Going Quicker, Faster. 33 Learnings from Our First 6 Months in Cadet Go Karting

Jack in his first race. Photo Credit: Freimiller Photography

My son Jack Cowell (@racingjack16) first stepped into his IAME Mini Swift sprint racing kart at the end of November 2023, with no prior racing knowledge outside of rental karts, and with myself having no previous mechanical or racing experience. This article summarizes the learnings from our first six months cadet racing at different tracks at the local, citywide and regional levels in and around Texas, and with a view to planning our first national competition race before the end of the year.

The purposes of the article are threefold:

1. To help us consolidate our knowledge and experience so far, and go “quicker, faster” in future by identifying further questions, contacts, knowledge and opportunities, and the planning required to reach and maximize those opportunities
2. To try to pull together in one place the relevant karting knowledge for beginners that can seem fragmented and even contradictory depending on who you speak with and where you look. This is the type of article I wished I had when we started
3. To shine a light on and publicize karting at the grassroots level as a legitimate and exhilarating sport, one that a much broader group can both participate in, and also more actively provide support for existing drivers and teams

Why now?

We were approaching our first six months in kart racing when I first decided to try to write this article, thinking it would be quickly done and we’d move on. That was a couple of months ago now. Six months seemed long enough so that we’d have gotten enough experience to be valuable to others, but not too long to lose the beginners perspective and freshness of those first experiences. Even if those perspectives were later modified, or changed with more experience, they are still based on our experience at the time, how we dealt with and thought about things. So much of that is glossed over when an expert teaches a topic, but might be very relevant to a beginner, so I’ve left it in, take what is useful and makes sense and leave the rest.

We are also in a transition phase from beginning, to trying to take things more seriously and move up the field with a view to regular national competition in 2025.

Lastly, why now is that there are also no guarantees about the future. Perhaps Jack will lose his motivation for karting, or even not make the cut in terms of the highly competitive environment. We’ve already put in the time and effort, I concluded, so let’s not allow that value to completely slip away, no matter what the future holds.

Caveats

Now the disclaimers and caveats to this article. This information is provided as-is for entertainment purposes, and we’re not warranting its correctness or applicability to your unique situation. We are in no way or holding ourselves out to be experts in any shape or form, in fact the opposite is true, and your mileage will likely vary. Karting comes with inherent risk of injury or death (see the waivers that you’ll sign hundreds of) and can suck a lot of money and/or time. Ensure that you are informed and make your own decisions based on a variety of inputs and trusted experts.

I hope that perhaps this article is a helpful starting point rather than an ending point on your journey to get into karting and build karting knowledge and experience. If nothing else it might give you some pointers on ways to think about things, and questions to ask those real experts. At the least I hope the information you find here saves you time and money, and helps you go quicker, faster. A little or a lot.

There are some good books around, specifically about kart driving. One I’ve found useful is Learn How To Master The Art Of Kart Driving by Terence Dove. To be honest it was a read I struggled to complete several times when we first started, but six months on I’ve found in rereading that it has a wealth of information that is relevant to where we are now.

There are many other books too, no doubt. If you know one, please reach out in the comments and I’ll add it to the list. Also, although it sounds geeky, it is also worth reading the manual for your kart engine, which contains a lot of useful information! In addition, there are countless videos on karting and karting fundamentals, and throughout this article I will encourage you, as we did, to watch races on streaming services and at your local track.

Structure

I’ve split the 33 learnings into five areas/stages:

1. Getting started
2. Going faster
3. Kart maintenance
4. Racing
5. Overall Learnings

And the key takeaways in each area are:

1. Evaluate, then get raceable (buy what they’re racing). Shorten the time between when karting first comes on your radar to when your driver is in a kart class that is regularly raced and has a good-sized participant group in your area
2. Seat time is critical, but driving is still a skill that might be accelerated using a creative approach, coaching and focus on experimentation and learning
3. Kart maintenance — find the Zen and do it anyway
4. Build a racing practice and practice racing. Being successful at racing is about more than just what happens on track. Make racing the drumbeat to drive your activity
5. Remember your why, get creative, and have fun. Keep the big picture in mind!

This article ended up being much longer than I thought it would be at the start so below is a scannable list of all the learnings.

You’ll notice that I’ve used the terms kids, young drivers and your driver interchangeably. Using the word kids seemed natural to me, because I literally have seen Jack grow up while he has been karting and he’ll soon be 10, a young man, before the end of the year. The word kids is not meant in any way to minimize racing at this age or the skills and effort required. This is real racing by any measure. At the same time, I’m sure that while there are commonalities, the approach to helping young drivers learn (who this article is for) differs at least slightly if not substantially from teaching adults.

I’ve tried to raise learnings and explain them from the position of the younger driver, and my audience is the parent or responsible adult for beginner karters around the same age Jack (9) was during this time.

The racing class Jack is in goes from 9-12 years old, so if your driver is slightly older don’t be put off by the word kid when you come across it, just substitute driver or your preferred term.

Here is the master list of learnings.

Section 1. Evaluate, then get raceable (buy what they’re racing)

Learning #1 — Be deliberate, relentlessly proactive, and take accountability

Learning #2 — Kids start karting early. For future professional drivers at the top level this is basically mandatory.

Learning #3 — Karting is a legitimate sport for kids, even if you don’t hear about it

Learning #4 — Rental karts can be a good stepping stone, not necessarily the best long-term track into competitive karting

Learning #5 — Focus on getting into a raceable kart

Section 2. Seat time is critical, but driving is still a skill that might be accelerated using a creative approach, coaching and focus on experimentation and learning

Learning #6 — Seat time is critical

Learning #7 — Being on track with other young driver’s speeds progress

Learning #8 — Your driver can make a lasting lap time breakthrough after racing

Learning #9 — There are karting fundamentals, learn them

Learning #10 — Improve your driver’s rest and fitness

Learning #11 — Use data and camera footage to analyze and improve track performance

Learning #12 — Watch live and recorded races, practices

Learning #13 — Practice and race on other tracks

Learning #14 — Understand the significance of big-ticket kart configuration options

Learning #15 — Joining a team might help you go quicker, faster

Learning #16 — Get creative look at cross training and skill accelerators from other fields

Section 3. Kart maintenance — find the Zen and do it anyway

Learning #17 — Find the Zen and get stuck in

Learning #18 — Acquire a minimal set of the right tools

Learning #19 — Learning basic maintenance tasks empowers your racing

Learning #20 — Having basic spares will keep you racing

Learning #21 — Deepening technical knowledge will take you further

Section 4. Build a racing practice and practice racing

Learning #22 — Know who you’re racing

Learning #23 — Racing comprises a specific set of skills beyond driving fast

Learning #24 — Make racing the drumbeat rather than practice

Learning #25 — Practice, watch, get coached, and race tracks before you race them

Learning #26 — the success of a race weekend is down to more than what happens on track

Learning #27 — Plan and debrief races

Learning #28 — Yes, make a racing checklist

Section 5. Remember your why, get creative, and have fun

Learning #29 — Racing will take your relationship with your driver, and their relationship with themselves, to a different place

Learning #30 — Managing the business aspects are key to a successful career

Learning #31 — Find the balance with the family and other stakeholders (teachers)

Learning #32 — Be a good member of the community

Learning #33 — Have fun

Don’t worry if this seems like a long list, I’ve tried to break everything down and take it step by step. Let’s move.

Section 1. Evaluate, then get raceable (buy what they’re racing)

There was a sense of nervous anticipation as we pulled into the parking lot of the indoor kart place, about 30-minutes-drive from our house. Despite the size of the building, there weren’t many cars in the lot, and inside we pretty much had the place to ourselves. We typed Jack’s details into a computer, signed the release forms and paid our money. Moments later Jack was wearing a head sock and hearing the safety briefing, then moments after that he was on track. He seemed to get the hang of it straight away. Perhaps it was the time in those little battery powered cars he drove around our neighborhood. Or even earlier, as a baby, racing toy cars around the carpet, something he still does to this day. The final session was ending and he enjoyed it. Good, so now we might have found a father son activity I thought, after many other false starts. We should come back again sometime I said to myself as we headed back out into the bright daylight of the parking lot, the first step in our karting adventure completed.

If there’s just one single “I wish I knew then what I know now” biggest regret I have about our adventure in karting so far, it’s delayed action.

That it took too long to get Jack into that first indoor rental kart session, and then it took too long to get him into his own kart, a further 18 months from the first day I described above. I imagine that if we’d taken a different path back then and gotten him into a real racing kart earlier, we wouldn’t feel the same time crunch and sense of urgency as we do now, constantly playing catch up, and wondering if we’ll ever get there.

This brings me to the first learning.

Learning #1 — Be deliberate, relentlessly proactive, and take accountability

To be successful and get the most out of something, and this applies to anything in life, you typically need to be deliberate, organized and proactive in your approach, rather than simply reacting, being in crisis mode, or going with the flow. That is not a new idea, but something that it’s worth remembering definitely applies to karting.

Being proactive is about taking the initiative to expand your knowledge, ask questions, make connections, anticipate issues, and to find out the pitfalls and accelerators in karting and at the level of what you’re trying to do and achieve within it. The higher you potentially want to shoot the more proactive you need to be. What’s tricky is that you might start with low or no expectations, and if your driver likes it the level of proactivity required shoots up even if you don’t realize it.

Being proactive is especially important in karting because champions start so young, and there is this long and indefinite period at the start requiring turning laps and putting in “seat time” until things “click”.

If you just “set and forget” and not remain proactive, your driver could get stuck turning laps on track in a plateau and give up due to lack of progress. You could get stuck in rentals not making the leap to having your driver in their own kart, and hitting the learning curve of racing karts as soon as possible.

As a parent I’ve rarely felt, except probably the first weeks in the racing kart, that we were exactly where we needed to be and I could just get Jack in the kart and everything else would take care of itself.

Since then I’ve been wondering and worrying about if Jack is doing the right thing in the right way at the right time, unlike in other sports where it seems that you drop your kid off with a coach and team and they get to work and you watch.

No, in karting you are the person that needs to relentlessly inform yourself, ask questions and set the agenda for training and development, even if you do use a coach or some sort of driver development program.

To say a bit more about things we’ve experienced that make proactivity so important in karting:

1. It can be difficult to get a reliable performance benchmark. How do you know if your driver is on course with their development, or ahead or behind? There is no standardized “playing field” in terms of pitch, court, pool and so on. Each track is different and even the same track is different in different weather conditions, temperatures, times of day and so on. Given this it’s hard to compare “scores” across tracks and drivers or even different sessions. An expert can watch Jack on track or review his videos and give an assessment but it’s difficult for a parent to do that straight away
2. The “click” is so important. There is that moment I’ve heard about so much, and seen in other more advanced kids when they are at one with the kart, grip, braking, acceleration in a flow state. They are not overdriving the kart. Everything seems to happen smoothly, even elegantly, and in concert with every other part. Getting to the click people have told me takes 6–18 months, and is related to seat time that you’ll hear about shortly. There is no secret formula and as such it’s up to you to experiment with different ways to get the click faster, I’ll talk more about that shortly
3. There isn’t the same critical mass of experience and help. Karting is still fairly specialized in the US and there isn’t that broad base of coaches and parents who have experience and contacts in the field, at school and in local programs. This means you have to be proactive in finding these coaches, and in networking on practice and track days to meet other parents and experts
4. It’s person and machine. Unlike many other sports the kart setup itself is another variable that can help or hinder performance in a big way. Perhaps the driver was good but the setup was way off and therefore the results weren’t there
5. The parent’s role is front and center. It will be up to you to decide your driver’s early development and “career” path, for example when to enter your driver in city-wide, regional and even national competitions beyond your local track’s club races. Before that you’ll be making decisions around which engine type/kart class, which tracks to join, which team or teams to be part of, and many many other choices

This need to be proactive is made even more critical given what might be a high cost of running and the time ticking for your driver to not only learn but compete and move up the field. Don’t wait for “someone” to come along. That person is you.

If that sounds like a lot of work, it is, but the payoffs in terms of your child’s development and confidence, your relationship with them, and your satisfaction are great as you will hear.

Lastly, although I’m introducing this message about being proactive is in the section about getting started, it really applies to all the sections in this article and I can’t see the need to be proactive ever stopping.

Learning #2 — Kids start karting early. For future professional drivers at the top level this is basically mandatory.

Drivers that progress from karting into the top levels of professional motorsports, we’ve seen, typically start driving early, some as young as 4 or 5 years old. Many of the current Formula One grid, for example, started racing at around 7 years old or before, as did many of the current National racers on the way up that we’ve met in person and raced with, in our Mini Swift kart racing class competition. You could have a philosophical argument about “letting kids be kids” and not pushing them too early too soon, but the fact is that champions in almost any field start young, and they have for at least the last 20–30 years if not longer.

I probably didn’t fully realize this and connect it with Jack early enough. We were focused on his school, and trying him in the usual other mainstream sports in the US. If pushed I would have even have said at the time that Jack “wasn’t sporty” and his skills lay in other creative areas such as engineering or architecture. He still has those skills and we’re careful to also invest some, but necessarily less, time in developing those. Karting wasn’t even on our radar until by chance I read an article about the Australian F1 Grand Prix in the Aussie news (where I grew up), and one thing led to another. Things have turned out well so far, and we wish we’d started earlier.

I have heard a couple of stories where things didn’t really work out and the kid didn’t enjoy kart racing, so I guess you have to make your own decision about whether it’s best to try and fail or never to try at all.

There are no guarantees about anything in life, but it would be difficult for my advice to be anything other than don’t wait, if you’re reading this make your own decision to get your driver to a local track and go from there.

Learning #3 — Karting is a legitimate sport for kids, even if you don’t hear about it

Even after Jack began to show good progress in rental karting it was definitely seen on the “fun” side of the equation, not as a “real” sport. We kept filling his time trying out other sports, and trying to fit karting in around that. It was probably only after buying him a kart and hitting the track for practice for a while that we understood that karting is a legitimate sport that he could pursue, and be his main sport excluding all others for a while, even though it’s not one of the other more mainstream and popular ones in the US.

It seems as if karting has much less visibility (and is sometimes invisible) in the US, compared to a long list of other popular sports: basketball, baseball, flag football, soccer, and so on, or compared to other places in the world such as the UK or Europe where karting is more mainstream. People still have blank looks when I say my son is into kart racing. I suspect they are picturing a homemade box car on a steep slope or something, like you see in those old movies.

