The 9 Questions to Ask After Every Karting Session

Most of my drivers weren't really aware of what to check after their session, especially when I wasn't around them. So I came up with this nine post-session questions checklist that I want them to go through using PURPL, and I think you're going to benefit a lot from it.

Before we start, a quick reminder: all racing drivers have to be extremely self-aware, with an extreme sense of self-reflection. When you drive you shouldn't be a sleepwalker who isn't aware of what he's doing. You have to do the opposite. Any time you make a mistake, or you notice something on the kart, you've got to absorb that information and change your driving the next lap — or refer it back to the pits so your team can work on the kart.

1. How close was I to my theoretical time?

Notice I framed it as "how close" and not "how far". I always believe in framing words the right way so they stick as positive reinforcement rather than negative.

There are two ways to answer it. You can look at the MyChron theoretical, derived from the three best sectors you had during the session. But those three sectors come from GPS, and if you only look at three, it isn't really fair — you'll never know whether you did turn one really well, because you might have three or four corners inside one sector.

What we achieved at PURPL was multiple mini sectors that are realistic: not cut in the middle of a chicane or a sequence of corners. On a track like Lonato or Franciacorta you see seven sections instead of three, and with around 12 corners that's roughly two corners per mini sector instead of three or four. Now I can tell whether turn two was the best I did all session on my fastest lap, or whether I did it better on another lap — because if it was on another lap, I know I have to put it all together next time. That's the same logic as splitting the lap into sectors, just with splits that respect the corners.

Drivers who are five or six tenths off their theoretical cannot blame the kart until they first get close to it.

That's what I tell my drivers. If you're a tenth off in qualifying and you're talking about the engine, but you already have six tenths sitting inside your own lap — go and fix that first. If you don't want to lose the respect of your team, your mechanic and your coach, match your theoretical first, repeat it consistently, and then you can have a conversation about setup. Not the other way around.

A very low delta — say one tenth — means you probably did a really good job, because with more sectors it gets harder. With two splits it's super easy to match your theoretical. With four it's harder, with six harder still, with eight it's quite difficult. But that increased difficulty is what pushes you to become a better driver. If it's too easy, you won't be pushed.

I didn't want a split at every corner — only where it's needed. The algorithm detects any point where the steering is essentially straight, so you're not in the middle of a sequence, and starts a new section there. That way the way you drive one section isn't influenced by the previous or the next corner.

2. How consistent was I?

You need to know whether you were consistent during that session, because doing one great lap and then being four or five tenths off it is a nightmare. You might get a good result in quali, but you won't win the race.

That's measured through the standard deviation number inside PURPL: it takes all your laps and computes, on average, how far you were from your fastest lap. I could have been meaner and asked you to compute the deviation from your theoretical rather than your fastest lap — the value would be even higher — but for simplicity let's compare against the fastest lap. The lower the better.

A 0.1 second deviation is really good news: on average you're a tenth off your best. If you have 0.6, you're six tenths off on average, which is a nightmare, and you need to go and work on driving consistent lap times.

One thing we built in: only clean laps get counted in that number. If you're rolling, or spinning, or slowing more than a few percent — beyond 2.5% off your fastest lap — it isn't treated as a clean lap. It wouldn't be fair to drag those into a statistic about your consistency.

3. How many laps did it take me to reach my fastest lap?

Suppose the race is 15 laps. If you only reach your fastest lap on lap 13, and until lap eight you're still half a second off it, that's not ideal — something isn't giving you performance early in the race.

Ninety percent of the time it's the tires. Tires today are built to be far more ecological so they last longer, which is better for the environment in theory, but they're not as soft as they were 20 years ago. Being harder overall with different chemistry, they're more difficult to bring up to temperature. And when there isn't enough temperature, there isn't enough grip.

The more you push, the more temperature you generate. The more temperature, the more grip. It's a cycle — and it works in both directions.

So if your best lap always lands right at the end, consider raising tire pressures, or attack the first few laps and drive the tire temperature up. Setup carries maybe 20% of it: more front toe for a bit of friction on the fronts, a bit more ride height for vertical load on the tires, a slightly stiffer setup overall. But the biggest factor is how you push in the corners.

If you feel there's no grip in the first laps, you don't want to drive softly. You want the opposite — drive as hard as you possibly can. Raising pressures won't rescue you; it's a bandage for a couple of laps and then you'll struggle mid-session anyway. Pressure and temperature aren't as tightly correlated as people think. You still have to drive like an animal.

4. Why did it take me all those laps?

This is the one PURPL won't answer for you directly, and I want to be honest about that. The cause comes down to grip level, carburetion, water temperature, or simply your driving.

What you can do is check the channels. Were your tire temperatures low in the first laps? Your engine temperature? Your EGT? If everything is low, it's going to be hard to get full power from the engine and full grip from the tires. But if you're not driving hard into the corners and not getting on the throttle early, you won't raise the exhaust temperature, the tire temperature or the engine temperature either — everything comes up when you push harder.

