F1 Fanatic

Right, so yesterday was the first time I ever raced in the wet and I’ve lost any hope of making it into Formula 1… There was a substantial amount of water on the track, with puddles at places. During the 45 minutes I must have spun more often than Massa at Silverstone 2008 (in my defence though, I was driving on slicks whereas he wasn’t). Never mind that though because after some time I kept the spins at a minimum (although I did spin at the last corner of the race and lost 2 places…) and my biggest problem was TERRIBLE understeer in slow corners especially.

Trying to kick the back out under braking as in the dry works through the initial phase of the corner, but once you’re in that position I either drifted round the corner by applying the throttle too early or the kart regained grip and started to understeer again at the exit.

The quicker the corner, the less of a problem this was (and I don’t necessarily mean quick corners, but say a 90-degree corner was better than a hairpin and so on). The obvious answer might be that I simply tried to tackle them too quickly, but that’s hardly an answer as some guy who’s done single seaters sailed through them with seemingly no problem at all. For some reason he had the grip to keep it smoothly on the outside whereas I either went straight on or was going sideways compromising my line.

Any help/suggestions?

Hi, if you have your own kart then I can suggest some set up tips, but otherwise hit the kerb, be smooth and progressive, try and line up late Apex’s and reduce wheel as much as possible :)

@raymondu999

Meant wheel spin! haha

and ive been pro karting for 4 years and EVERY driver hits kerbs, mainly cos 1. The track less grip on the racing line than a kerb because the water on the rubber doesnt disperse as well and the kerbs mostly remains drier because they are slanted and let the water run of them and 2. by getting on the kerb you are reducing the track length and making less drastic changes of direction between 2 consecutive corners :)

There are two ways to introduce front grip in a kart if it rains. The first is a very easy fix; put on wets. The second takes a little practice to get the set up right, and a lot of work with the front end of the kart. First off, a quick fix would be to widen up the front. Long hubs, more rings, anything it takes to get that front as wide as possible. The reason the front pushed is probably because the rear had more grip in the situation (due to your sitting position, axle softness, narrower tires so less surface contact etc….) and therefore the front did not have enough, leading to understeer. Note that if you induce more grip in the front, you may get to much front grip and have problems with over-rotating it into a corner. Therefore you always have to counter what you do to the front with rear set up changes as well.

Other than set up, one thing I wish I learned earlier was to use your body in the kart. If you lean backwards and to the outside of the corner, the loaded wheel (in a left turn its the right rear, a right turn its the left rear) gains grip and improves side bite, which will then increase rear grip. It will also give you more stability mid corner and exit.

And on the topic of kerbs and rubber, stay off ALL kerbs on the ENTRY to a corner. If you break on a kerb, you will lose the kart. There are many different ideas on what to do with the rubber, and how to change your line in the wet. A basic idea to have is to “cross the rubber”. I find that breaking slightly to the inside of where you usually break, and then getting the kart to the outside of the corner works best. Basically, reduce all contact with the rubber on the track to a minimum. In other words, instead of outside inside outside, its inside outside middle. On entry, don’t go to far inside, but more inside than your usual breaking point.

This is because as was stated, when rubber gets wet, it does not give much grip. This is for several reasons. One, being that the surface is smooth, so if you break on it while wet, the water gets jammed between the wheel and the surface and you aquaplane. Also, when it rains, the rubber can release oils that the tire naturally holds. When this oil comes out, it gets very slick. This isn’t such a big deal in the full wet, but it can be problematic in drying conditions.

Hope this helped a little, but rain racing takes a lot of practice, and usually some luck too.