We also didn’t have the frame of reference of other karting families, until we were well into competitive karting already. Karting wasn’t in the school newsletter, or on the regular activity sign-up sheets. As far as we know Jack is the only competitive karter that there has ever been at his elementary school. his elementary/primary school is one of the biggest in Dallas with over 1000 students. We are planning to try to talk to and engage with the school a bit more formally about talking about karting as a sport, so we’ll see if it’s really true that he’s the first.

Now we are well into karting I’ve begun to hear about some fledgling grassroots efforts to reach out to local schools and promote and inform them about karting. If that is you then please reach out, I’d like to hear about and promote what you’re doing. As I said, we are thinking about doing something with our school and school district, which I think is win-win. The more the merrier. The more kids coming into the sport helps them for practice and development and helps the sport stay vibrant.

The other part of this legitimate sport equation are the positive things you might want for your child from competing, such as teamwork, health, competition, confidence and discipline and so on.

These things are all part of karting especially once you begin to race, and driving has become part of Jack’s identity, something that is him.

Ironically, to help his karting we’re reaching back into other sports for cross training, like tennis, swimming, cycling, and even fitness/gym sessions. Karters increasingly need to be endurance athletes in the traditional sense, but there is this persistent belief that drivers aren’t athletes.

Another benefit compared to other sports, at least right now, is that the national and even international level of competition is still quite accessible to many drivers prepared to put in the effort and funding to do so. You are competing against tens or perhaps hundreds of drivers rather than tens or hundreds of thousands, even though the standard of current competitors is still sky high. We often get to compete in regional and sometimes even local races against national champions or those who’ve raced internationally. It’s well known that having role models or examples is a great for motivation, and it makes these dreams seem all the more achievable.

We have got to meet and befriend a bunch of other karting families so there is that important aspect of sports too, although none live exactly in our area. Another random factoid is that karting is increasingly, at least in the US is being covered on niche streaming services like Kart Chaser also, so it is possible for grandparents, parents and others to tune in even if they can’t make it to the track.

You can’t choose what your kids like and are good at, so I think it’s a good thing to shine a light on grassroots karting in the US, and give kids a chance to find if it’s their thing.

Learning #4 — Rental karts can be a good stepping stone, not necessarily the best long-term track into competitive karting

We began our competitive karting adventure with indoor rental karts. This was a convenient and fun way to start, and gave us the comfort that Jack had some talent and enjoyed karting, without having to outlay for a kart, and rentals helped him build some basic karting knowledge. Quite a few of the staff there were really great, and made us feel welcome, and we got to know some of the parents and drivers too.

Jack was even able to compete against other kids in an indoor monthly rental league, and to quickly be in the top part of that field, even though we eventually got frustrated at the variability between karts and stopped doing it! At age 8 Jack was old enough to drive solo in outdoor karts in our area which solidified our view that he had some real ability, at least compared to the average driver on track, even adults. Luckily for us, the outdoor rental track we went to also had a members track for racing karts, and we were able to walk over to the “other side” to connect with some key people, and we eventually joined there.

That was our journey over 18 months, and while it all kind of moved at what felt like the right pace, looking back I feel that we lost quite a bit of time, and instead would have cut rentals down to 3–6 months max knowing what I know now. This is not a criticism of rental places at all. Quite the opposite, they were great for us as a stepping stone, and great for taking the racing experience to the masses. My simple point is that if you want to be in kart racing at higher levels, as we do, you need to be in a racing kart, and not leave it too long to take that step.

We got caught up in chasing lap times, lap records, and monthly race results at the rental track, in what turned out to be quite inconsistent karts that kept us coming back. More fundamentally we began to see overall success as Jack winning rental races and beating the lap record, when success really should have been around using rentals to test his potential to move forward much sooner.

So, how do you use rentals to test potential?

Knowing what I know now, I’d say that if your child is quickly getting into the 5–10% range of a competitive time for the track (lap record, or recent race winning pace), and they can do that consistently then it’s already time to start thinking about contacting your local member’s track. In fact, it’s never too early to start making contacts and understanding the broader karting industry and community.

For Jack, he was onto a competitive pace the first couple of session/weeks. Then there was a very long tail of incremental improvements before we hit the lap record from when we started. I’ll show a graph in the next section.

That “tail” time I wish we had instead been spent chasing incremental improvements in the kart we have now, and literally if we had started age 7 ¾ we would have had exactly the same chassis and engine we have now (although with a changeable restrictor). We’d likely be so much further along.

If your driver can also do consistent laps and handle themselves with other drivers on track then it’s definitely time to think about next steps, and if they can also handle themselves in a race situation it’s the icing on the cake but you don’t have to wait for that. You certainly don’t have to wait until your driver is regularly winning races, that never happened for us in rentals and yet Jack won his second club race in a racing kart.

If you’re meeting these measures, I just talked about it’s probably time to reach out to your local member tracks and go visit them to see what the next step looks like, and you can ask them what they’d do in your situation, and I think I know what the answer would be.

Learning #5 — Focus on getting into a raceable kart

We also probably lost six months overall trying to work out the optimal kart to buy. And I also probably didn’t realize at the start that when you talk about buying a kart, you’re really buying two things: a chassis and an engine, to make up a certain package that needs to match a racing class that a good number of other kids race in your area.

There are so many permutations of chassis brand and engine that it can be overwhelming, and I found myself going down many rabbit holes in kart forums when in the end, the answer boiled down to basically two options that were raced for Jack’s age in our area: a four-stroke engine and two-stroke engine.

As it turned out for us, the deciding factors on what to buy weren’t really about the kart in isolation at all, but also about having a mechanical shop and kart storage on site too.

Just to repeat, you’ll want to pick a kart class (combination of age, chassis size/type, and engine type) that is well represented and has good participation in your track/area. I did that check looking at racing at the regional and national levels for IAME Mini Swift, before we finally pulled the trigger

We heard and read several times that your driver will develop faster and have more fun if there are others to practice and race with of all different abilities and that have the same or similar equipment. We’ve found that to be really true, especially for that period up until things click for your driver.

Often tracks will group similar classes together to allow people to be on track and race together but if your driver is the only one in a class that is much faster or slower than the majority they won’t learn as much. Jack’s Mini Swift kart class is relatively faster than the 4-stroke engine, so he was pulling away from better drivers on the straights and they were sometimes catching and overtaking him on the corners (that require skill!)

He got a bit of false confidence about how good a driver he was and would overtake those better but slower drivers (because of the faster kart) rather than try to learn from them, for example how they were using braking and approaching corners.

Another point, having standardized kart classes and engines helps in keeping the focus on driver skills rather than kart tuning, and crazy engine enhancements. You will know, getting the basic setups right aside, that if you are faster than someone else or they are beating you then it’s almost certainly due to skills and not the kart.

The quickest way to navigate what class/package to buy is to contact your local tracks, even going along to a track day or race, and then also cross reference what you see and hear against research on local and regional racing series. You can use apps like RaceHero too that show actual participation in race classes in recent races, or you can often find the timing app various tracks use, or find the results directly, by going through the track’s website.

Our area had one track with more of the 4-stroke Briggs/LO206 engine population and the other almost only the 2-stroke IAME Mini Swift engine, even though either class was raceable on either track. Even though the four-stroke is seen as more cost effective and has a broad population, we chose the two-stroke since that track had, as I mentioned, a service shop that was also a distributor for the kart chassis we bought. It also had kart storage so we could simply arrive and drive.

The reason I’ve tried to explain all of this about classes, as best I can, is that I’ve seen several examples of a parent getting a great deal on a used kart, but then can’t race that kart in regional races beyond the local track because the engine type is not supported.

In extreme cases the local club might not even allow the kart on track because it doesn’t meet minimum technical standards. For example, and I’ve seen this, the kart might be cobbled together with bits and pieces (a “frankenkart”), and the parent simply didn’t know what they are buying.

So, you’ll need to remain mindful that whatever you buy is raceable in your area, and also recognize that the running costs of different engines vary widely, so initial kart/engine purchase is only a fraction of all that you’ll spend, particularly if you go racing.

I’ve been happy with the Mini Swift, particularly as I look to the future since there is good representation in regional, national and international competition in this class. The running costs are high, something to note, given we’re regularly racing, particularly around engine rebuilds and special fuel and oil required.

We’ve found that at the club level the participation has been a bit patchy and probably less than expected across the two member tracks in Dallas we are part of. The last club race had 1 Mini Swift, the one before, none (and we missed those two anyway), two previous ones we participated in had three, our first race had six! I guess this goes in waves with new people coming in and leaving too, and is heavily dependent on your specific geographic area.

For us, the Mini Swift drivers are around but have typically already moved to regional and national levels, or at minimum only come out for citywide competitions. This is one reason why we’ve also started travelling to Houston.

That means that, when not racing, more often than not Jack is practicing on track by himself or with drivers in other classes such as the IAME KA100 which has many more participants at our main track than any class of junior/cadet kart. To try to deal with this we’ve gotten to know other parents/racers similar to our level and arrange practice sessions with them which is something we’re still trying to arrange at the moment.

I do see the point of view that particularly in the first 6–12 months the 4-stroke engine is more cost effective as you’re putting in so many practice hours to get seat time. I’ve seen a good level of participation in that class too, and see that this engine package might also force the driver to develop stronger fundamentals earlier, out of necessity, such as keeping momentum through corners, and following others closely.

Do your research and work out what’s best for you given the specifics of your budget and participation levels in your area!

Section 2. Seat time is critical, but driving is still a skill that might be accelerated using a creative approach, coaching and focus on experimentation and learning

This section is our learnings about helping Jack to develop the fundamentals and go faster on track. I will cover racecraft in Section 4.

Even though he’d already gained some of the fundamentals in rental karting by the time we bought Jack a kart in November 2023, it was still a learning curve transitioning to the racing kart, but one he was up for and took to easily.

Although seat time is critical and not something you cannot get around, we’ve found over time that other factors have helped Jack to go “quicker, faster” and I’ll talk about those now.

Learning #6 — Seat time is critical

“It’s all about seat time”

You’ll hear that, in relation to driver improvement, again and again if you’re around karting for any amount of time. If there were to be any single piece of karting advice carved on a stone tablet it would be that.

We’ve come to understand, in our experience at least, that there are several things wrapped up in this seat time mantra:

· Don’t overthink it, get your driver on the track as often as possible, and many things you’re worried about at the start will work themselves out. It will happen, keep going and keep pushing

· That seat time is related to the idea of when things “click.” It’s a physical and sensory thing more than a mental thing. Your driver has to be at one with the kart, grip levels, braking, lateral forces and so on, where driving and reactions happen automatically. You might want to compare this to climbing a mountain, step by step, and there are incremental improvements but I’d say that it feels more like trekking through a thick forest or deep valley. It’s hard to see the end in sight until you’re there

· Seat time is a way to drill the fundamentals and the bridge to other more advanced techniques to chase incremental improvements later on, coaching on mindset and other improvement approaches. Get the fundamentals right first before pouring in money chasing quick fixes

As I’ve already mentioned the “click” period I’ve heard is anywhere between 6–18 months, so although I trusted the advice, I was also wondering if all seat time was equal or if there were ways to speed along the click and Jack’s development. I believe there are, and I’ll get to those shortly.

In writing this section I thought I’d go back and analyze Jack’s best lap times both in rental karts and in his racing kart. The results are shown below and definitely seem to support the “seat time” advice.

Figure 1: Best lap time per session over time

In the graph, the blue line is the time of the best lap of 12 in a session a.k.a. a “race.” We’d often try to do 3 sessions in a day, and the bottom axis shows the total number of sessions, 73 in total over a period of just over a year.

We first reached the lap record on the website of 22.7 seconds after 67 sessions (around 800 laps) and then reached that time again after another 6 sessions, showing that it was repeatable. It’s a reality that Jack and drivers in general will almost by accident pull off a good time, then it will take more sessions (weeks and even months) to be able to repeat that consistently.

You’ll also note that in the graph the time (blue line) comes way down quickly in the first few sessions. Jack set a best time of 25.240s the first day in the kart, which is just under 11% off lap record. You’ll recall that I suggested above that if the driver is 5–10% off competitive lap time it’s a sign that it’s time to think about next steps, so in a sense we were there from the start.

The orange line in the diagram is a linear trendline, which shows that despite there being differences between karts, Jack’s times were steadily coming down in proportion to the time he spent in the karts. Obviously, that improvement doesn’t carry on forever and we’d expect the line to flatten out and be more of an exponential curve shape as we reach the limits of what’s possible on that track for a given kart. If you kind of squint your eyes you can see the shape of downwards overall trend in the blue line is a curve that flattens out. That shape would probably be more clear if I further cleansed the data to remove outliers, but I think that you get the point, and I wanted to show the raw data so you could see the full picture for yourself.

The faster adult karts record is around 19.2 or a bit less for comparison. I think the current best lap time is around high 21 something seconds for junior karts last time I looked.

Other notes are that the conditions are controlled since it is indoor and at a relatively constant temperature, which is different from outdoor. Jack’s level of tiredness, for example, no doubt had an effect on times (and still does). A greater effect was variability of karts which I’d estimate to be up to +- 3 seconds per lap which was huge, and other variables were beginners on track that might crash into the barriers or Jack or others and stop the race.

Despite all of those notes, you can quite clearly see that lap times did improve with seat time. That’s good to know, but also cold comfort as I’ve already mentioned we probably had the wrong goal, going with the flow chasing lap times when we should have moved Jack to a racing kart.

Next, let’s look at the same graph for his racing kart.

Figure 2 — Racing Kart — Best lap time per session

Again, you can see that the times fell away quickly in the first few sessions, then took on a more gradual improvement over time. The orange trendline shows Jack’s best times gradually coming down over time, and with increased seat time.

Here is another version of the diagram omitting the first 2 weeks, letting us see the variability in more detail.

Figure 3 — Racing Kart — Best time (omitting first 2 weeks):

I’ve tried to analyze and give my best explanation for the highs and lows in the data, and annotate those onto the chart as you can see above.

There are several things to note here on this zoomed in graph which starts at Session 9 on 9th December 2023. First is that we are in late fall moving towards winter and we only had a few more sessions before heading off for the holidays and being out of the kart between 17th December and 11th January (Sessions 16 & 17 have a gap of 25 days). Note also that what I call a session is a group of laps (usually 10 or more) on a day when we visit the track. On any track visit we’d do 3–4 sessions with a break in between. Sometimes we’ll do shorter sessions if we’re practicing a specific thing, or longer ones as we’re really trying to build endurance and seat time.