So work like a detective: use all the information available. The water channel telling you it was too cold at the start. The EGT saying it was cold and therefore rich. The grip level being low early on. Nine times out of ten, the real reason you can't find time early in a session is simply not enough temperature in the tires — so everything should be aimed at carrying more speed and generating that temperature. Everything else follows.

5. How much is the aggregate loss across all my laps against my theoretical?

This one is my favorite, and I use it a lot. It's almost like the standard deviation, but built differently — the deviation measures you against your fastest lap, and this measures every lap against your theoretical.

Say your theoretical is a 53.7 and your fastest lap is a 54.0. Then you also did a 54.1, a 54.2, a 54.3. You take 54.0 minus 53.7 — three tenths. Then 54.1 minus 53.7 — four tenths. Then 54.2 minus 53.7 — five tenths. And you add up all those gaps across all the clean laps.

I normally exclude the out lap and the in lap, and I also exclude the first two laps — because you'll never have optimal temperature that early, and in a race you're fighting, defending and overtaking. Comparing those would be irrational. PURPL gives you the number, and I encourage you to put it in your checklist.

6. What was my peak braking G?

I want to know, across the lap, what my peak brake G was. You probably don't have a brake sensor — almost nobody uses them. At Babyrace only one or two drivers run them, because they're heavy, a pain to set up and maintain, and you can't place the ballast where you want with all those cables around the kart.

But you can derive the same information from longitudinal G. I created a custom channel that displays it as if it were brake pressure, and it's really accurate — it shows exactly whether I'm braking hard, and how hard.

• 60 Mini: aim for about 1G. If there isn't enough grip you'll see 0.8G.
• KZ: with front brakes you easily reach 1.8G.

That KZ number is close to a racing car — they have carbon brakes and pull far more, but 1.8G is about the most you'll get in karting, and it means you can brake really late. I love that. In PURPL I've set it to detect the three heaviest braking zones, so you can look at those three values session to session. The best drivers in the world are hard, late brakers, so keep those values nice and high.

One caveat: if you're on a track that's essentially flat out with no real braking spots, don't focus on this. It matters where you arrive at high speed into a tight corner, like a hairpin, and have to stop efficiently.

7. How repeatable are my braking points?

There's a section in PURPL that shows this visually, corner by corner, again across the three heaviest braking zones. It's extremely accurate — it's just reading the data from the MyChron — and it shows how far you are from being perfectly consistent on the brakes.

What you should see naturally is that in the first laps you brake a little earlier. You kind of have to: you don't have the same grip you'll have later. As grip comes, you brake a bit later and a bit harder. If you see the opposite — braking later early and earlier at the end — that doesn't make sense, unless you had a big drop in grip late in the session, which is rare.

The limitation is that this metric doesn't tell you whether you actually made the corner. It shows your braking point, not whether you got a good exit or even made the apex. So you can't rely on it alone. But it does show your consistency on the brakes, and once you have real experience at a track, replicating those braking points should become quite effortless.

8. Which sections am I losing the most in, and how much?

Look at sections, not individual corners. This is a theory I hold strongly: if you look at single corners and you have a chicane, what do you do? Look at the first part, the second part, or both? You have to look at both — because treating a chicane as two separate corners is a mistake. If you over-push into the entry of the first part you get a great entry and a terrible exit.

So we gave you sections rather than single corners, with an algorithm that detects them realistically — not hallucinating unreasonable splits in the middle of corners. I'm proud of that one.

Address the three sections you lose the most, and understand why you lose them.

Then confirm your theory against the data: I'm probably braking too early — yes, confirmed. I'm probably getting on the throttle too late — yes, the exit speed is low, confirmed. The goal is to know which sections cost you the most and exactly how much, whether that's a tenth, half a tenth, two tenths or three. This is the same hunt as finding where you're losing time, just run as a routine instead of a one-off.

9. How repeatable is my line?

This one matters, because there's no excuse available. With braking repeatability you can argue that you couldn't be inch-perfect early on because you didn't have grip yet — fair enough, I'll accept that.

But line repeatability? If you're missing your line by two meters, three meters, 1.5 meters from your fastest lap, you can't blame grip. Even without grip you should be able to put the kart in the same place.

You should see a sub-one-meter deviation from your line. Bring that number as close to zero as you can.

I love this feature — it shows you exactly where in the session you deviated most, and gives you a clear number, literally plus or minus 1.5 meters. It'll blow your mind the first time. And it does the thing I care about most: it makes you look at your performance inwardly, rather than outward at other drivers. That's the same principle behind getting faster with nobody to compare against.

Run it every session

These nine post-session questions are extremely important to me and to my drivers at Babyrace. They use them a lot, I use them a lot. If you already run a structured debrief, treat this as the question list that goes inside it — the debrief is the ritual, these are the things you actually interrogate. And if you're wondering how much of this the software can genuinely answer versus what still needs your judgment, I've been honest about that too.

We could certainly add more in future — let me know if you feel there's one that has to be in there right now. But for now, these are the ones. It's the same habit that turns telemetry into actual performance rather than a folder of files you never open.

Go and download PURPL on your mobile and sign up to the web app as well. You'll get instant value from the demo sessions, or you can upload your own and see for yourself. I'm really excited. I'll see you.