Is It Me or the Kart? How I Tell Driving Problems From Setup Problems

I've been on the racetrack for about 22 years or so, and I've seen it all. And I'm sure I still have to see a lot. But what I notice a lot of times is that drivers struggle to identify whether a mistake is happening because of them, of their driving, or because of their actual kart, so from the setup, etc.

The reality is that, as I see, most of the times, I would say 80% of the times, it's just the driver that's making the mistake and even making it seem like the kart is behaving, having wrong, but it's just the driver that's driving bad and it's not helping the kart in a way.

How your driving affects the kart

You got to remember that the way you drive affects your kart balance massively. So if you drive very aggressively but in an erratic way. I mean, you gotta drive aggressively, let's, let's be real. Of course, to be driving fast you have to carry the speed, you have to brake really hard and late. But for example, you want to be super aggressive with your brakes in the slow corners, in the hairpins, of course, but then you want to be super smooth with the steering. So you need to know how to be aggressive, and where to be aggressive, and where to be smooth, and when to be smooth.

But the many times drivers get it wrong, and most of the times they are, like, very smooth with their brake pedal and they're very aggressive with their hands, which then results into oversteer, and the kart feels like it's sliding. Which, again, it feels like the kart is sliding, it feels like the kart is set up badly. But the reality is that most of the times the driver makes it slide.

There is really a difference, a big but subtle difference, between when the kart is actually sliding to when the driver is actually making the kart slide. So it's really key to analyze and detect whether it's a driver at fault or the kart at fault.

There is no perfect setup

I mean, I'm not going to lie, many times the setup is not going to be perfect, and the mechanics and the driver and the team are going to be working proactively to try and get the setup in the optimal window. But you also need to recognize that there's no such thing as the perfect setup. I mean, you need to just be aware of that and acknowledge that. I mean, it's never going to be perfect. The setup is never going to be perfect, you need to know that up front. I'm not going to fool you into thinking, oh, the kart is always going to be perfect, don't worry. No, it's not going to be perfect, most of the times, probably never. I mean, it's never really going to be perfect.

But the goal is to get it as close as perfect as possible in terms of setup, and then you have to adapt. Let's say if the setup is 99, you need to try to adapt your driving to make that become, let's say, 100, because maybe the kart is a little bit oversteery, you gotta control it by being a little bit smoother, so you can drive with it really well. The best drivers are the ones who are able to adapt, and their ones were able to live with it and get really good lap times no matter the setup.

And, you know, of course everybody would love to have a perfect setup all the time, but not even if AI had the chance to tune up the setup would he manage to make a perfect setup. It would be impossible. I mean, like, the conditions of the track changes so much in terms of grip level, temperature, humidity, the carburetion changes all the time. Um, you know, it's never going to be predictable. Sometimes you can predict that, sometimes you can't predict that. But even if you could predict that, you know, you would never really have the grip level you had the session before, because either you'll have more or you'll have less. The carburetion will not always be in the sweet spot. Sometimes it will, sometimes it will be, you know, a bit off. But again, you can always tune up the carburetion yourself if you're driving Juniors or Seniors, um, you know, where you have the possibility to change the carburetion yourself. But in other kart classes, like 60 Mini or like KZ shifters, you can't really change the carburetion yourself during the session. Instead, you'll have to just do it after the session together with your engine tuners.

So, but again, the reality is that most of the times it's the driver who's responsible to adapt into the kart, for example. And the kart again cannot be perfect all the time and probably will never be perfect, okay. And that's the same in F1. I mean, think about it, you know, one race Mercedes wins, next race Ferrari wins, next race McLaren wins. You know, even there it's just really hard for the teams to be dominating all the races. Sometimes you have some seasons where some teams are dominating, as in the case of Mercedes this year in 2026, or McLaren last year in 2025, or Red Bull before. But reality is that it's very hard for them to stay at the peak of their, of their performance, and it's the same in karting. It's just really hard to stay at the peak of performance and nail the sweet spot in terms of setup all the time. So the driver has to adapt, by definition.

The best drivers are not the drivers who get the best setups all the time, no, other ones who are gonna be able to adapt. If you have an understeer, okay, I'm gonna try and find a way to rotate the kart even though I have understeer, by using more brakes, carrying more speed, clipping the apex kerb if needed to rotate. Or if I have oversteer, I'm gonna try to find a way to get the kart to rotate just a bit less than usual, so I can control that.

Bad driving feels like a bad kart

You know, so as I said, about 80% of the times it's just the driver that's at fault and causing the, let's say, issues in the lap time, mostly from faulty driving, in a way that the driver is braking too early, or the driver is just driving too aggressive with the steering wheel, or the driver is just anticipating the corner, etc. You know, and that basically makes it even feel like the kart is not right. As I said, in the case of aggressively using the steering wheel, may feel like, oh, the kart is, uh, too slippery, sliding all the way through, but reality is that it's not, not like that. It's the reality that it's the driver who's usually responsible of that.