Next note is that there are some gaps in the data. I stopped importing every session from the data logger unless we’d gotten a personal best lap time on that day or there was something I specifically wanted to look at in more detail. Then, not long ago, Jack accidentally erased all the data from our logger so I was left only with what I’d imported. This might be a lesson to back up your lap times if you think you’ll return to them later. It is also a good practice to make notes and keep a record of each session and track practice day. I’ve started to do this on my phone, especially to record when we’re experimenting with tires pressures and gearing, for example.

To explain some gaps, Session 19 on Jan 11th and Sessions 20–21 on Feb 21st 2024 actually had 6 track days and probably 12–18 sessions between those points which are not shown on the graph (I saw by cross referencing from my phone camera photos and Instagram posts at @RacingJack16). As I mentioned I didn’t import those sessions since there would have been little or no improvement. If I had that would stretch out the graph and show more of a plateau during that period

The breakthrough for Session 20 & 21 (same day) was our first set of new tires since we’d bought the kart back at the end of November! Sessions 22 & 23 were 4 days later on 25th Feb, which showed consistency there in the 57’s.

The sessions that immediately followed were during a club race, which Jack actually won before Spring Break, then Session 28 was the first one back after the break and still good times. Perhaps some carry-over confidence from his win? Confidence I’ve seen again and again with Jack makes a big difference.

After a race in Houston (only our 3rd race) we’d changed Jack’s rear sprocket down from 80 to 78, so from Session 32 onwards and looking back that might have masked some of his progress??? Session 43 the next breakthrough happened after Jack raced only for the second time at a different track (our 4th race overall). That track was more high speed, and he gained a lot of confidence that weekend.

The graph ends at around the first five months, and since then we’ve definitely been travelling around a lot more to other tracks. We did four races in the first five months, then seven races in the next three months! Our track has started to run in reverse direction more often so we’ve had to learn the differences there too, and also means we don’t have consistent data and I haven’t included those times in the graph.

After getting his first podium outside a club race at our home track just over a week ago (and after 5 weeks out of the kart), Jack returned for his first practice sessions at our home track for a while and got a 56.075s, which was 0.5s better than his previous best time in the reverse direction.

Also relevant is that I offered Jack $20 if he got a lap time beginning with 55.x seconds, and $100 if he got 54.x seconds. I’d heard other parents say they paid their kids for each overtake in a race, so thought I’d give it a try.

This seemed to work really well and when I asked him the secret of his big jump forward he said that he was “pushing” on the laps. I said to myself if you haven’t been pushing what have you been doing all this previous time! But I get that sometimes it’s hard to push in practice when there are no other kids to race, especially when you’re still starting out. I joked to someone at the track that this kind of incentive scheme was sensible financially too since it was less than the cost of fuel burned doing it the old way!

Although the data set is far from perfect, I think that the quantitative drivers of improved lap times are:

1. Fresh rubber — running on over worn tires is something to look out for
2. Seat time — experience on track
3. Confidence/mindset — can provide a quick boost if driver is pushing
4. Racing at different tracks
5. Gearing

In addition to these, and the data doesn’t specifically show this but I feel that qualitatively Jack improved most quickly when:

a. He was on track with other slightly faster kids. He learned by osmosis and copying the others, and was pushing

b. Having some coaching on specific key corners and karting fundamentals.

c. He was well rested and not over tired

Just to repeat, I don’t believe that things have fully clicked with Jack yet, even though he is progressing well.

If there were one thing I’d change it would be to have had a few more coaching sessions early on especially ones just focused intensively on braking. Getting him to understand different braking techniques and to drill those again and again, and to get the process for and confidence in taking personal accountability for experimenting with different braking zones and approaches.

I just want to say a bit more about the qualitative findings I just talked about.

Learning #7 — Being on track with other young drivers speeds progress

Having Jack on track with faster kids is like free coaching! It’s a free education in karting fundamentals, delivered in a way that Jack (and your driver) will actually pay attention to, and learn from!

Although I’ve mentioned this already, I wanted to talk about it again since it links to Section 1 about getting a raceable kart, and picking a class that has a high participation rate in your area.

For 99% of what I’ve called the plateau time with Jacks practice, he has been the only kid on track, either the only driver on track or with other older drivers in different classes.

We’ve found that the only reliable way to get him on track with others is to go racing, which has the added bonus of teaching him racecraft. We just haven’t found the critical mass at our track to have regular group practice sessions.

Jack loves racing and tolerates practice. So, when other young drivers are there, it seems more like the former and fun, rather than the latter.

He doesn’t have to be told to push and chase others on track, he just does it, and naturally follows their lines and braking and so on even if he’s not consciously thinking about that. I’ve said it’s like osmosis, he just soaks up the knowledge automatically. And sometimes there are probably bad habits too that he’d try to copy early on, but this is outweighed by the fact he gets used to pushing, and has more fun.

There is also a type of coaching that simulates this “lead follow” where the coach will either go slightly ahead of the student leading them through the lines, or slightly behind, pushing them. We did a couple of sessions of lead follow at the indoor rental track and were very happy at the results. Actions do speak louder than words in a sense, showing someone and getting someone to do it for themselves is much more powerful than listening to a lecture, even for adults.

Jack is also getting to the stage where he will discuss what’s happening on track after the session with other drivers (but particularly the young ones), and it makes the whole practice session more engaging for him, and he gets to meet other drivers.

Jack also loves sharing his knowledge with other young drivers, especially those younger than him. At a recent visit to a track we’d just joined, Jack offered to do a lead follow session with a young driver that was still a bit hesitant, and over a couple of mini-sessions that driver knocked 2 seconds off their best time. The Dad was ecstatic, and I was too but for a different reason, we were happy to help.

Learning #8 — Your driver can make a lasting lap time breakthrough after racing

To build on the prior points, Jack seems to have progressed quicker by racing more often. One reason is what I just talked about, being on track with other young drivers. But there is more going on in a formal race situation too.

Definitely the level of pushing is higher on Jack’s part, as is the confidence boost of doing well, or at least nailing another race start, and finishing the race well without major mistakes.

Another reason I think, is that racing/practicing on different tracks exercises different driving skills and fundamentals given the different shapes and different technical sections. Our home track is not highly technical but we’ve joined two other member tracks that are, and the kids coming from and being good at those tracks seem to be able to race anywhere competitively.

We threw Jack into his first club race after a week, but I’ve talked to other parents that seem to want to wait 3–6 months until their driver is more comfortable before racing, which is something I’m glad we didn’t do, although I respect that everyone has to make their own decisions on what’s best for them.

We’ve found that although Jack might not make a huge breakthrough immediately after every race, racing does seem to have stopped him from plateauing at our home track, even if we’ve been off racing elsewhere.

Learning #9 — There are karting fundamentals, learn them

Another nuance on the seat time mantra is that there are karting fundamentals that can and should be learned to form the building blocks of future improvements.

These fundamentals include:

1. Using the whole track — being right on the white line on the outside of a corner, turning in and then going right to the outside after the corner
2. Braking — avoiding coasting, experimenting with braking techniques and zones, trail braking
3. Working the track — using curbs, finding visual indicators, looking ahead

It was in our fourth month when we entered a large regional race and tagged along with a well-known team over the weekend. As part of that each driver has a post-session review. Other drivers were getting into real specifics and chasing 1/10ths of a second, but for us after reviewing Jack’s video we were mainly told to get right over to the white line, and to not coast! We were trying to run before we could walk.

It was after that race we had our first coaching session and I felt that we’d definitely left it too late since we’d probably done 40–50 sessions by that point. The reason is that after than initial period when the lap times fall away, and Jack was simply getting used to the kart, he had been “rinse and repeat” for quite a long time, doing the “wrong” thing again and again, and plateauing as a result. I’m fairly sure that if he had constantly been on track with young drivers of varying abilities, and also racing regularly that he would have picked up these basics by osmosis, by just copying other drivers naturally.

Since that was not us, Jack wasn’t regularly on track with other young drivers, coaching would have been, in retrospect, something we should have done much earlier, perhaps as early as 2–4 weeks rather than four months into it as we did.

We found our coach at the track since we saw them coaching others, and jumped on the opportunity since the price was right as well, and we liked their approach. Prices and quality can vary, I’ve heard, so I guess like anything it’s buyer beware.

It is important to ask around to find someone reputable, and that has the right style for what your driver wants and needs at the time. Some coaches are more “hothouse” style like an old-school football coach, and others more nurturing, if that’s the right word. Both can work well in different situations. That is my view and our experience since we’ve tried both, and matches the anecdotes of others that have been through both. Some parents have said that the “tough love” approach doesn’t work for their driver at all since they close up, others say it was key to their success.

If pushed I’d probably say that discipline is something so important to build early on for race situations, and supportive works well in building skills and confidence away from the race weekend. Both important. Find what works for you.

Learning #10 — Improve your driver’s rest and fitness

Our practice schedule is to go to the track 1–2 times during the week and the same at the weekend. I discovered early on that often Jack did the best at the weekends (also since others were on track), and the weekday practice sessions were heavily dependent on how much sleep he’d had and how awake he was. We’d also have the problem that Jack was hungry after school and there was only junk food at the track, that we’d dip into before having dinner later on.

This worked up to a point, and sometimes I was surprised to see Jack pull out some good laps after eating his preferred candy option (Sour Patch kids if you’re interested) but this was obviously not sustainable given how often we were going to the track.

I’ve now made a process to try other healthier and importantly more “effective” food and snacks so he is performing at his best. He’ll eat baby carrots and turkey rollups with flour tortillas, a mandarin, sometimes some grapes, cheese, nuts and so on. He’ll eat those energy bars for kids sometimes, and likes the energy “chunks” even more, although they are not super healthy, I believe.

There is much further to go and more to learn here and we’re only at the start, the average race weekend still involving a few too many fast-food sessions, many more than we’d have if we were at home.

It’s not good for me either! The fumes and the junk food, not seeming like a recipe for health.

I’ve found that trying new things at home first can work, offering them a couple of times if he (and my daughter) are not keen the first time. If I can get one eating the healthier option, it can also help to get the other to try. Then bingo, we can bring them to the track. Regardless, I also bought some stuff for me like dried apricots and nuts, that seem to work really well to keep hunger at bay, and keep me moving at track.

Even though Jack is old enough to ride without it, I’ve found that having a high-backed booster seat in the car encouraged Jack to sleep on the drive to the track. I also made it a rule that he couldn’t have any electronic devices on the way to the track.

On fitness, we’ve started working on pushups from time to time, which seem to be the standard currency workout for young drivers. We are definitely looking for other opportunities for cardio and endurance, letting him stay and play basketball or other playground sports after school, cycling which he likes, and swimming.

Learning #11 — Use data and camera footage to analyze and improve track performance

Although our kart came with a data logger, and I was able to quickly come to grips with pulling the data and analyzing it, we didn’t have a camera for the first 3 months as we were trying to manage our karting expenses. As it turned out, camera footage from the kart was the standard option for working with Jack to improve his performance, and useful for social media efforts too!

The bigger challenge came in getting the data and onboard footage into our workflow. At the start Jack wasn’t really interested in reviewing stuff, he only wanted to drive the kart. I tried to give him feedback, but although I might have been right, his view was that I wasn’t a driver. Really, he also didn’t want his Dad trying to tell him what to do in his domain at track I think.

He would however listen to those same suggestions from a coach, that’s life, but it is slowly changing now we are getting our ways of working and working relationship established!

We were fortunate to be able to the get data for a fast lap from another kart at our track, and this is something you might look into as well. Getting the lap data file or onboard footage from a parent whose driver is much further along, if possible.

This data provided a good baseline, but it and 99% of my data analysis showed the same things: Jack needed to brake later, and carry more speed through the corners. This was linked to fundamentals rather than that specific corner.

The few times we’ve used a coach, they’ve focused on the camera footage and the fundamentals, and that is what we’ve tried to do also after the coaching session finishes.

Jack has heard enough times to stay near the white line, hit the apex and so on, and that is something we are still working on 1-on-1. I do still pull the data though and I feel that now we’re slowly getting closer to a second off competitive laptime, and the obvious opportunities highlighted by the camera become potentially less, that the data will be even more important in getting those final tenths or couple of tenths here and there.

For now, we are still working with the onboard footage, and I’ve tried to get creative in getting Jack to watch it, putting it on his iPad or even as a private video on his YouTube channel so we can watch at home on the big screen. We’ve also got some good onboards from races and practice sessions, with other faster drivers, and I try to go back to those believing that Jack will begin to notice more and more things now that he is getting more experienced. A tip to always record sessions with the camera, even if you end up deleting them later, you never know when something interesting or useful will happen.

These videos can also help Jack remember what he was doing when he got a personal best that he is trying to repeat or better.

Learning #12 — Watch live and recorded races, practices

Early on, we were given the advice to watch live races from different positions on the track to pick up tips and tricks, overtaking areas and so on.

To be honest at the start, Jack wanted to race, and didn’t want to watch others at all. He definitely didn’t want to do what seemed like “homework” while he was karting.

The idea was to walk around the track and perhaps find high vantage points to view the action. There will be certain corners, such as those before coming onto a straightaway or technical corners that you’ll just need to see with your own eyes and listen (for throttle changes and braking) to really understand what the leaders are doing. When I’ve done this it seems plain as day for me the difference between leaders and others back in the pack. Sometimes, I’ll try to grab a quick video with my phone, but it has been 50/50 whether Jack will really watch and absorb!

For example, Jack would often be coasting through a high-speed corner into a technical turn. When we watched others, they would be going flat with perhaps a 0.5 second lift. You could see and hear the difference. Now I recognize it, I’ve seen the same type of turn at both of the tracks in Houston. I’ve also seen that Jack is doing the same thing in a part of our track that is the same shape when running in reverse direction. If we solve it once we get the benefit three times!

Although we always scramble to be on track with other drivers in our class. I’ve often thought that it might be more valuable to instead let Jack miss part of an open practice session and see with his own eyes what I’ve seen, what other faster drivers are doing. This is something I might experiment with, and we might get much of that value too if Jack was now prepared to watch other cadets/juniors on track in different classes and not have sacrifice our session. The challenge with watching other classes is it might still be easy for Jack to dismiss that as not being the way our kart should be driven.

Watching other drivers and classes is also more useful to us now to find overtaking and defending points on track, which are often common across different classes, and we can literally mark them down on the track map and talk about them. Jack has often made positions at the start but given them back not defending, or frankly in being too much slower. Now that he’s getting faster defending is more important, overtaking too as he gets faster, but also in practice sessions.

Apart from doing this homework live, it’s possible and I’d say something we plan to work on to analyze past race videos or streaming at tracks we have or will compete at. It might also be worth asking your local expert what they look for in these videos, something I plan to do!

Learning #13 — Practice and race on other tracks

Jack seems to more consistently improve after he’s been practicing and racing at other tracks.

