been doing heat conditioning where I run 3 miles in 95F heat. For a couple of months, I was running 5 miles every other day (8.5 min miles).

On Friday at practice in the car, I was working on transferring those things from the kart to the car. Not everything in a kart is transferrable or applicable to a car but a lot of things are and I need to burn those things into muscle memory so they happen unconsciously under stress.

When I kicked all of this off back in December, I knew that it would be a long term effort and planned to use all of 2018 as a "training" year with the hope that I'd see measurable improvements in my car racing performance in 2019 - so I still have a long way to go, but I am hoping to see some early improvements between now and the end of the year.

[jaykay]

Tom,

Great insites. Just had to ask.....people assume it's a given. Karting control movements and techniques are shall we say are manic compared to sports cars.....for me anyway. I gave a bit of a go for the first time last season when I was able.....the learning curve is steep but being up against 10 year veterans with body weights of a teenager meant the highest I placed in a race was fourth....I will try and pick it up once again; had a major family crisis this year.

The pressure, stress, and intense racing are definitely there to work on you. I have not had any coaching save an F2 driver that I chatted with once. He was in my race.... wanted the series win on the resume it seems. Yes this race was definately out of my league.

How are your ribs?

[thstone]

Originally Posted by jaykay

How are your ribs?

Back, ribs, arms - sore!

[jaykay]

Originally Posted by thstone

Back, ribs, arms - sore!

Yep really want to learn how to relax when I approach this again......


Yeah crashes hurt the old cage....very uncomfortable.

[jaykay]

Tom,

How effective is the rear bumper cutout / vent that is commonly found on BSR cars?

Have you ever come across pre and post vent temperature data (intake, coolant oil, engine compartment)?

[thstone]

Originally Posted by jaykay

Karting control movements and techniques are shall we say are manic compared to sports cars.....for me anyway.

Yeah, everything in a kart feels magnified - very small inputs yield large responses. This has taught me to be smoother with my inputs and improve my sensitivity to the minute changes in balance that result.

For example, now I can feel as soon as the tires are starting to slide a bit and instinctively dial out just a tad less steering angle to gain back full grip (rather than let it build into a full slide). This means that I avoid big slides because I catch them as soon as they start and this helps to keep up my speed and momentum because I don't have to let off the throttle or scrub a bunch of speed to deal with the tires sliding. Smooth is fast and smoother is faster.

Another thing that I've worked hard on is racing behind another car. I used to focus a lot on the car ahead which basically meant that i was driving reactively based on what the car ahead was doing. Now I am able to look ahead and around the car ahead (while still keeping track of the car directly ahead) which allows me to proactively drive my line and hit my marks cleanly. In the kart, this let's me go faster and creates better passing opportunities.

I hope that these and several other skills that I have worked on in the kart, will ultimately transfer to the car.

Time will tell...