And, you know, it's gonna be hard to tell sometimes the real cause of oversteer. Sometimes you may be feeling that it's just the driver, but in reality sometimes it's going to be the setup. I feel that, again, there's a fine line which is really hard to tell. All the very experienced drivers can tell whether actually it's just the setup, it's not me. But again, that's why the drivers need to develop of that self-awareness. I would say it's pretty much like a driver superpower to have a crazy high self-awareness, because it literally tells you whether you are experiencing some, you know, setup issues in that moment, or whether it's actually you that are having, um, faulty driving, and so you can fix that the next lap going through that corner, or right away into the next corner of that same lap. That's why you need to be massively self-aware.

Two tenths of your theoretical

But one thing I always like to tell my drivers before we even think about the setup, because let's say the kart is at fault, and the kart is not good, so maybe the chassis, maybe the engine, so I would say to my driver: so, okay, why don't we look first at your theoretical time?

If your theoretical time is like three tenths faster than your real lap, I mean, we shouldn't even discuss that. Because if you are two tenths off quali pole position and you have three tenths to your theoretical, do you know that if you drove all your sectors together, you would have set pole position, right? So my prerequisite is like, okay, before we even talk about chassis, engine, whatever on a kart, first, you got to make sure you are at least within two tenths of your theoretical.

I mean, it's not world class, because to be world class you gotta be within half a tenth of your theoretical on a daily basis, basically, not just once in a lifetime. You gotta be doing it repeatedly, session by session, within half a tenth. It means you are getting your peak performance when you get peak performance for your tires, and then you just drive at your best in that specific couple-of-laps window.

And also you want to see real consistency in your lap times. So once you're able to match your theoretical, or as close as possible to it, you also want to repeat yourself on multiple laps, like two, three, four laps within one tenth. I want to see that. If I see one lap that's pretty good and the other laps are not even close to it, and the second-best lap is like three tenths from the fastest lap, then that is really upsetting, because it means the driver is not consistent. So the driver is not consistent, and the kart basically doesn't really change during the session, well, then we have really a driver problem, before blaming the kart for whatever reason.

Another really important metric to measure is the braking-point repeatability, in terms of consistency. And that's the same in terms of line repeatability, the racing line. And we're able to track that through the PURPL app. You're able to see that, oh, was I able to replicate my braking points again and again? Were I able to push them every lap as the grip came, or not? Or were I able to get my racing lines consistent lap by lap? Or were they deviating two, three meters from one lap to the other? Of course that's not good if that's happening. So, you know, you want to match your lines and your braking points when you get them right.

Of course, racing is happening mostly by feeling, and in a subconscious way more than a conscious way, so you can't really overthink about that too much. It has to be happening automatic, through so many hours and days and months of muscle memory that you've built into your skills, let's say. So you can't really fix it in one second after looking at the data and say okay, go and fix it. It's just not possible like that. It would be like telling a newbie basketball player to just, you know, match Kobe Bryant, just after watching his, uh, game. It's just not possible. You gotta put the work and build that muscle memory to become that level of driver.

When it's finally time to touch the kart

Then, once the driver is driving well and I still see that the lap time is not coming, and I see that, for example, you know, the consistency is there, but, you know, even though the driver is trying to brake late, trying to carry the speed into the corner, you can still see that his actual lap time is not improving and his actual corner is not improving too. Despite him trying everything, he may still not be able to carry the same minimum speed as the others. Then what I then do is, like, okay, we first make some setup changes.

We listen to the driver's feedback and we're like, okay, what do you need, more front, more rear? And we try what he says. We're going to add more front. If he improves, perfect. If he actually gets worse, then we try the other way around: if he said you need more front then it gets worse, then we try to get to the opposite, to remove some front, or to add some rear. And then if he improves, that's perfect. Then we probably understand that we can't trust too much his feedback, because probably he's not too experienced yet on helping the setup tuning, and maybe he needs more races of experience before we can actually start implementing his feedback into the setup. But it's fine. I mean, happens to many drivers. Probably happened to me too.

Then, if the driver has no clue what's really going on, even though the lap time is not coming, I will just obviously use my perspective and my experience. And I will go through the data and watch the video, and I will be like: okay, you know what? I think that, yes, you probably weren't trying hard enough before. Now you are trying hard, but it's still not coming in the lap time. So you probably need more front, based on my experience and based on the video. And it looks like, okay, yeah, now the lap times are much better. You can see the minimum speed increased, because you weren't able to rotate the kart, and now you have the rider rotation, exactly what you needed. Boom, there you go, we're set.

So, you know, it's all these sorts of things that are extremely nuanced. But again, you, as the driver, first have to demonstrate that you are driving properly, that you are having consistency, and you can repeat your lap times, and you're close as possible to your kart potential, which is your theoretical, basically. And once you're able to prove that, then obviously it's going to be down to the mechanic, the coach, or your team manager, whoever's taking care of your setups, to give you, you know, some trust and actually go out and try changing something on the kart. Whether it's on the chassis, whether it's on the engine, of course on the carburetion, on the sprockets, there's a lot you can be tuning. On also on the engine side, you can be tuning the engines too, in a way that shifts the power band to more top, or more bottom, or more mid, based on what you are looking for in that specific moment.