Tracks vary all the way from fast and flowing, to small and technical. Our track is probably somewhere in the middle.

It is a generally held view that if you can master more technical tracks, you can be fast anywhere. In my own casual analysis this seems to be true, with leading drivers typically spending a lot of time at one or both of the more technical tracks in Texas.

For us, this is one of the reasons we’ve joined those other tracks and even gotten coaching there since they simply contain technical features that we don’t have at our track. I think Jack has improved after being on those tracks and racing at others since he’s working different “muscles” because of these different track shapes and technical features and the combinations of them. Also, those fast young drivers are often out on track there, particularly when we race so that is a double bonus, we get the benefits of learning the track and from other drivers. Going to other tracks also helps keep practice fresh, even if there are not other young drivers there, and is a way we’re trying to avoid plateauing.

I’ve seen that while drivers at technical tracks have a homefield advantage, our track is one where home track advantage, at least in my experience, is fairly low in terms of pure lap times. Drivers from other tracks can master ours and progress quite quickly from what I’ve seen, but our track has other features that make it a good and exciting place to race, with solid overtaking points.

It actually takes more time, effort and money to visit other tracks, rather than just staying at our home track, but I feel it is well worth it, and is an example of the proactivity and creativity I talked about earlier. Find what works for you, and experiment with different ways to go quicker, faster.

Learning #14 — Understand the significance of big-ticket kart configuration options

The data above seems to show, some quantitative correlation and verification of, what is commonly understood: that a small number of configuration options can make a material difference to lap times, and even get your driver off a plateau in performance.

I’ve talked about new tires already. To say more, I think leaving Jack on old tires too long reinforced bad habits in getting him to slide the back end out around corners rather than learn to control his speed and braking and get used to feeling what doing things the right way felt like on tires that weren’t worn out.

You’ll also want to understand some good tire pressure ranges for each track you drive on, and you can ask the track or other drivers for their recommended starting point. The wrong pressures can easily cost 0.2 seconds per lap or much more in a race situation, and this is something we’re still learning about through trial and error. To actually learn though you have to actively measure and record the cold and hot pressures and keep notes of how changes affect performance. It is something we’re now, after 6 months, paying a lot more attention to, and I’ve started doing the work to record and analyze this, as do all the leading parents/drivers I’ve seen.

Another key configuration item is gearing. You’ll see from the data that when we adjusted the rear sprocket (the “gear” attached to the back axle that the chain goes over) from 80 to 78 for a race at another track, which was right for there and our ability, that potentially worsened Jack’s lap times at our home track when we left that same sprocket on. There are ways to use your logger data to help determine the right sprocket for your track and driver, and can also ask your local expert. In general drivers start higher, and work lower in gearing, on the same track, with added experience and being able to maintain good minimum speed through corners. Higher gearing is better for extra torque / power / acceleration out of corners, while lower gearing generally allows a higher top speed. This also means that, even on the same track, gearing is not set-and-forget, you might need to adjust the gearing down as your driver is improving to unlock the next lowest lap times.

Another complicating factor is that the track never stays the same, even on the same day! The weather has been quite bad in terms of lots of thunderstorms this year so the track often hasn’t been at its best, and lap times for everyone have been slower. It’s possible that your config is right, but you’re not seeing the benefits because of changes in the track and conditions at the time.

You don’t have to understand all of this on day one, but it is good to perhaps show a photo of your data logger session summary screen to others and your local experts and get advice on what rear sprocket should be fitted for where you are right now.

Recently we’ve also adjusted Jack’s brake pedal to make it easier for him to apply full brakes. He’s always braked too lightly so far, and that is an experience thing. We hope this might help him to begin to use full braking more often and get used to that, and early indications show it looks to have helped him, so that is something to bear in mind.

Lastly, the throttle cable can stretch, or the pedal limiter bolt can be too far forward and that can mean the throttle is not fully open when the pedal is fully pushed down. Worth checking as I’d forgotten that our bolt had been adjusted quickly by someone a long while back to stop the engine from cutting out when Jack was flooring it at race starts. We adjusted it back, and told Jack not to slam the pedal but apply it a bit more gradually, and that also seems to have helped our average max RPM straight away.

Although I’ll talk about kart maintenance more in the next section, I wanted to bring up these points here since they can directly affect lap times negatively or positively, might help you get through a plateau, and will certainly keep the driver in their most productive zone, not doubting whether the kart is set up correctly. Then there are no excuses not to focus on the driving and getting better.

Learning #15 — Joining a team might help you go quicker, faster

For most of our time we’ve gone it alone in the sense that Jack and I are the entire team for practice and race weekends. Over time, we’ve found out and seen that it is possible to join a team that provides various services and coaching, which you pay for, and that this can help your driver go quicker, faster.

At the most basic level the team might be a mechanically knowledgeable person who services several drivers under a literal tent (canopy that can have sides). The tent is the place where everyone hangs out and works on their karts, gets ready to race, exchanges information. At the other end of the spectrum, you have professional race teams that have a much bigger staff, and tent, and perhaps even a semi to transport equipment around, and dedicated mechanics for each driver. The tent often provides some sort of coaching and information sharing to between drivers too, as well as acting as a social hub to pass the time on long race weekends.

Our home track doesn’t seem to be as regularly team-centric as other tracks we’ve visited, and is more on an individual basis. Part of that is that our track has a mechanical workshop, spares, kart storage, and store built in whereas at other member-run tracks, often the teams probably sprung up out of necessity since there were few or no services onsite.

Our first experience of a team was tagging along with a well-known and successful one to our first regional race. The first thing I noticed was the performance culture, the drive and focus to win at all levels. There was also a competitive racer in our class within the tent too, so we had the potential to do what others were doing, spurring each other on, sharing knowledge, providing support of all kinds and so on.

The team environment was great for taking what could have been a totally overwhelming experience, and making it manageable yet still full-on, walking us through step by step.

Jack, in hindsight, was too early in his karting experience to take full advantage of the performance improvement aspects. The team also organized meals and we had a dedicated mechanic who not only took care of the kart, but ensured that we were in the right place at the right time, that we met the tech requirements and correctly filled the paperwork for the race, as well as looking at things like tire pressures, gearing and so on.

After that positive experience I nevertheless realized that we were probably not ready to get the benefits of such a professional and performance-oriented team, since Jack was still learning the fundamentals.

Since then, we’ve gone without a team, which means that I’ve had to pick up the mechanical and organizational elements, and we’ve mostly been doing ok with that approach. The caveat of course is that you have to be confident and competent enough on the basic mechanical side for this to work, and of course your (our) race weekend is at risk if something goes wrong mechanically that you can’t fix.

I’m sure we’re also missing out the coaching through the weekend and the motivation that comes from being in a good team. It’s hard to quantify that while he is still on the initial learning curve to clicking, but I know it is something we could really benefit from in future.

Of course, many successful drivers are not part of a team and their parent does the required jobs. If there is one thing I’ve found most with this approach, is that you are the one that has to set everything up and be on the ball with every single aspect of the weekend. This is tiring and sometimes stressful, and I’m sure I’m not optimizing everything and still making lots of mistakes since I’m still learning as well.

The other aspect is that it can be a bit lonely if that’s the right word. Kart races have a lot of down time, and although I’m pretty much an introvert (but professional extrovert) I think I’d value the camaraderie aspect of the team. I compensate for that by chatting to my neighbors at the track and now we are getting to meet and know more people, so we can walk around and not feel too isolated. Other parents of drivers we are most competitively nearest to often drop by and vice versa, we go visit them for a chat, and perhaps some tips.

Over time, I’ve also now seen different types of teams in operation and there is something at really every level from basic to advanced, with cost structures to match.

I feel that we might have gone quicker, faster if our home track had been more team-centric, and/or there had been more young drivers in our class, which those two things probably go hand in hand a little too, and we’d been able to do group practices and the like.

As we think about planning for next year, and our first national races it’s now a job to find out more likely which team, rather than if we’ll be working with one.

Learning #16 — Get creative look at cross training and skill accelerators from other fields

This learning is more of an emerging one. I’ve recognized that it should be an opportunity but haven’t yet explored and experimented with cross-training and skill accelerators much.

I know from my original career as a management consultant that there are significant benefits in looking at what other companies are doing, perhaps even in other industries, and then selectively applying that to your organization’s situation, generating new ideas and real value. Sometimes it’s easy, and the default, to do what you’ve always done even if there are better options and approaches out there.

Obviously, this idea of cross training and sharing ideas also applies in sports too, as the popularity of sports autobiographies and content shows. You can and should learn from the best, even if in a different sport, or even if you’re not a sportsperson at all.

We’ve looked at karting videos and these have been quite useful and as I’ve tried to come up with new ideas for us. For example, we’ve tried techniques like one-handed driving, and also doing practice sessions that are twice race distance to build endurance.

I’ve also thought about things like cross training and accelerated learning.

I recently read champion tennis player John McEnroe’s autobiography and in it he describes living through a transition period where tennis players used to train physically only by playing a lot of tennis, to when players started going to the gym and cross-training to help them on court. It has never gone back to the old way. This cardio and endurance training is also quite common in karting, recognizing that karting time alone is not enough to develop the levels of fitness and endurance required so this is something we’re investigating at the moment.

Another form of cross-training is sim racing, and something we’ve started working on, focusing on improving Jack’s racecraft, specifically overtaking, instead of the physical aspects of karting, which sims can’t really replicate.

We’re only at the start of this learning journey. I know that learning itself is a key foundation of creativity down the track. We’ll invest time now to learn and work out the principles of why and what drives performance on track.

Most accelerated learning techniques seem to involve learning or deriving these principles of what you’re doing, and also learning how to self-correct. This self-correction is something we’re starting to see when Jack looks back at his own videos, he knows some of what he should be doing differently (using the whole track, and not coasting), so the gap is just then applying that knowledge to what he actually does on track

To add to this, I’d also say that we are beginning to work on experimentation to support how to look for opportunities and learn on track. This first seemed like a revelation, when a coach first suggested that Jack himself had to work out the best braking zones and feel the control through the corner by trying different things, when before a coach would put a cone down at the suggested braking point, which is probably the right way at the start.

I’ve tried to remind him about and reinforce this experimentation approach, and help Jack break out of simply repeating the same thing, he’s good with consistency, but one that is sub-optimal. He’ll learn that there are different ways of approaching things and it’s his job to experiment, find out and learn.

Another random factoid, our track had a table tennis table in the members room for a while, apparently a great way to build better reaction times. I wonder whether perhaps playing some computer games (not only driving games) that also require fast reactions might help Jack’s driving?

Section 3. Kart maintenance — find the Zen and do it anyway

It would be fair to say that I was a bit intimidated the first time I visited the pit and paddock areas of a karting track on race day.

Jack and I had been used to the cool hum of air conditioning at the indoor electric rentals track, and not having any mechanical stuff to mess with. Then we jumped into the blaring Texas Summer heat, with gas engines revving at ear splitting volumes, and adults busily tinkering with and wrenching karts on stands.

For some, what I just described might sound like heaven, but without any type of mechanical or motorsports background it seemed like a million miles away from my comfort zone. What’s more it probably revealed that long ago, although I had a job programming computers and that type of engineering, I didn’t see myself as mechanical at all.

Would I ever be one of those dads with a wrench in one hand and an impact gun in the other?

I was more than dubious at the time, but six months later, yes is the answer, and it happened, like most changes, step by step and because I had to.

First, I had to decide it was important to do it, then I started small, recognized the inevitability of needing basic mechanical skills, and found the Zen in that. Instead of being an observer I was part of the process, and perhaps more importantly, a more central part of the team.

Learning #17 — Find the Zen and get stuck in

One of the limiting factors when we began karting was my blocker of not seeing myself as mechanical. I was even probably a little intimidated by the kart and engine. Worried the wheels would literally fall off or I’d break something.

This is natural in the short term, but not helpful or I’d say sustainable even in the long term even if later you get a team and/or mechanic to help you. If you want to get better results then you need to learn more about what you’re doing, and the kart is a key part of that. I can say from experience that it is totally learnable too, most of what you do is only a few key things. And if you have a small set of the right tools, this is totally doable. Of course I can and do go to the mechanics at our track for help and advice, but I no longer want them to do it for me, if possible I want to take control and be empowered to do it myself.

The first ever mechanical advice I got from an experienced hand at our first regional race was to keep the kart clean! Initially I put that down to some neat-freak tendencies but quickly learned when I was covered in stains and they weren’t that it’s better to have the grease on a cloth than yourself.

It’s also true that if you want anyone to help with your kart it better be clean. Don’t worry they will tell you as well, and also good-naturedly guilt you into cleaning it through peer pressure.

It was only later that I came to understand that cleaning is a maintenance technique.

Going over every aspect of the kart lets you see what things are supposed to look like when they’re right, and importantly by contrast to notice when they’re not.

Bits get loose and even fall off through normal racing vibration and the like, and definitely in situations where your driver has gone off track or been involved in an incident with another driver.

Instead of rushing through cleaning, a slower more deliberate and methodical approach works best, you can finger test bolts and re-tighten as necessary, and check that safety clips and fasteners are present. More than just performance and safety, and we shouldn’t need other reasons, there are “tech” inspections in racing that sometimes might find these issues and might cause a problem for your race, so better to go over the kart in practice, and as you go through the weekend.

More than just all the benefits of checking the kart, and there are many, I’ve come to understand the so-called Zen aspects of kart maintenance. That you train your mind to be present and unhurried, that you feel at one with the kart, rather than intimidated by it.

This is really key as I began to do basic maintenance on the kart, beginning with changing tires and moving on to changing the gearing. If you rush then you’ll make mistakes and that can cause an issue. Having your tools organized and a certain routine for where you put bolts, washers and nuts you take off the kart is key too otherwise you’ll lose those bits (have spares anyway). Tip: look out for hidden washers!

Knowing what tools to use when is important, even whether to use a wrench or impact driver for a certain task. For example, finger tightening wheel nuts then using a socket can be more effective, although slower, than using the impact driver because there is less risk of damaging the wheel hub.

Although images of Pat Norita (Mr Miyagi) in the original Karate Kid movie come to mind when I talk about Zen, or even bald-headed monks, Zen, at least in my interpretation of being present and deliberate and trying to minimize your own ego, does have a place in Karting, especially in the hectic rough and tumble environment of the track.

Learning #18 — Acquire a minimal set of the right tools

For the first three months, the only tools I needed were a small Phillips head screwdriver to remove the data logger battery for charging, a hex multi-tool from my road bike, to adjust the onboard camera arm, and a drip charger for the kart battery. Since we were at our home track, I was able to use the combined air inflator/gauge there, and the workshop changed the tires for me, that was pretty much that, apart from a regular squirt of chain lube before we put the kart away.

