Can You Really Analyze Data in the Wet? An Honest Answer

You probably experience the same, but when you're driving in the wet and you're driving by yourself, there's not many other drivers on the track, and maybe you don't have any teammates to compare against. You're solo on the track, almost alone. And you notice that you're not really improving. You're not really learning much from your telemetry. You're not really getting any feedback from your MyChron.

And you almost feel like, what's the point of even charging my MyChron? You know, it's kind of useless in the rain. The track changes every single session, there's no real reference laps to compare against, my teammates, you know, with the grip changing, the standing water level changing, it's all quite, uh, down to the conditions. So even if I did notice something in one session, the next session it would either be more wet or less wet, it wouldn't be the same. So in a way, that's how I felt a bit.

Why wet data feels pointless

Even though now I figured out that on PURPL you can have a look at many cool things. For example, you could have an idea of which are the perfect lines for that conditions by looking at all the lines that you have tried and tested during that session. You can see which lines work better, and you can see that not only from the mini-sectors heatmap matrix, where you can see in all the laps exactly the gap from your mini-sectors to the fastest mini-sector during other laps, so you can quite literally invisibly see on which laps you managed to get the best mini-sector, and then you can have a look at what you did in that mini-sector.

The lines

So you can see specifically in the data if you change your line in the specific corners, and that's really cool, because you can really have an idea, okay, in that lap I tried to actually go super wide and it worked out, my delta time is saying that I gained one tenth, for example. And the cool thing is that it automatically detects not only the speed but also the distance as you travel, so it's not going to just see, oh yeah, you carried more speed, but the distance is way worse. So it's really about understanding that it's super important to all the time match the speed with the distance, and there are some softwares that are not really taking care of that, and of course it gives you false information. But I just feel like that's too important for, for someone to neglect.

And also Babyrace, like with my drivers, I always show them, okay yes the speed is just 50 percent of the equation, then the rest is all about the distance. You need to make sure that you do the least amount of distance but while carrying the highest amount of speed.

So yes, again, once we identify that optimal racing line, even though it's from a previous session, so the session that you just did, and yes the track conditions are going to change in the next session, in the wet then rarely the same, but at least you'll have an idea of what are the best lines in all the sort of corners. So I'm sure that if you spend real time looking into the lines and really figuring out which is the right one, then by doing so you will get to the next session with much more clarity.

And yes, well, you may have to brake a bit later because the track is slightly dried up, and so you can brake later and carry more speed. Or vice versa, the track is gonna be wetter, so you may have to brake a bit earlier and carry less speed. But in a way, no matter what, you're gonna know that in those conditions, we just drove the session before, before the line, the optimal line for your conditions was, let's say, in that moment, like wide, for example, but a certain amount of wide, because, you know, there's not only, oh I'm either wide or I'm tight, you know, I'm on the curb, you know, there's, it's not just black and white. You can also have some corners that you have to drive in between what is full wide and what's full tight, you may have to be in the middle. So again, that's really cool to me, understanding all the time what's the, the optimal line, in the way it's key.

And then you need to obviously memorize, based on the different conditions, you need to say, okay, you know, this session the track was quite wet and I was doing 1:11.0, for example, in terms of lap time, okay, I know that those lines were working pretty well, so next time I'm going to have a similar condition I think those lines are going to work out well. So that's what I mean, with a MyChron or even with Race Studio 3 you couldn't really do that, or it would have really needed a detective, or like a mechanical engineering degree, to unveil that. Now it's way easier, and I just feel like it's speeding up the learning process, and it actually feels like now there's some sort of value in the MyChron being used in the wet. Before, as I said, it was a bit useless.

Grip and tire pressure

And also it's cool to understand the consistency. Of course, as always, you can see the grip level, so you can see, maybe with different tire pressures, just by simply changing tire pressures, either lowering down or adding back some air, and making a quite large change tire pressure, you can see in the grip indicators, with the friction circle or the with the grip load index, you can have a look at how the grip behaves differently, whether you had more grip or less grip. And it's also going to give you some insights whether you picked up some grip during the session as you went on, so maybe the tire pressures were a bit low at the beginning, or vice versa, whether you kept losing grip the more you went on, so maybe I'd say your tire pressures were a little bit too high, you know.

Braking

So it's really cool for that. Of course, you have lots of intelligence on what you can do with the braking, and with the braking it's really quite useful, because again, in the wet everybody thinks, oh you don't have to brake so hard in the wet, you have to be careful, but it's not really like that, it's the opposite. You almost have to be a much better braker in the wet than in the dry, I really believe that, because in the dry there's a lot of grip, in most cases, that, okay yeah, you need to brake later, hard, but the grip is gonna kind of, like, make you stop in a way, also in mid-corner, especially with very high grip conditions in Italy.