If you keep blaming the kart

Just one thing that I wanted to point out is that drivers need to understand that when they say that the kart is bad and it's not good, or whatever, the kart is not behaving like they want to, or the engine is not good, or the chassis is not good, they need to be seriously aware of what they're saying. Because if they say it once and they're wrong, they say twice and they're wrong, they say three times, they're wrong, then guess what the team or the coach or the mechanic is going to think about a driver? They're going to think that that driver is just, you know, taking excuses. And all these individuals are not going to trust the driver's feedback anymore. And so that's pretty bad for a driver in terms of reputation, and the moment that you may actually feel something right in the kart, they may not trust you anymore.

I've seen that many times in racing, where a driver, for example, was complaining, complaining, complaining, and it was never right. He would find excuses all the time. But then eventually it would come up to something that he was right. But because he kept finding excuses and blaming the kart for no reasons, then in that moment the team didn't really follow them, and he was very frustrated. But, I mean, that was what he created, he created that situation where the team didn't trust the driver anymore, because he would always address the problem to something external, something else, and not taking the responsibilities when he needed to.

So I've seen this playing out multiple times in karting, but, you know, the thing that you always have to remember as a driver is that the team is always ready to back you, but, you know, they also want to find lap time and win races as well as you do. And if, you know, you are constantly searching for excuses and not paying attention to your driving, and instead just think about the kart all the time, then you're not going to be getting the trust from the team, because again the team is going to try to do the best they can for you, up until a certain point where, if you become too much of a headache for them, they would almost most likely will prefer you to go to another team, then you always, like, becoming a headache and just, like, finding excuses, which again then it doesn't play out for both of you. So the team is always there to support you and back you, but they always need to teach you at some point, and make you understand that you are wrong whenever you're wrong, because that's part of your development and your learning curve.

Focus inward first

So what I suggest is, as a driver, when you are losing some tenths here and there, you may be like three, four tenths off the pace, and you are not really quite sure whether it's on you or the kart. Before blaming the kart, I would always advise you to have a look at videos, have a look at your telemetry. You can use PURPL to give you some feedback on where you're giving up time to yourself. First of all, because maybe your theoretical time is five tenths away from your current fastest lap, and you realize that there will be probably enough to get pole position and win race. So before even thinking about your kart, let's get as close as possible to the theoretical, or even match it ideally, or be super consistent to your optimal time, in a way so that you can then have the proof, okay, that I'm doing a really good job.

Because that is the thing, like myself too, when I feel I'm not there in terms of, like, fitness, because I've been, like, in this case I'm not driving in the last six months, and, uh, it's very busy at Babyrace, and, you know, working here at PURPL to help all drivers find lap time with their telemetry and make it as super easy as possible, and effective, but of course, so I've had to sacrifice my track time for all these days at the track with the team, as well as days in the office working at PURPL. But I know that I will not be probably super fit in terms of, like, muscle memory, even though I'm super fit because I'm training every day, I will not really be fit for the kart, and I will need some days to get back into my rhythm, you know. And I know it's not going to be the kart will be at fault. It's just going to be me who will need to pick up back the automatism, the muscle memory, in order for, you know, me to drive at my best. And it's not going to be the kart that can drive every lap consistently, or within one tenth to the theoretical or less. It's just me, the responsible one for doing that. And you should always think about the same too.

Of course, once you feel like you're driving really, really, really good, but you're still probably four or five tenths off the pace, then, well, of course, if you have data from your teammates, go and download them and try to have a look what's missing, and then if you, I mean, see that you're missing something in the corners, then probably there's something wrong with your setup or your tires. Otherwise, if you're missing in the straights, there may be something on your carburetion, your sprocket, or your engine. Or maybe it's just something that you can't really see, it's maybe something on your tube, on the frame of the kart, but that's not most of the case. Maybe you're not able to brake as late as the others because your pads are finished, or because you have no more oil in your brake pump. So that makes you brake early, and maybe that's your limit, but that's not the limit of the others. And so again, you always have to first see what you're doing, and then obviously compare that to the others. If you see the others are able to brake later, well, you have to think, is that because they have new tires compared to me, or because they have better grip, or maybe the grip is the same, or maybe it's just the brakes that are not working quite as well. And you bleed the brakes, you rebuild them, and you go out, wow, you find three, four tenths. Then that was it.

Of course, with time you will develop that experience, of course, to being able to identify the issue a lot faster, instead of having to wait five, six sessions to find the issue. But again, that takes a bit of time. But first, focus inward, don't focus outward.

The worst drivers focus outward first. The best drivers focus inward first. They see: okay, what can I do better myself? Okay, is it me? Okay, where can I improve? When they feel like: okay, now I'm done. I mean, like, it's probably, I'm pretty much arrived at what I can do, it's like I can't extract more lap time from the kart, then it's time to work on the kart. You know, not the other way around. Remember that. Remember to sign up to PURPL, and as always, keep sending it.