It was not until the end of April this year, about 4–5 months in, and ahead of our fifth race, that I first bought some tools. For that race I decided that I’d do the basic mechanical stuff myself, rather than hire a mechanic or join a team.

The first thing to keep in mind, that I hadn’t thought about initially, was that given our kart and engine were made in Italy/Europe, as many are, all the tools for it would be metric sizes, rather than the standard (SAE) in the US. But then things like the bolts used to attach weights and various other things are inches!

My minimal shopping list was:

1. A quality and reasonably priced, but not top end, digital tire gauge with a bleed button from a reputable manufacturer. Note that our portable inflator and ones at tracks all read slightly differently so this gauge was our source of truth
2. Portable rechargeable tire inflator
3. Cordless ¼” hex impact driver. To change wheels etc. There are other bigger, heavier and more expensive sizes but this was more than enough. I bought 3/8 sockets and used an adapter, which stays in the driver
4. Impact grade socket adaptor set (mainly use ¼ to 3/8 adaptor)
5. 10mm rachet wrench
6. 10mm deep sockets (3/8” drive to match impact driver w adaptor)
7. Various sized hex bits metric to use with driver (only use 2–3 of these)
8. Various metric wrench set (only use 2–3 of these)
9. T-handle hex set metric (only use 2–3 of these)
10. An electric liquid (fuel) transfer pump
11. Backup fuel funnel in case electric one breaks
12. Permanent white “paint” pen to mark kart number on tires, batteries etc as per tech
13. Black heavy duty disposable mechanics gloves 8mm
14. Spark plug socket (also needed for tech)
15. Spring puller tool for removing exhaust (also needed for tech)

You’ll find that you only use a small subset of tools for most of the common tasks. I discovered this, and was putting this small subset of tools in a reusable grocery bag, then putting that in a cheap widely available tool bag. Now I’ve evolved to put the commonly used tools, and frequently used spares, in a karting toolbox that opens at the top and has drawers, then putting the bigger items in the tool bag. I didn’t invent the idea but: a place for everything and everything in its place, rather than a jumbled mess and spending half my time finding where I put that wrench.

I also use foldable camping/party table as my work surface, which is critical to keep everything organized. We’ve also gotten a 10x10ft portable pop-up canopy/tent, which is essential for working in the hot Texas summer, and occasional rains.

Just to finish off on gear we’ve also got two inexpensive steel auto jacks/stands, and a trailer jack with double wheel, which we use with rental trailers, so we can use the trailer as a base and store what we don’t need at the time. Plus, to wheel the kart on its stand in there overnight on race weekends, without having to have the towing vehicle attached.

If it’s not obvious, my approach to karting has been to postpone buying something, where possible, until we’ve proven we need it, and not having it is holding us back.

So it has been with trailers. We don’t have a truck, so we’ve fitted a trailer hitch to our SUV, and rented trailers so far. This is also since we don’t have anywhere to store a trailer at our house, except on the street overnight.

This has worked ok as most of our time we store our kart at the home track, but with ever more races it has become a real time-sink getting and returning the trailer, not always having one with a ramp, forgetting to load something in the trailer, and having to completely unload the trailer each time we use it.

Learning #19 — Learning basic maintenance tasks empowers your racing

I’ve already mentioned how some big-ticket setup adjustments are often necessary to unlock lap times, particularly as you go to different tracks, and your driver gets more experienced.

While you could pay someone to do these changes or rely on the kindness of others, I believe there is a bigger topic here about self-reliance and education, that supports why you should learn how to make these setup changes yourself, even if you eventually do get a mechanic and/or join a team.

For me personally, I couldn’t justify the cost of travelling with a mechanic to local races, and I sensed that if we really wanted to spread our wings and go racing at different tracks then without basic knowledge, we’d be much less likely to. It would hold us back.

We’d probably have found excuses for why practice or racing at different tracks wasn’t necessary, and done much less or none of that to our detriment.

For member-run tracks, as compared with business run ones, we’ve found that often there might not be anybody there at all when you are at track.

This is often seen as a selling point since you can often come earlier and stay later, but at the same time even something as simple a problem as flooding the engine can end your session before you start. It happened to us, but luckily we were able to call the shop at our home track and have them talk us through it. Now I’ve learned some techniques to deal with that.

The real tipping point for me, to have to learn more mechanical stuff, was that after 4–5 months we were about to enter our first regional race weekend without a mechanic and the forecast was for rain.

I knew that I couldn’t just bring our dry setup there and hope for the best as we had at a citywide race at the same track a few weeks earlier. It had gone great and we’d had fun, and it was only later that I found out that we had too high a sprocket on and that likely cost us lap times and places.

Rain means changing tires at a minimum, and also different gearing. The fact that the conditions would be changeable would mean that I wouldn’t only need to do the setup changes once, but over and over, if we hoped to be competitive. I got a mechanic at our local track to show me how to do the changes and I performed the steps myself with them watching, and then I was off and running, and did the steps at least 4–5 times by myself over the weekend!

I felt so proud of myself, nothing wrong with that, except I probably let my newly minted ego get ahead of my ability and shearing off a stud on Jack’s wheel through overtightening the following week brought me quickly back to earth!

Here are some basic tasks I picked up:

· Fuel. Checking you have the right type given the tech regulations for the race. Mixing the fuel as applicable (our engine requires fuel and oil mix). Remembering to fuel the kart to the right amount, not too much or little. Ensuring that I had a process/habit to check the gas cap was screwed back on properly after each fill! Also have a spare gas cap

· Tire pressure and changing. Monitor and check/set through day based on conditions. Tire Pressure is one area where there are many many opinions, get a trusted opinion for each track and type of conditions. Expand your knowledge and experience over time based on trial and error and what your driver requires. Learn how to change the wheels having new or different tires already fitted, and as a more advanced topic how to fit and change tires on the wheels using the special tool, or as I’ve seen, other wheels as levers

· Cleaning the kart. As discussed earlier. Also learn how to wash the kart off with a hose properly when driver went off track in rain, for example, without shooting water into the wrong places

· Warming the kart on the stand safely before going to grid. A cold engine might not start correctly on grid, and your driver risks flooding the engine trying to start it, and them getting flustered and perhaps missing part or all of a session

· Dealing with a flooded carburetor or starting issue. There are at least 3 or more different things to try if engine doesn’t start on the stand or grid. Learn those! If all else fails, it might be the spark plug too, which needs to be replaced on a regular schedule (as short as every hour of runtime)

· Picking the right gearing and making changes. Learn how to change back and/or front sprockets (also depending on your type of kart/engine)

· Checking the weights. Kart races set minimum weight for kart and driver by class. Need to be able to adjust that balance, according to specific scale and requirements at that track, while still leaving a safety buffer so not underweight (and potentially penalty or DQ) when you’ve used up fuel to lowest levels

· Tech sheet. Be able to understand and walk through tech sheet, or at least get some help to fix kart for minimum tech standards: washers, bolts, zip ties, labelling, locking pins etc.

· Know default carburetor settings and how to set. Know how to reset engine carburetor “dials” back to default and/or preferred settings. These can get knocked or a common approach is to close these in case of flooded engine. A more advanced topic is how to optimize these for different conditions and performance based on data from kart data logger and other principles

· How to prepare for rain. Including shielding air filter, drying air filter etc. Also it’s worth having a rain suit, changes of clothes and spare gloves and even shoes for your driver, and for yourself

This is a basic list of what I’ve covered off in the first six months. Other tasks include adjusting or fixing the rear axle, and also adjusting the width of the front which we haven’t gotten to yet! There is always something new to learn, and to be honest I’m looking forward to the learning, especially if we don’t have to first learn from a mistake we’ve made!

Lastly, our engine package the IAME Mini Swift 2-stroke engine needs to be rebuilt on a regular interval based on the number of hours you use it, and that can take time so you’ll need to plan if that applies to you. We recently got caught out when our engine took longer to be finished and we missed valuable practice time. Many racers have one or more other engines for this, and other reasons. Some run a spare engine as a practice engine, and have a newly refreshed other as a race engine. This also gives them a spare at a race weekend in case they encounter a larger problem. Some, have other classes of engines that let them practice and race in those classes and in other series. All things to think about.

Other parents have offered to sell us their spares when their kids move up classes, so that might be an option for you to ask around about also. Either way we’re at the stage of needing to acquire a backup engine if we’re to keep moving up in our racing.

Learning #20 — Having basic spares will keep you racing

This is fairly self-explanatory, but since the kart doesn’t usually come with spares (ours didn’t at all), I guess unless you buy a used complete package with your kart with spares (possible), you’ll have to acquire a basic set over time, including:

1. Wheel nuts
2. Wheel hub, studs etc.
3. Rear sprockets and front drivers of common sizes for different tracks you race, and to take into account improved driver skills
4. Chain
5. The various washers, particularly those that often drop on the ground when you’re working
6. Fuel cap, and the bolt that attaches fuel tank to chassis
7. Steering rods
8. Steering column
9. Any spare washers or bits for camera mount
10. Rain tires
11. Fuel and oil. Might needs different types if compete across locations or series
12. Weights
13. “C”/angel clips and other fasteners required for tech inspection
14. Spark plugs of the right types for summer and winter. Also worth trying replacing the spark plug, we’ve heard, if getting strange readings from your data logger, or driver reports engine “funny.” We experienced that, when the kart wouldn’t start on grid and the usual engine flooding type fixes didn’t work, so called high performance spark plugs might need to be replaced as often as every hour of engine time. Have spares that you’ve pre-gapped, and check with your local expert on replacement cycle of your specific plus, then ensure you do replace them as regularly as required!

There are many many others, and people will often carry multiple spares of each, you can ask a mechanic or other knowledgeable person what spares you’ll need for your particular kart. More advanced drivers might also have multiple chassis in their stock too.

In addition, you’ll need to stay on top of tire wear and requirements around new tires for race weekends.

Often it is mandated, we’ve found, that you’ll have to use a single brand-new set of tires from qualifying onwards in a race weekend. These will often be scanned and registered earlier in the race weekend, and checked when you come off track. Many drivers and teams use multiple new sets of tires in the weekend, so the driver can dial in to that specific level of grip, rather than adjusting their style to worn out tires, then have to adjust again for new ones and not quite getting there soon enough.

Obviously, the cost of tires really adds up and we’ve been mostly trying to run two sets of wheels, one with practice tires and one with new or newer ones. We look ahead and see if we can keep the newer tires for a few smaller races’ qualifying and main events, and really use the practice ones up, Then the old practice ones become new, and the former race tires are practice, and so on. Despite this, knowing the difference new rubber often makes, it has become tempting for me to replace tires more frequently, at a cost.

Learning #21 — Deepening technical knowledge will take you further

Your kart and engine will likely have a user manual and it’s worth taking at least a quick flick through these as they will contain useful information e.g. default carburetor settings, and the proper names for engine parts. These names helped in communicating with mechanics and others, and learning them shows a bit of effort. I don’t know perhaps it’s like when they say if you travel to a foreign country, you should at least learn a few words of the local language. Even if it’s not enough for a whole conversation it will help get you where you need to get to, and it shows a positive intent that you’ve made an effort, and people will help you.

On my list at the moment is to dig into a lot more on how temperature, humidity and other conditions affect tire pressures and carburetor settings, for example. There are also other more advanced setup changes like changing the front and rear width, camber and castor which I want to look into as well.

This is not just learning for learnings sake, which I do enjoy actually, but because I believe it will help us go quicker, faster. If we learn more, and work harder we should be able to close the gap to the leaders, and at the moment that is our focus.

Section 4. Build a racing practice and practice racing

The hotel bedside clock red-glowed 3:28am. Not again. Race weekend. My thoughts were already on the track racing, tumbling over each other before I was even consciously awake and had remembered I was in a hotel room. Then my feet and knees began to phone in their complaints as the wave of dull pains swept upwards eventually reaching my shoulders. I’ve said before that the feeling is like waking up on those music festival weekends I used to go to, now in fading memories, but without the good music. Don’t fully wake up I say to myself helplessly, you need the sleep, but my mind doesn’t listen it’s still processing what happened yesterday, and what is to come today. I know that writing these things down can help, but Jack is in the other queen bed, sleeping soundly and I don’t want to disturb him. Perhaps I’ll leave a notepad in the bathroom or take my phone in under the cold fluorescent lights for this pre-dawn ritual that I could do without. So many questions. More than only about sprockets and tire pressures, they’re really about how what’s happening now will reflect on the type of future Jack will have. Whether racing is part of that or not, these lessons will shape the kind of young man he’ll be, and the man he’ll eventually become.

This section covers our learnings about racing (and that’s more than what happens on track), building a level of racing experience, and getting more consistent around bringing everything together when it counts.

A race weekend can be an assault on the senses, the emotions, the body and the mind for driver and parent. All of that effort can lead to moments of exhilaration and victory, and equally to, we’re seeing, crushing heartbreak. That is part of the passion of racing I guess, its magnetic appeal, how sport encapsulates life.

Learning #22 — Know who you’re racing

After being in his racing kart for a week, we entered Jack in his first club race, and it turned out that in the field of six in his class, there was a national champion, two national competitors, two others that had been karting for a year or more than Jack, and Jack himself. This is one of the joys of racing (in Texas at least) you never know who’ll turn up and the strength of the field varies widely as national competitors often drop in for seat time, to test setups and stay race ready.

We’ve found it’s important to understand who you are racing against to set the right goals and expectations, and to break your goals into chunks.

Jack came P5 in his first race, getting an overtake done. We were pleased with the results, and proud of Jack, and it gave him some good confidence. Jack went on to win his next club race a couple of months later but with a vastly different field. After that race, we threw him into his first regional race in Houston where he ran dead last, around P22 in the final.

We learned a lot from that regional race, much of it off the track, which I’ll talk about later.

On track, the learning was that although the leaders seemed untouchable, the field when you looked at it wasn’t some big solid homogenous thing, it was made up of different groups and races within the race.

For example, there were others towards the back of the field that were much closer to Jack’s skill level. Rather than focus on winning (P1) as the only measure of success, and getting discouraged we could focus on catching and beating the back markers and then move onwards and upwards from there, which is what we decided to do after the dust had settled and we’d gotten back from the weekend.

I called our first mission “catching the freight train” at the time. Success was to work to catch the back of the pack, and if we could do that, we’d “won.” The reason was Jack would learn much more racecraft that way. It was a meaningful milestone that we could celebrate. Any more than that of course was a bonus, but it’s also dangerous to say you’d be happy to reach a goal, and yet secretly keep wishing for and being disappointed if you don’t get much more, since that would show through to Jack. You’d lose trust that you are both driving to the same goals.