But in the wet, okay yes you arrive at the lower approaching speed on the straight, so you may in theory need less braking, but the reality is that the minimum speed is so much lower, because you can't carry the speed, because it's just slippery. Therefore, yeah, you gotta stop, you gotta stop properly, that's the thing, you gotta stop, and you gotta use the brakes to stop. So I just generally feel there's a lot of value in understanding your, your braking technique in the wet, how efficient it is. You don't have to combine much in the dry, you have to combine a lot, so you have to brake and, you know, turn a lot and holding the brakes. But in the wet you do, in, uh, in the cases where you're not hitting the curbs, because when you're hitting the curbs you're just like braking really hard until the curb, then when you're on the curb you kind of come off the brakes. So you're doing almost like a straight-line braking in the wet, but you do a lot, you've got to do it a lot.

In the, in single-speed cars, like in Mini, you may have to open up the lines, because the, the torque is so low, the RPMs need to keep up and the momentum needs to stay up. So in juniors and seniors, the torque is quite a lot, so you need to kind of use the, the tight lines, for example, so that you can make less distance and you can take advantage of the brakes and of the exit speed, which you don't really have in 60 Mini with just 10 horsepower. So in that case you just only have to rely on the momentum, I would say. But still, the braking is just key.

RPM and sprockets

So again, there's a bunch of things you can really work on, on the wet, by looking at your data. For example, you can also have a look at the RPMs and understand, and have an intelligence about the sprockets. You can have an, okay, an idea, right, how's my final drive ratio, which basically is, uh, the sprockets plus the pinion you have, and it's gonna tell you, okay, you know, you need to be a little bit longer on this sprocket, or you need to be shorter on this sprocket. Of course, it won't tell you what to do, but it's going to show you what you did in other sessions, maybe with different sprockets, and it's going to show you quite clearly the difference. And maybe you will notice that, you know, for example, making, making that sprocket change and going shorter for more acceleration, maybe won't need, because right now you may already have a lot of wheelspin, so you may not need to go on a shorter sprocket. Or maybe you will see that you are controlling the wheelspin really well, you see that your bottom is not so strong, your top is too strong, so it's better to go on a shorter sprocket, a shorter gearing, in a way.

Water temperature and carburetion

So yeah, there's quite a lot of things you can, you can analyze. And as I said, when you think about the lines, your consistency, your braking, your RPM management, so with the sprockets, but also you can have a look at their water temperature intelligence, if you see, if your water is too cold, you know, normally the water gets very cold in the, in the wet, it doesn't keep up the temperature, so you need to, yeah, just kind of close off the radiator, in a way, when it's wet, to keep the optimal target water temperature.

But again, you can have an idea, also with that, you can also have an idea of the exhaust temperature, how it behaves through the lap. If you see it's going, going down too much, you know, it probably means you're too rich on the carburetion, because it's always like that, you can't run the same carburetion between the wet and the dry, you need to lean the carburetion out massively, because every time you, you brake and you wait to go on the gas, basically the engine gets filled of fuel that isn't get burned, and therefore it becomes, you know, rich. And normally you lose performance in the mid-range, but also in the bottom you will feel like the response is, is more dirty, it's like delayed, it's like laggy.

So yeah, you gotta go out and see, okay, my carburetion is not behaving well, it's not in the sweet spot, it's too low, we've got to go and change it, we're going to make a change for that. So you need to have everything at hand to change jets, or maybe it's easy, it's an X30, and you can just close the carburetion easily with the two screws, super easily.

So yeah, so remember, in the wet you can still get a lot of value, a ton of value, from your MyChron, or whatever other logger you're using, Unipro, Alfano, etc, you just need to obviously have the right tools. In case you were wondering, PURPL is the right tool for you, I believe. There's those other providers, but I just believe that we put so much effort into really putting ourselves in the driver's shoes, and we're highly invested into this project, and we just want to make sure this is becoming the number one tool all the best racing drivers are going to be using 24/7 when they are at the racetracks. You're going to find lap time, that's basically the thing, if you want to find lap time you're going to use this. Now, AI has taken over many areas of, of our lives, and I feel like it's going to be integrated in karting too. If you want to win, you're going to have a unfair advantage over everybody else.

So yeah, remember to keep pushing, start using your data that you're already recording, in the way, and you'll see your lap times and race results improving. So I'll see you soon. Sign up to PURPL, let me know how it goes, text me on Instagram, and keep sending it. Ciao.