Finding the Parts of a Racing Line
This is the start of your journey, once you’ve made it to the track. There is one thing above all other tasks that you need to do when you are looking at the track. You need to discover the racing line. As I stated in “Blog Post 7: Common Racing Terms Highlighted in Simple Form For Beginners“, the “racing line” is the most efficient way around the course to get you the fastest lap time.
However, discovering this racing line is not as easy as it sounds. Many components make up the structure of the racing line around a track. The structure will consist of components such as; apexes, turn-in or snap-in points, track-out points, braking zones and ways to carry your momentum through a corner. All of these components I will continue to cover in follow-up blogs.
Some facilities will have a track layout for you to look at so you can talk about the racing line. If there is an outdoor karting track that you will be visiting, I recommend looking up a bird’s eye view of the track from Google Maps or Bing Maps. From there you can study the track layout and get a general idea of how the racing line should look. Don’t be convinced that will be the racing line though because you will have to take into consideration possible variances with the track itself. In other words, the track may have different surfaces or obstacles that may change your racing line. Remember to be flexible and the racing line can even evolve differently depending on outside factors, such as weather, time of day or even how many runs have taken place before you’ve hit the track.
If you have the opportunity to walk the track ahead of time, you have to think about how much speed you’re going to be carrying out of the last corner and where you need to be to take the next corner coming up. This is all about kart placement and the process of how you are going to get the kart into the position you want. Doing this all while keeping your speed, grip, and momentum up as much as possible. Often I find that when I am walking a track, I’ll stand at a corner and not look at the corner ahead but rather look back at the corner that I will be coming from and see the best approach. The classic “out-in-out” or “snap-in to apex to track-out” is the most common approach and then you can modify that to your racing line to improve your lap time.
The Snap-In 
Hitting the Apex 
Placing the Kart for the Next Corner 
Hitting the Apex 
Tracking-Out
When in doubt, find the apex of each corner. Then modify your racing line to allow you to carry the most momentum through the corner. I recommend working on one corner at a time to see if your time improves. Also, this will help you work on your consistency as you work on the racing line, one corner at a time. If there are more advanced drivers there, follow and watch their racing lines and see if you can mimic their movements. Don’t worry, it’s not cheating.
Over the next couple of posts, we will cover the different components of the corner and how to address each one. After that, we will come back for how to finish simply building the racing line.