Catching the freight train is what we did, and by the next regional race we had some nice battles with the bottom middle and back of the field, finished on the same lap as the leaders, and learned much more as a result.

Then we moved on to focus on the next fastest group of kids. Taking this approach allowed us to chunk up our development and to see and celebrate progress along the way. In the next regional there are three other drivers we want to finish ahead of, and we know specifically who they are. We’re also now friendly with two of those drivers and parents, it has become, at least how I see it, a friendly rivalry, whereas before Jack wasn’t even in the picture. We know that this type of competition will spur all of our kids/young drivers along, and I was happy when we came ahead of one driver in a race, then they went on to win a much bigger race ahead of us.

I’m not sure if this framework is useful to you, but I’ve come to think of the field as composing five or so groups, for example:

· Segment 1. Drivers who are competitive/winning at national level and setting fastest laps at tracks and in races

· Segment 2. Strong regional drivers who are competing at national level, within 0%-1% laptime of the top, often right up and battling at the front in regional races

· Segment 3. Experienced regional drivers within 1% to 2% of leaders, and who’ve “clicked” and are consistent solid performers across different tracks

· Segment 4. Solid drivers e.g. within 2%-5% of leaders, but more variable across different types of tracks i.e. much better on their home track

· Segment 5. Back markers, e.g. more than 5%-7% off leaders lap times but still finishing within 1 lap of leaders

· Off the back. More than 7% off leaders, finishing 1, 2 or more laps behind leaders

Obviously, the percentages are approximate and mainly to illustrate the concept that the field can be split into different segments based on lap times and skills, and doing that helps you to get an idea of the strength of field, where to set your goals and expectations, and how to measure and celebrate progress.

Based on our lap times at our track, and this segmentation approach I can work out our likely position and set both goals and stretch goals. There are actually two big races are coming up on our home track, so that gives us real motivation for practice. We can see how putting in the effort now will move us ahead of certain drivers, when race time comes, all other things being equal.

We are probably between Segment 4 & 5 above, and winning for us right now is beating certain drivers, and when we do I can honestly congratulate Jack for a great job done, rather than constantly being disappointed we weren’t first (that will hopefully come later!) and feeling bad about the whole thing.

Learning #23 — Racing comprises a specific set of skills beyond driving fast

In my mind there are two interdependent halves of driver skills, knowledge and experience.

First is going around a given track quickly, having good fundamentals, which we covered in Section 2 and which I just touched on above.

The second half is racecraft, which we’ll cover here, and is the ability to put that first half into practice in a racing situation with other drivers on track, an additional set of skills. There are also other factors that have to come together for a successful race weekend that I’ll talk about later in this section.

Some of the race skills, with a few notes on each, include:

1. How to get the most out of Controlled Practice. We often try to go out behind the drivers slightly faster than us
2. How to Qualify well. Jack is still in the habit of treating qualifying like a race, often getting stuck behind slower drivers or stuck defending much faster drivers and sacrificing his lap times. We are learning to find the right gap to get him into so he pushes and feels like he’s chasing faster but not too fast drivers
3. How to nail Race Starts
4. Getting through and optimizing first corner/first lap. Not trying to win the race on the first lap and spinning out, for example
5. Situational awareness of other drivers. Looking or otherwise being aware of other driver’s positions while still focusing on going fast, allows for defending and also avoiding collisions where possible
6. Defending. Understanding when and where on track defending is required, and how to do it in terms of racing lines and other techniques
7. Overtaking. How to plan and execute overtakes, not just get stuck behind someone on the normal racing line
8. Bump drafting. Something we’ve seen but haven’t yet had the opportunity to work together with others drivers to catch the leaders
9. Endurance. We’ve been used to doing 10 lap practice sessions, while many races are 16–18 laps. We’ve been told that working in long stints of double race distance is handy to build endurance and we’ve tried to build that into our routine

You learn racing by racing, but some of these techniques we’ve worked on in practice too.

For example, we’ve started to practice the defending and first lap (inside) lines in addition to the usual fastest/late apex lines. Knowing the typical overtaking areas on a particular track is helpful too in planning defensive drills, and in thinking ahead in practices.

Learning #24 — Make racing the drumbeat rather than practice

The parent of a national champion racer I spoke to said that when they started, they entered every organized race they could find. This advice opened my eyes to what we were really trying to do and “what good looked like” in terms of driver development, and it had a profound effect.

Instead of practicing with the view of doing some races, we entered races and framed our practice to support that. We knew we had to get quicker, faster, because we’d be on show competing in another race soon, not at some far-off time. Racing became the drumbeat rather than practice.

First, we expanded the circle of our racing world to include all tracks and race series in a 5–6-hour radius, particularly including Houston, a big city which has many of the top drivers, rather than just focusing on our local tracks, and the regional series.

This approach dramatically increased the number and cadence of races. We’ve already done almost 40% more races with this new policy, and almost double the races of those equivalents who only focus on club and citywide races within the same time period.

Naturally we hope this approach will help us catch up with and overtake others who are not putting in the time to do this. Some might not be prepared to put in the time and effort, or be unable to, which is totally fine. I think for others that it is not even on their radar to even try to travel and race elsewhere, which is fine too. There is a local competitor that has been at karting longer than us and clicked, but doesn’t travel anywhere near as much and yet we’re still often neck and neck, with them winning a fair share, so that is a data point. Despite this I think, obviously, that our approach is sound and will pay off in the medium term.

Second, this focus on racing gave motivation for training, we visited other tracks and worked on different things, even getting coaching on other tracks than our home track. Instead of having, at a minimum, a couple of hours of the same old practice at our home track in a weekend and perhaps going home early, we’d have up to two or three days on track, including practice, qualifying, heats and races.

Thirdly, we got through many more mistakes in a given period of time and learnings from races fed back into our training plan, such as spatial awareness and defensive lines, starts and so on that I talked about above.

Jack’s starts, for example, seem to have come a long long way in the past few months, which they wouldn’t have yet I think if we hadn’t been racing as much This has a compounding effect since if you can do better starts and stay on track around the first lap you can learn a lot more by staying in the race.

As a side benefit to this racing focused approach, I’ve got to meet and get to know a lot more parents, and learn faster myself too. Some of the races we’ve been to have smaller fields but still with quality drivers. Instead of Jack being separated from another driver by 10 places, for example, in a big race, we are right next to them at starts and in the pit lane, so we’ve gotten a chance to chat to people we’d only otherwise see from a distance, and that has been great for Jack too, he can make new friends, learn and so on.

There is also probably something about making the effort to travel to races that shows others about your mindset, values and approach, that you’re committed and prepared to put in the work. By others seeing this, I think that people make more effort to help you, and you can find yourself in a virtuous cycle. You’re getting better inputs and help from those further up the field, and that helps you go quicker, faster.

Learning #25 — Practice, watch, get coached, and race tracks before you race them

This learning is about making the most of a race weekend by getting familiar with the track beforehand.

The origin of this learning is quite simple, after our first regional race in Houston, I made a pact that we’d never race on a track that we hadn’t practiced on first. Jack was running at the back and I thought he would have been capable of a lot more had he been on the track more beforehand. In fact, this seemed so obvious, what a lot of people would call a no-brainer, something hardly worth saying at all.

Controlled practice and even a whole controlled practice day wasn’t enough for Jack to come to grips with the track, and that isn’t really even the purpose of those sessions. Given all the effort and expense and expectations around a race weekend it seemed a waste to go there without sufficient prior practice.

My action was to look at the calendar and pencil in potential dates to visit Houston for practice weekends. This is easier said than done, to find yet another weekend for us to be away from the rest of the family, and as it turned out there was a race at another Houston track so we went there first to practice beforehand and to race, before finally getting back to the site of our first regional race.

It was only a few weeks ago that we returned there, and this time Jack had twice as much experience so my expectations were very positive going in, and I expected much improved lap times. We had a free practice session the evening before the race, then the usual controlled practice, qualifying and race the following day.

So, how did he go?

As it turned out he wasn’t that much faster than the first time we’d been at the track, and definitely still quite off the pace of the leaders! What was going on?

My interpretation was two things.

Firstly, things still haven’t fully clicked for Jack and we are still 1.5–2 seconds off best race pace even at our home track. It was unrealistic therefore for him to suddenly be much better on that track in Houston, even though I somehow expected him to be.

More experienced drivers can better feel their way around a new track, and refamiliarize themselves with old ones they haven’t been to in a while. They seem to have a data bank in their brains and senses of a range of track shapes from past experience, which lets them dial in the track quickly, but Jack wasn’t there yet.

Secondly, the track itself had some specific technical features that made a huge difference to lap times if you didn’t get them right, and these were not features we had on our home track (though running in reverse direction there is a similar high speed corner I can now see).

These features and how to deal with them, were not super obvious, just something you have to learn on that track.

Jack was still driving these sections as he had last time, and getting similar results. Then I talked to another Dad whose son was on pace. He told me that they’d basically camped out at this track all summer in a previous year and got regular coaching here too. It quickly put in context the amount of potential effort required to master a track and layout. It wasn’t just throwing a few more sessions at it.

It also made me ask myself whether karting fundamentals or track knowledge were more important. That race changed my mind in favor of having the right fundamentals and “click”, but clearly getting coaching on specific tracks is important too.

That weekend I wondered whether we’d wasted our time and effort again, and we should have just stayed practicing at our home track, if fundamentals were that important. Later when we did get back to our home track Jack set his PB by half a second after only a couple of sessions, so that put the weekend in yet another light. As I mentioned earlier Jack often seems to get a bump in his lap time reduction after a race weekend elsewhere.

I’ve come to the conclusion that for now we’ll continue to race in Dallas and Houston plus any other regional venues but we won’t go out of our way to drive to some of the National venues that can be 12–15 hours away. It’s not worth it yet, but might be in future if Jack is getting really competitive at that level.

So, what instead?

The other more low-key preparation methods include:

· Racing on the track in a sim/mod

· Watching previous and upcoming streamed races from the track

· Watching YouTube onboards from the track

· Getting the track maps ahead of time and walking through them

· Speaking to others who have raced there who can give you a heads up on key get-rights for the track

What we’ll probably do is to try to convert all of that into some sort of initial analysis and notes with ideas, probably also marked on the track map, and I’m interested to see what Jack can come up with and if that’s helpful.

We can try out or verify the ideas when we get to the track and do a track walk, through initial practice sessions, and through watching others go around the track too.

Learning #26 — The success of a race weekend is down to more than what happens on track

Race weekends can be hot, noisy, busy places, but they move to their own rhythm too.

There is a lot to keep track of as a parent, especially if you’re also the mechanic too, some of which has to be done within or at certain times. What you do (or don’t do) and how you do it will have a big effect on your driver’s ability to be calm and feel prepared to be their best, and ultimately potentially affect their results.

If there is one key to success that we’ve learned for a race weekend it is preparation. This includes getting everything that we’ve talked about so far to come together:

1. A raceable kart in the right class

2. Practice and driver preparation

3. Kart setup, consumables, spares

In addition, you’ll need to have a plan to pull together all the other logistics around a race weekend: your trailer, transport, team (if applicable), accommodation, race entry and so on.

If you’re managing your own mechanical aspects/team then even forgetting something as seemingly removed from racing as a trailer jack or tent weights can be a rolling inconvenience and distraction that can take time and mental energy away from the many other tasks that have to be done.

You and your driver are truly a team that need each other to be performing at a top level if you’re going to be getting the overall results that you’re aiming for.

For example, Jack is not yet at the stage where he can give me detailed feedback on setup changes like gearing and tire pressures, so it is my responsibility to ensure that I have process to get that done and optimized. Also, with that I’m trying to get him to pay more attention to how things feel when I make a change, ideally only changing one thing at a time, and be able to articulate that back to me.

If the weather is changeable, you’ll be the one stressing about the weather and watching out for track conditions and ultimately making the decision about whether to use rain tires or not, for example. You’ll be checking the gas, warming the kart on the stand so your driver doesn’t have to stress about the kart not starting on the grid, and flooding the engine.

You might be involved in discussing start or race strategy with your driver. I find myself reminding Jack about key things about the start, or working with him to determine where we’ll put him out on track during qualifying. And I’m reminding him not to race people in qualifying, getting stuck behind a slower driver, or fighting to defend against a faster one and thus sacrificing multiple laps or even his whole qualifying. He is a racer after all though, they all are, so helping him get out in the right space in qualifying can solve a whole host of problems!

Although every parent is rooting for their child and part of their “team”, I feel that in motorsports especially when you are the mechanic too, that you are literally a key part of the team, and so you have heaps of skin in the game, I expect perfection from myself in my jobs, and yet of course I’m learning and make mistakes too, just try not to make the same ones twice.

I get choked up sometimes, and lose all kinds of separation and objectivity when people ask me how “Jack’s” racing is going because I’m deeply invested in it in every sense as his parent and team member. I’m right there alongside him on the adventure and I’d be lying if I didn’t share emotionally in his success, and also too when things don’t go to plan.

Apart from preparation, a key to success in a race weekend is getting into the rhythm of the weekend, ensuring that you’re doing the right things at the right time, and in time.

I usually use the published schedule for the weekend as a starting point, and through experience I’ve found that most weekends run in a similar way and understand what that is.

Even though there is a schedule I wouldn’t expect things to run like Swiss trains, and more often than not things are running behind or there are other changes. Once in a while a session will go out slightly early or multiple classes run together and might arrive at the grid early and ahead of you, so it pays to always be a bit earlier than what you think. Listen out for announcements and check is there is a physical copy of the updated master schedule posted somewhere.

I’ll put a timer on my phone 10–20 minutes before the next time we need to be at the pit lane. I also double check the schedule against the current sessions showing in the racing app (e.g. RaceHero or transponder app), and also if I have a moment, wander across to the track to triple check which session is currently running. Like I said you have nobody to blame but yourself if you miss or are late to a session, and that impacts your weekend and results.

Another tip is to walk around the paddock and find other parents/drivers in your class, even if you don’t know them well, or to look out for others in a class that is scheduled to run before yours. For example, I know that often Kid Karts and/or Micro Swift runs before us. It can be handy to have a visual reference for when other drivers are warming their karts or moving over towards the pit lane.

Now we’ve gotten to know some people we will sometimes text people that are missing for a session, and vice versa, but this is definitely not something to rely on!

