How to Structure a Kart Practice Day (Stop Driving Empty Laps)

Driving empty laps on a kart practice day is just a huge crime. I don't want my drivers to do it and I don't want to do it myself. You should structure your practice days so that at the end of the day you know you've improved, and you know you've learned something.

If you are not practicing like that — are you really practicing? Are you really improving?

That's the question I ask myself, and that's the question I ask my drivers. Every day you should have a goal: what you're working on, where you should improve, which areas to improve.

What's the goal for today?

If you're learning a new track, the first goal is obvious — get out there, drive around, find the reference points and the racing line, then push your limits further and further so you go beyond the limit and eventually come back to it. That's its own process.

But let's say you're driving a track you already know multiple times over. Either you're preparing for a race next week, or you're just driving to keep yourself in shape and ready for whatever race is coming up. You still need an idea of what you're looking for:

• Are you training to get your body in shape for an upcoming race?
• Are you trying to find a new setup for that track?
• Are you testing an engine setting, or comparing a different engine against your current ones?
• Are you trying a new chassis setup to fix a problem from the previous races — too much grip, sliding too much, not enough front, too much front?

You should always have an idea of what you're working on. The track conditions are rarely going to be the same between a test and a race day, but you should still have that idea. When I see drivers just driving empty laps again and again, clueless about what they're doing, clueless about what they're working on — if they even know they're working on anything — those are wasted opportunities, and they turn into regrets later on.

Two ways to pick the day's goal: reactive or pre-planned

One way to structure the day is to react to where you're currently losing time. After session one, let's say you notice you're losing a lot in the slow-speed corners because you're braking early — either from the evidence in the data, or because your mechanic or coach noticed it, since you may not be able to get data from other drivers. If that's what you and the people around you are seeing, then that's the area to work on for the day: the slow corners, because the braking isn't late enough and hard enough. That's the reaction approach, built on where you're actually losing in the first session or two.

The other way is a pre-planned approach. For example: in the last race I wasn't confident on the brakes. Whether it was me or the kart, I just couldn't brake as late as I wanted to. So my next practice day, I'm going to focus relentlessly on building that confidence on the brakes. That goes on the priority list. I'm going to drive myself into the grass, out-braking myself as much as I can, to build that braking skill — that braking muscle — through muscle memory and confidence in the kart and in myself. Then I go to the race with far more confidence.

Here's a live example. I'm probably going to compete at SKUSA SuperNats in Las Vegas, and that track will be extremely low grip. So what I'm planning already — even though the race is three months away — is to practice on tracks with very low grip, because Las Vegas is in a parking lot and it's going to be very low grip too. Obviously I can't go and train in parking lots, so I need to find the track here in northern Italy with the lowest grip, drive around it, do many laps, and try to find lap time there. Not only for the lap time: I'm building the muscle-memory skill of driving in low-grip conditions, because I'm preparing for a race that will have exactly that.

Using setup as a training tool

I've also had days where I focused on reducing my center of gravity massively. I wanted to reduce drag on the straights, but also to reduce the grip level, so I mounted a seat that put me very low. It cut the air drag and the grip. It was quite extreme — it made me slide so much — but I knew that was training. I was preparing to drive a track that had a lot of grip, and I wanted to get used to sliding, so that when the grip did arrive I'd have a setup that was much better for high grip, with the kart nice and low.

I also moved the seat forward to free up the rear. I had very little traction but a lot of rotation, and I knew I couldn't generate as much grip as I wanted — but I also knew that the moment I went to new tires, or the grip came from the track, I'd find so much performance, purely because of the way the kart was set up. Understanding what seat position really changes is what makes that kind of experiment useful rather than random.

So when you have a clear idea of what you want to work on — based on your current weakness, or maybe not even a weakness, maybe you just have to adapt the setup because you're very tall, or very short, or a bit heavy, and you need to tune the setup to your body — you can go driving on a random track day just to practice on a different setup, build familiarity, and build the muscle memory of driving a slippery kart, so that when the grip comes you're at an advantage. Or the other way around: build more grip into the kart, so that when the track slides you have a bit more performance.

I like to always have one kart with a bit more grip and one kart that's a bit more free. Based on what I need, I use that kart.

I need to practice different grip conditions, so I like having two karts with different setups to test and practice on.

Training the body: race fit, not gym fit

Let's say we're not working on the setup — we're working on the driver. On myself, if I want to train my body, I strap some weights to my helmet, so the helmet is artificially heavier. It's much harder to drive; it feels like I'm going to lose my head every lap. But that builds my neck muscles massively compared to driving with a very light helmet.

If your goal is conditioning, stamina, sport-specific training, then fine — go and do laps, almost like empty laps, to get the conditioning. Because you don't want to be gym fit.

You want to be race fit. And it's really hard to get driving fit — you can only drive to get driving fit.

Yes, you can do forearm training, core stability work, and very helpful endurance training — running, cycling, swimming. But at the end of the day you can't train the muscles you use in the kart unless you're driving. The neck, the forearms, and the rib cage muscles that support you in the seat and hold you up against the G-forces — you won't train those anywhere but on track, and you can't really train them in the gym.