I’ve really emphasized the schedule since that the drumbeat of your time, and you’ll then work back from there to all the other stuff you have to get done on the kart, and with the driver such as analyzing the data and video from the session. Time can easily get away from you, so I’ve learned to “front-load” that work, rather than relaxing after a session first, then potentially running out of time.

In addition to all of that, here is a list of things at top of mind to think about, and any related tips.

For example, you’ll need to:

1. Ensure that you’ve registered, paid, got all required wristbands and put them on, signed waivers etc. within the published time windows
2. Get the latest version of the schedule, take a picture of it with your phone, set alarms on your phone with a timer ahead of next milestones. Like 10–30 minutes before your next key event.
3. Pick up fuel and tires, register tires that you’ll use for qualifying onwards, for example
4. Deal with tech requirements and/or inspection, fill out the forms, gotten and attach tags and seals as required by the race series management
5. Move in. Set up your trailer, workspace, tables, tents etc.
6. Check that the weight of driver and kart meets the minimum for that race series plus a buffer, recognizing that scales at different tracks all weigh exactly the same weight slightly or even quite a lot differently
7. Ensure you have the right practice/race tires fitted for upcoming sessions, and that you have the right type and quantity of fuel loaded
8. Check cold tire pressures
9. Plan and make any setup changes well in advance of next upcoming session time on track
10. Warm the kart engine on the stand far enough ahead to fix any issues, but not too far ahead that the engine is cold again on the grid, this will help ensure kart starts first time in pit lane, and can help avoid driver flooding the engine
11. As you’re watching the track session make at least a mental note, or ones on paper or your phone about useful things you see your driver or others doing, or improvement areas
12. Bring a small set of tools to the grid in case you need to go to tech e.g. screwdriver, spark plug socket, spring puller
13. Look at sessions on track in especially in changeable conditions, to get any indications of need to swap rain and slick tires
14. Fit rain tires or bring them for the walk to pit lane if conditions are changing
15. Don’t hand or take anything from your driver as they come of track in an official session, and before the scales
16. Don’t forget to go to tech when exiting after a session, if required
17. Check and note hot tire pressures as soon as possible when driver off track
18. Get some feedback from driver at the end of the track session while it is fresh in their mind
19. Review video and/or data as well as any notes you took to identify small improvements and corrections. This is key to help the driver improve over the weekend, also note/discuss things that they are doing great that they need to keep doing
20. Review the data logger info for anything that indicates a setup change is required
21. Clean the kart with a cloth, to check for things like loose or missing parts, damage etc. This might prompt you with further questions you can get answers to from others at the track. If the kart is clean others will be more likely to help you!
22. Discuss the session with other parents and get some tips and share info on the session
23. Plan meals and snacks ahead at the right times, when have a break, not immediately before a race
24. Ensure your driver rests, stays cool and hydrated between sessions. Jack often wants to run around and play or hang out with other young drivers, I try to let him do a bit of that but remind him what we are here for, and to be back well before next session. I even thought about putting an AirTag in his pocket
25. Keep all your tools and equipment organized and avoid trip hazards and things getting lost or broken for no reason. Have a place for everything, keep everything in its place
26. Remember to charge anything that needs to be charged, or swap out spare batteries
27. Use your down time to get a head start on your packing up before the main event, so that all that is required is to load the kart at the end
28. Take some behind the scenes photos for social media and memories
29. Take a moment to enjoy the experience
30. Take some time to get to know other parents and racers, be of help if they need it!
31. Look after your team and others that have helped you, can be as simple as grabbing a coffee or water for them. Pay it forward!

This obviously isn’t an exhaustive list but just a thought starter (rather than a blank page) and to demonstrate that a lot of important stuff happens off track. Make your own list too!

It’s part of learning but I’ve tried to always do the same things in the same order so I can build up habits and not miss anything out. This organization also helps in not feeling like you’re having to be in rush mode all the time, which can cause careless mistakes, which unfortunately I still make but I don’t ever want to needlessly be in the position where something I’ve forgotten or rushed through has compromised all the hard work Jack has put in (it will unfortunately, but trying to minimize this where possible and get better).

Learning #27 — Plan and debrief races

One thing I learned from my previous corporate career was to debrief after any major events, interactions, workshops and so on.

If you don’t learn from your mistakes then you’re doomed to repeat them! These mistakes can be very costly and even “fatal” in business if you keep making them, but even in karting errors such as not checking your weight on the scales before qualifying can have disproportionately large impacts, like disqualification.

More than that if you want to maximize opportunities, it is critical to continually be getting better and reaching higher. All of these increments, eliminating past mistakes, and capturing small opportunities add up too. They take you up to greater levels of performance, and to the stage of unlocking new potentialities. As far as I know all professional sports teams and coaches use some sort of debrief and “plan, do, review” process.

For example, an item in the debrief from last time. The symptom was Jack getting stuck behind slower drivers in qualifying, and the root cause of that was not getting Jack into the right slot in qualifying. The solution was to ensure we were always at the grid a bit earlier, and to experiment with finding the best slot that worked for Jack e.g. at the front, in the middle or at the back.

Without a debrief process we might forget about the issue or not take any action, or not take the time to get to the root of the problem and solve it properly.

It’s not just Jack though, since I have lots of things to do there are lots of opportunities for mistakes. Like the time Jack came in from practice on race day with a wobbly wheel. It seemed like I hadn’t tightened it enough and so the fix seemed to be to make sure the nuts were tight, and to buy a spare hub or two. In case it happened again.

It was only after talking to another parent about this that I found that it is was more likely that I had overtightened the nuts and sheared off the stud/”bolt” connecting it to the wheel hub. This is another aspect of the debrief process and problem-solving process. You need to get beyond the symptoms into what is really causing the problem, only then can you make a sustainable fix, solving the right problem. You can use the same systematic process to chase down opportunities also.

It’s easy to focus on what went wrong in the debrief process but it’s important to also note down what went well so you can remember to do it again next time, and you’re not in the situation of fixing one issue and in the process breaking something that is working. It’s also better for the drivers confidence to hear and reinforce that they are doing things 95% or 99% right, and these are only small tweaks to make them even better.

There is a much bigger topic here about driver feedback, which I’m certainly not an expert in. Jack and I are still working on that. I think that we’re slowly building trust through practice and repetition of the debrief process and feedback more generally. For example, if it is something that the coaches have told him too, or a problem we’ve had before, and I’m reminding and repeating. He is starting to see that this is not his just dad having a go at him, like I do about picking his laundry up or talking about some feedback the teacher had. Those are for his to benefit in the long term right? Right?!!

Here is what I’ve been talking about in process form.

I create a folder on my computer for each race weekend ahead of time. The first items in there are the planning documents, track maps and registration and so on. Later I’ll put photos and videos from the event in subfolders to keep everything together.

I’ll also create a plan and debrief document in any text editor with the following sections:

a) Race date, location, logistics

b) Race story — filled in later the details of Jack’s results in each round, notable incidents. I fill this after the to give some memory joggers and context to what actually happened when looking back

c) Plan/Prep — big picture plan and specific steps to take ahead of race

d) Debrief — what went well

e) Debrief — better next time

f) Debrief — actions to take

g) Learnings — what have we learned

It’s important to do the debrief as close as possible to the race so it’s fresh in your mind. You might also want to make notes on your phone as you go along. It might seem like there are lots of headings but it’s amazing what useful information you come up with when prompted to fill in something under a heading, rather than relying only on what is top of mind.

It’s important to do “what went well” first in the debrief to get the right perspective. What worked, what ideas were successfully put into place, what luck went your way that you could plan for to not require luck next time. I have mostly been doing this part by myself but I’m gradually starting to involve Jack in this process too.

Next, you’ll cover “better next time”, which was the name suggests is future focused. There is no point in laying blame for what is already in the past. Better to focus on what needs to change next time. For example, perhaps your driver needs to work on spatial awareness, and adopt a defensive line if they are being pursued into a common overtaking area. Perhaps the lunch was missing or a bust. Real examples.

Often you won’t have all the answers to what to do differently, you’ll have to go out ask questions, experiment and learn. There will also be actions that come up too and you need to write these down and do them! For example, one action was for me to understand what the session summary information screen on the data logger (e.g. EGT, minimum speed, max RPM) were telling me about setup and driving,

Some of these on your list might seem insignificant but if not addressed might lead to irritation or frustration on the part of you and your driver, you won’t be in the best mood to perform at the highest level. Keep working out the tension and the kinks, so your driver can focus on the driving and nothing else.

Learning #28 — Yes, make a racing checklist

We all know that making checklists can be helpful but I wasn’t naturally a checklist person until I was forced to be when we started travelling for races with me doing the mechanics role, and I was worried about missing things. There is simply too much to keep track of or to leave to chance.

Even if you have created a checklist then you need to remember to have the discipline to actually look at it each time. I have quite a comprehensive equipment checklist but for our last weekend I didn’t review it because we were unsure if we were going to compete because of the weather. When the decision changed to a “go” I rushed to load our SUV, and forgot a removable jack wheel that I keep in a different part of my garage from the other kart stuff. This was not a show-stopper, but could have been if it had been something else, like the different varieties of fuel I have for different tracks. Yet even the jack wheel was still an avoidable mistake that caused inconvenience over the weekend.

My checklist extends back to the weeks and even months prior to a race, with sections for the week of, day before, and race days. And there is also the equipment checklist I just talked about.

My list also includes a packing list, items that need to be charged, booking accommodation and even a trailer booking, which we still are at the stage of renting.

Of course, this checklist is also updated based on the post-race debrief process, so new things are always being added.

I will see if I can get my checklist in shareable format, and if so, will post a link below. I’d love to hear feedback too if you have any thoughts or additional items.

Section 5. Remember your why, get creative, and have fun

In this section I want to cover off any other overarching learnings and “big picture”, and things that didn’t fit into the earlier sections.

Learning #29 — Racing will take your relationship with your driver, and their relationship with themselves, to a different place

It can be so easy to get caught up in the urgency and details and minutiae of racing that you can lose track of the big picture.

For us that big picture is that Jack grows into a responsible and driven (and happy) individual, who has confidence in himself, is kind to others and doesn’t take himself too seriously.

I want this to be “golden” time for us, super quality time, me, the family and our friends supporting Jack to achieve his dreams in a way that lets him live his life, no matter whether he climbs to the top of the motorsports pyramid or not.

I want it to strengthen our relationship too and not negatively affect it, which can be a real balance when my tendency is sometimes to reprimand Jack for making a mistake especially if we’d already talked about it before.

This karting adventure especially of late has made me respect Jack a lot more, which might sound like a strange thing to say, but I’ve seen his genuine talent for driving and of late his real determination and even grit to stick with something and get better. Whereas before I felt that he thought his base talent would carry him through by itself.

What I’ve seen recently in Jack are some of the universal human traits that most all of us admire and even aspire to, and I’ve been lucky to see them demonstrated in non-trivial situations on several occasions. I feel that karting has been instrumental in really forming positive aspects of Jack’s character, which he’ll take forward to everything he does in future.

We’ve also simply just spent a lot of a time together towards the same shared goal. We’ve had the time travelling to the track or other cities, in practice, at races, in hotels and meals after a long day when things have gone well, and when they have not.

We’ve had those shared experiences that he’s old enough now to hopefully remember and look back on. What first pops to mind as special memories was the first regional race we went in, staying in a basic motel near the track. It seemed even at the time to be special moments for both of us, something new and the first time we’d ever gone away just the two of us, apart from a camping evening.

We’ve also had to work through frustrations on both sides in working out our “karting relationship” as compared to what our average day to day relationship had been.

Importantly I’ve learned to try to keep these separate and put him in the driver’s seat, pun intended, much more around karting and for us to have much more of a working relationship there focused on karting, rather than me just telling him what to do, or even trying to.

We’ve also really tried not to involve karting in the consequences of not doing his chores, homework and so on. We try to never take karting away, since this is surely counterproductive since it says we don’t value all the work he’s already put in. The slight exception is that Jack has to keep his grades up if he wants to keep racing, and has to make the effort at school, even if he’s tired after a race weekend.

Racing has become part of Jack’s identity and a central part of how he sees himself. I have been at pains to stress that it is his effort and focus that are most important to his Mum and I right now even ahead of results at this stage. Yet Jack can see that winning does matter, and that’s not a bad thing, he is a racer at heart after all.

The last thing I’ll say is that sometimes you need to be in parent mode though, give your driver a hug when they need it and tell them that they can do it and you believe in them. That works for us, do what works for you.

Learning #30 — Managing the business aspects are key to a successful career

Early on in our karting experience I began to hear tales about talented drivers essentially being forced out of the sport because they ran out of money. At the same time other advice seemed to be to “not worry” about sponsorships until much later on, and essentially that self-funding was the only way to move forward.

These two views in my mind were contradictory, and coming from a business and content production background seemed a bit jarring,

It would be easy to “drop the ball” on business totally and miss out on funding and the like when Jack’s results made those options available. At the same time, I could see that when Jack was eventually starting to get better and more visible results, he would likely start attracting more attention. Other parents have told me as much too.

I didn’t want to be like one parent I saw, running around the track with a huge lens and professional camera shooting photos, and printing photo cards to give to professional drivers, when his son had just stepped in the kart and was a back-marker.

There should be an opportunity to find a middle ground in all of this, and think more creatively about how to approach things to lay the foundations for future success.

So, what is a way forward?

What we’ve actually done so far is to very casually create a social media presence (parent managed Instagram and YouTube) and brand (@RacingJack16 — Race Hard Play Hard) for Jack, without overthinking it too much.

We also have created a few different shirts that we can wear on track days. Jack likes racing and gaming, but also likes building structures and wants to design games. We’re trying to weave these things in since they are more unique to Jack, and his personality and will hopefully help distinguish us from others. Also, we don’t want to lose track of these other interests and remember to feed them despite his practice and race schedule.

In a very practical sense having the Instagram allows us to connect with other drivers and karting professionals we meet, and we also follow pretty much only karting sources so this is all handy to find out about stuff that is relevant to us, and might help us.

Next, if we’re to treat this like a real business we need to look at money going out, and money coming in, and how we can manage costs and start generating some income. I need to create a budget for next year, and understand what drives the overall cost, which is mostly the amount of practice and racing we do in the schedule. For example, for each race we’ll have at least one set of new tires and likely two, we’ll have entry fees, travel, expenses, fuel and so on. If we decide to join a team, we’ll have to factor that in too.

Basically, I’ll need to add up everything we’ve spent so far (something I’ve been scared to do), and use that, and an estimate/schedule of what we plan to do to come up with a budget. I can work out the total estimate for tires, fuel and work out which are the biggest cost buckets. Fast forwarding, I’ve read that some people have gone out to friends and family and found someone/a family to be tire sponsors, fuel sponsors and so on, which I think sounds like a promising idea, but don’t stop reading and jump into that yet!