So if your only goal is to get fit ahead of a race, fine, go out and do laps. But the goal should be to have at least one more goal alongside it. Fitness is one; the other should be getting as close as possible to your theoretical best, doing more laps within the optimal lap-time window, getting your consistency as high as possible — therefore reducing your standard deviation.

Reflect at the end of every session

You should have multiple goals, but not too many. Fitness runs in the background. But at the end of every session you should reflect:

• How good was that session?
• How close was I to my theoretical best?
• Did I optimize and use everything I could from the kart, from the tires, from the track?
• How many laps was I able to do that on — was it one lap by chance, or can I replicate it again and again?

That's really the goal. And you also want to see whether your lap time is fading: is my stint getting worse, or better? If it's getting worse, most of the time it's you getting tired, not the kart getting slower. Sometimes the track gets worse, but mostly it isn't the track. The tires get a bit worse, the water temperature in the radiator gets a bit too hot — but the reality is that most of the time the driver just collapses. Especially drivers who aren't very experienced or aren't fit for the track: after 10 laps they're kind of dead, the lap times drop off, and they start making big mistakes. They need some cool-down laps. That's my case too right now, since I haven't been driving for a long time — and it's the same for everybody, especially in hot conditions. When you're unsure whether the fade is you or the equipment, that's exactly the is-it-me-or-the-kart question.

Take note of your progress

If you have a day where you're working on something, you need to track your progress. Look at how much better you're getting from session to session.

If your only goal is fitness, you can't really track that session to session — you'll have to track it daily or weekly. You're always going to get tired during the day, so the end of your day will not be as fast as the beginning, unless the track gets much better or you go out on new tires.

The sweet spot for most drivers is the end of the morning. If you want to go on new tires, better at 11am than 3pm.

By the afternoon they start to get tired. Yes, at 3pm you may have more performance from the kart, but you'll have less performance from the driver — and the goal is to hit the sweet spot with everything at once: driver, tires, kart. Reading how the track's grip evolves across the day is half of that timing decision; your own fade is the other half.

You'll never be perfect. If your goal is to train low-grip conditions, you're not going to be perfect — you'll probably be better at the end of the day, especially if you pushed yourself in those conditions, but not perfect. So how do you track improvement on something like low grip? Not directly. But you can track your consistency: the more consistent you are, the fewer mistakes you make, which means the more familiar and better you are in those conditions. Measuring that consistency properly is what turns a vague goal into a number.

And if your goal is to improve your braking — first, being able to brake later — then you can easily track that in the data. Did I manage to brake later than in the other sessions? Did I still make the apex? Did I still make the corner, yes or no? We have that in PURPL: braking repeatability, in terms of how hard you brake and how late you brake. You get the whole view, so you have a clear idea of what to work on and whether you're actually progressing.

But again — you won't be perfect at the end of the day. Even if you practice 150 laps braking the latest, the hardest, the most efficient, and as consistently as possible, it's not going to be perfect. You'll see what to work on the next day. And you're never going to be at the point of: okay, I'm done, my skill is maxed out, I don't have to improve anymore. That's not true. You'll always have to improve. There's a lot of adaptability required, because every day, every session, every track condition is different — you won't be able to brake at the same point every session or every lap. That's exactly why being flexible and adaptable matters so much. Keep track of your progress on the areas you're working on.

Practicing racecraft on a busy day

I always like to have a day with a purpose, not an empty-laps day. If you want to practice racecraft and there's another driver on track you can do it with, do that. Or if you want to improve your overtaking technique by getting as close as possible to drivers on the brakes, pick a busy day at the track and brush the other driver's side pods every time you overtake — even when you don't need to.

You need to get used to that. You need to get accustomed to overtaking and opening up the lines, because that's what you'll need when you try to win a WSK or CIK-FIA race: overtaking while losing as little time as possible, so you can catch the driver in front instead of losing a second on the move.

That's a superpower — a meta skill. And how do you develop it? Not by thinking about it. By going out and doing it.

If you drive on a track day where there's nobody out there, it's going to be hard to work on overtaking — you won't be overtaking anybody. So getting yourself in the mix with a bunch of drivers is far better. But when you are driving alone, there are still lots of things to work on and lots of ways to get faster. Even a solo day has plenty to attack, and there's a whole method to squeezing value out of practice days.

It compounds

Remember: you don't want to drive empty laps on days where you're clueless about what you want to work on. Everyone has things to work on. Even F1 drivers have to work on their driving, and they also know they want to improve their car — so you may have to work on both at the same time, and that's totally fine. That's basically what I try to do all the time: improve myself, improve the kart, and every day come up with ideas on how to improve the kart.

At the end of the day it compounds. At the end of the week and at the end of the season it compounds into solid gains and driving improvements that take you to another level and set you apart from every other driver in the paddock — which ultimately turns you into an alien. A driver who sets purple sectors and laps every single time.

So go out and try PURPL, get busy, start seeing your sessions come alive, and enjoy it. Let me know how it goes. Remember to keep sending it — and go purple. Ciao.