The other side of the equation is income. At the moment the expenses are 100% covered by what you might call “startup investment”, which is basically our family paying or self-funding. I’ve just called it investment so that gets us into a different and more creative mindset, around how do we manage our investment, and potentially get some returns, or at least some funds coming in.

People only give you money and stuff if they think there is something in it for them, some value, and that can be financial and non-financial value. The classic sponsorship model is that you as a driver or team will help promote the sponsors business and they will sell more products or services as a result.

When I thought about this more generally there are lots of other types of value created here for other potential stakeholders and supporters.

There is entertainment, living the thrill of racing vicariously, education, motivation, supporting a kid’s dreams, giving back and making a difference, seeing yourself and your identity in a new and positive light and so on.

If we were to treat racing and Jack/your driver as a “product” you start to think about how to market that product. You can do some research on yourself about why you buy and keep buying various things. Products and services solve needs, wants and dreams so that is what we need to try to tap into.

Racing, driven by a resurgence in Formula One and shows like Drive to Survive and other factors, seems to be having a champagne moment in the sun, to mix metaphors so that is positive. Though this doesn’t always translate to people understanding grassroots karting in the mainstream, so the question is how do you bridge that gap. To do that, if it’s like any other business, is about education, metaphor, comparison, is about satisfying a need, telling a story then delivering on that in a way that is valuable to supporters.

Again, some of this is just finding the right questions to ask, and these ones come to mind:

1. What are the potential sources of revenue?
2. What do other drivers / parents / teams do?
3. What makes a successful revenue raiser vs less successful? What are some supporting case studies?
4. If/how/when to best engage friends and family?
5. If/how/when to engage business or even corporate support?
6. What are the different types of value that supporters get and across the different levels of support?
7. What can we learn from higher levels of motorsports, other sports, and a broader set of endeavors e.g. indie music and film production?
8. What should our social media approach and content plan be?

For us this all probably means getting more organized on storytelling and getting Jack out there to speak more in his posts and videos, so people outside our immediate circle can get to “know” him.

We also need to not forget to emphasize all the great and interesting things that come along with racing, and help potential supporters feel excited too. We’ll likely try to write some sort of document or prospectus to supporters that we can send out. Even if we choose to not send it out straight away, it is good practice on the business side on how to engage with supporters in the first place, so we will be ready and not starting from scratch when Jack hopefully moves towards the front of the field. I want him to be involved in this too, since this isn’t necessarily the stuff they teach you at school, yet is valuable in the real world.

And we genuinely want to find ways to give back, whether that’s demystifying karting and encouraging the next generation through means like this article, or engaging the schools, or more directly helping get others started in karting who would otherwise have not had the opportunity, for example.

My last thought here is also “be careful what you wish for”, if you’re going to accept money from sponsors or supporters then that comes with additional levels of responsibility, commitment and potentially scrutiny too and overhead.

Keep any funds separate from your personal funds, and be clear at least to yourself, and ideally to supporters what happens if you decide to stop karting, or pull out of national races and so on. Do they get their funds back, a pro-rated amount and so on. With all the positives that can come from engaging supporters, be aware that there can be negatives too if things don’t go as you expect, and have an idea of what to do if that is the case. Under promise and over deliver.

Find out what works from you and go from there. As you’ll hear shortly getting the story of what you’re doing and why is probably as important for internal consumption within your family as external, to justify the time, energy and expense you’re already putting in.

Learning #31 — Find the balance with the family and other stakeholders (teachers)

There is a need, we’ve found, to bring family and other stakeholders along on the racing journey too, since they are not necessarily part of the adventure side of the equation. They just see that you’re away a lot and, at the extreme, living a parallel life in which karting is the only important thing! Some of finding the balance is simply about communication and conveying enough of the right detail about what is going on and what that means.

You and your driver will be away a lot more for practice and racing, and you’ll be tired when you’re back, and seemingly unable to focus on other things that are not racing. There will also be significant expenses, and even days away from school and the like. Kart racing is simply disruptive to the status quo, I believe, whichever way you look at it.

I don’t have all the answers here, but at least this is a reminder that you’ll need to bring others along, and square things off with your significant others at a minimum.

For us, we’ve tried to get the overall story established and stick with it. This is about more than karting, it’s about Jack growing as a person and a young man, learning responsibility and grit that will help him in later life. This is his sport, and we’re investing in his fitness habits too. We’re not in dreamland that he’s going to step into Formula One next year, but what is wrong with helping a nine year old chase down their dreams, if it doesn’t mean having to sacrifice everything else forever.

The karting story is about exploring his talent and potential, and when we made the decision to get the racing kart, that was also a decision for us to do our part and help him with more than money but time and emotional support for his practice and racing.

This wasn’t an open-ended commitment though, we said we’d review it after a year and as we went along. It’s important that we can get Jack to the click point and beyond this year, and even to a national race if he’s ready enough. From first stepping in the kart to national race is a great story if we can make it happen in a sensible way. We’ve also tried to set our expectations and remind ourselves that things don’t happen overnight, but we do want to see progress.

I’ve tried my best to explain to my wife and others little bits of the detail to show how hard Jack has been trying and working since those things can be invisible to anyone that is not with Jack every second as I am.

I’ve tried to decode for her the ideas about the strength of field I talked about earlier, the level of competition and so on.

For example, in Jack’s first regional race he was last of the starters (P22) and the first of two black flagged as the leaders came round to lap him. In the most recent regional race, he finished P12 last on track (due to spinning out early and getting started again), but was on same lap as leaders and wasn’t black flagged, plus had 3 race starters behind him, two who crashed out and one that had other issues after we’d overtaken them. This was significant progress! We’re getting to know our immediate competition more, so I can explain whether we came ahead or behind a certain driver or drivers. My wife can put a face to the name, and get a clearer sense of how we did, and therefore to celebrate progress, even if on face value the result might not seem impressive to others.

We do try to shield our daughter from track time, and having to sacrifice her playdates, sports and interests for Jack’s karting, so that inevitably means that my wife takes care of her when we’re at the track. I’m really mindful of making sure that I attend her big events, and have promised that Dad will drive her around Texas too, if that’s what she needs when the time comes!

A stakeholder is simply someone that is impacted by a thing or project that you’re doing. So apart from our family, there are parents, siblings, and extended family and friends. other important stakeholders are also the school and school district, and even our neighbors, parents of Jack’s friends (when we can’t make play dates, get togethers or parties sometimes) and others including the people at the tracks we are part of, and others in the broader karting community.

For school, we’ve tried to inform and bring Jack’s teachers along with what he’s doing, and with a new school year starting we’ll have to begin that over again. We probably have more work to potentially engage the school principal and even school district, and like I said get in the newsletter so we’re educating other students, parents and teachers too.

With stakeholder management, a thing I know particularly from business, you need to work out the impact on the stakeholder person and group and also work out “what’s in it for them” also known as WIIFM.

For the teachers and school part of the impact is that Jack will miss days of school to compete at regional and national races, and that he’ll be tired and probably not paying as much attention after a big race weekend. We also practice after school on say Wednesday and/or Thursday so again Jack might be tired the next day and we also have to manage any homework and have a process for that. They will have to come to know and trust that Jack and we are serious about school, and will get the work done. Even if that might look slightly different than others who don’t have the same levels of sport commitments.

What do they get out of it? Again, this is telling the story in an engaging way (and it is an engaging story), and making them feel like they are part of Jack’s journey, perhaps even a story they can tell others about talented students they’ve taught?

Keeping the school onside, and keeping within the attendance policy, and Jack keeping his grades up, are well-known challenges for student competitors. I know that there are several parents who either homeschool their kids, or their kids are part of a remote school.

We’re not there yet on remote school, but it is on our radar, especially too since Jack has his own unique challenges and creative strengths that might benefit from a more tailored education.

Of course, Jack himself is a stakeholder too. We have to remind him that driving the path of competitive sports means that he won’t have as much time to just relax, and play with his friends.

I’m a stakeholder too, and my wife and I together are a stakeholder group. We have to make sure that the demands of karting can fit in with how we want to live life, to sacrifice for our kids but not sacrifice everything if we could avoid that through better planning.

Learning #32 — Be a good member of the community

We’d heard that karting had a good community and we’ve found that to be really true so far.

For any community to work there is definitely give and take involved. I’ve been pleasantly surprised to experience that while karting is a business, the vast majority of people are in it for the love of the sport and racing, and have gone out of the way to be helpful. Naturally we’ve also tried to offer what limited knowledge and help we can too. This has mainly amounted to lifting stuff so far!

I always try to find my own way to give back and this article is an attempt to do that for something that I can do, while others might volunteer for track days, be part of the leadership of member tracks, host race series, fund karting infrastructure, teams and drivers, and so on.

At the grassroots level everyone has been great at offering technical knowledge, loan of spares and help. I have met only a few parents who I’d describe more as takers, so this article is also an opportunity just to flag this to those new to the sport. It’s easy to get so focused on your own driver that it might also be easy to forget that you are part of a community also. Find your own way to contribute.

Karting has been a good activity for me to meet other parents too and share a bit of the journey together given our common goals to try to let our kids follow their skills and passions, and deal with the ups and downs of racing.

We are getting to know people, and finding our place, and definitely interested to see how this community aspect evolves.

Learning #33 — Have fun

I’m going to close on what is perhaps the second most common piece of advice after “seat time” and that is to “have fun.”

I’ve probably seen that simple advice from a thousand different viewpoints over time, and my current take is that in kart racing it can be easy to become obsessed, lose perspective and sight of the big picture.

Racing and competition can easily suck you in and become an obsession or addiction. It can be easy to forget at times that my driver is a 9-year-old boy, my son, and racing is just one of the things he does, and one of the ways he engages with the world, even though it is one he’s clearly very proud of.

It can be easy to be too hard on Jack when he makes a mistake, especially one he’s made before. It can be easy to be too hard on myself also, but that’s just the way I am, and a lot of us are too.

A few times now Jack has performed his best when he’s just relaxed and confident rather when I’m trying to coach him on a lot on things to get right. Taking things too seriously can be counterproductive, and I have to remind myself and him coming into a main event that we’ve done the work, so we just have to go out there and have fun.

There is also probably something too about this being a “marathon rather than a sprint.” It could be easy to miss the potential good times, and not be present for the experience but instead trapped in your head about permutations and the future.

A win is a win, as many parents have reminded me, so take the win, even a small one, they seem to imply, because there might equally be heartbreak next time. That’s racing.

It could be easy for either of us to burn out too, race weekends can be grueling already, and we haven’t even started nationals yet. Part of trying to keep some balance is making the most of our non-racing time too, and trying to keep things in perspective.

Last race weekend was a scorcher, weather wise, and one of the things I remember most fondly was Jack and I sitting in the car with the a/c running and eating a take away pizza. The final was still to go later that evening. It was paradise, just a special moment, we’d done the work and put everything we could into the weekend. The result didn’t really matter as Jack was likely to be off the pace anyway, as he had been all weekend. We could just look forward to the race and enjoy our pizza. That’s having fun in my book and a treasured memory, one that might live on now that it has been inscribed in this article.

Epilogue

The plane touched down at DFW from Maui’s Kahului airport a little after 6am, on a still dark rain-soaked morning. Through the painful fog of tiredness came that old familiar feeling. Cogs turning, wheels turning. Thinking about Jack’s practice schedule, and the seat time we’d missed while on vacation. Thinking about things we should be doing, or should have already done. Closing the gap. Constantly feeling that we are behind, running, trying to catch up.

Tomorrow we’d be back at the track and it would all begin again. We sleepwalked through the next 24 hours in a jet-lagged fuzz. Ready to go to the track, I decided to call the shop to double check that Jack’s engine service had been completed as planned, and it hadn’t since there was a backlog.

Now I really wasn’t sure what to do next. We had a race coming at the end of the following week and would be traveling to Houston. Then a key regional at our home track in 6 weeks. Jack was still off the pace by up to a couple of seconds.

The phone clicked off. After a flash of relief that we didn’t have to lethargically drag out to the track in our tiredness, the reality began to sink in. I’d hoped that after resting up for a few weeks on vacation Jack might make a breakthrough, find half a second, when we got back on track. We could work with that and confidently build from there. But now that reassuring expectation turned a little into mild panic instead.

Three weeks out of that kart would turn into four or five. A week can make all the difference in momentum. This year that we’d planned to invest getting Jack up to speed seemed to be slipping away. Jack’s chance to place in the top 10 in a regional race was fading. Even the likelihood of completing his first national race in the first year, and keeping his development trajectory and story strong.

I didn’t ever want to be in this position again. I know why people have backup engines too, and lamented the fact that I hadn’t acquired one yet. Our “why?” for racing had evolved, we were aiming to be competitors now rather than hobbyists and needed to plan and organize at the level we aspired to be.

I tried to console myself that sometimes setbacks can be blessings in disguise and hoped this would be the case. It was a prompt for us to up our sim racing game and finally think through what a fitness plan for Jack might look like including some cycling and distance swimming.

The engine was finally ready and we made the trip to Houston to compete, we even by chance ended up on the podium. On returning to our home track Jack made great progress over a couple of days as we tried various tricks to get him to push rather than only drive in familiar circuits around our home track.

We left for a planned in-laws family meetup on a high as Jack really seemed to be on the verge of a breakthrough, and moving ahead of some of our immediate competitors from the last races together.

After arriving at the meetup, I casually looked at the results of a club race that we were missing and saw that one of our close competitors had bested Jack’s time and their own PB by a significant margin.

I held back from telling Jack for a while since I didn’t want to burst his bubble on what he’d just achieved, as I myself had felt quite deflated when I first saw it. When I did finally tell him he didn’t seem like it was a big deal, which kind of surprised me.

Perhaps his reaction was the real breakthrough, really what we were doing all of this for. Not falling apart every time the bar was raised on us, or there was a setback, but acknowledging it and getting back to work. In that moment Jack’s reaction and what it implied seemed much more valuable than any lap time could ever be.

Follow Jack on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/racingjack16/)

and YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/@RacingJack16) at RacingJack16

For more of my writing, and to read upcoming articles applying the lessons we learned to business and creativity, follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/brettcowell/)

I’d love to hear any tipes, suggestions, or feedback that you have. If you found the article valuable then please like and share it widely.

All the best, and keep pushing!

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Revision history:

• 14 Aug 24 — inserted comments about need to regularly check/replace spark plugs, can also be a cause of kart not starting on grid