The 9 Questions to Ask After Every Karting Session

Since most of my drivers weren't really aware of what to check after their session, especially when I was not around them, well, I came up with this nine post-session questions checklist that I want them to go through by using PURPL, and I feel that you are going to benefit a lot from them. So let's get started with the first question.

Well, before starting, I just wanted to quickly remind you that all racing drivers have to, to be extremely self-aware, and just have extreme sense of self-awareness and of self-reflection. So when you drive you shouldn't be just like, you know, driving almost like a sleepwalker that's not aware what he's doing. You have to do the opposite. You have to be fully aware what you're doing. And any time you make a mistake, or you notice something on the kart, you gotta absorb that information and change your driving the next lap, or, you know, refer that information back to the, the pits so that your team can work on your kart and improve that to go faster.

1. How close was I to my theoretical time?

As you can see, I framed it with a "how close" and not a "how far you are from your theoretical", because I always believe in framing the words in the right way in order for them to stick and become positive reinforcements rather than negative reinforcements. So again, how close was I from my theoretical time?

And now there's two ways to do that. You can look at the MyChron theoretical, which is derived from three sectors, the three best sectors you had during your session. But the thing is that the MyChron has those three sectors that takes it from the GPS band. But I came up with a solution to that, because if you just look at the three best sectors, I mean, it's not really fair, right? Because you will never know exactly whether you did that turn one really well, because you have, for example, three, four corners per sector.

Whereas what I was able to achieve, and we were able to achieve at PURPL, basically, and that was our goal, was to actually have multiple mini sectors, but that obviously they need to be realistic, and they don't want to be cut in the middle of a chicane, for example, or in the middle of a consecutive corner. So I obviously wanted to make it very precise, and I think we managed to. So now, for example, in a track like Lonato or Franciacorta, you see seven sectors instead of three, but the corners are like 12, and so you can probably see that we have roughly two corners per mini sector, instead of like three, four corners per mini sector, as the AiM has. So this makes me understand whether I did those corners really well, because again, with the sectors I'm not able to, you know, you may see that sector one was really good in lap three, but you don't know if turn one was really good, turn two was really good, or both of them really good. So this solves that problem, and you need to know whether your turn two was the best corner you did in that session during your fastest lap, or it was on another lap, because it lets you know, okay, you know, if it wasn't on my best lap and I did it on other laps, that means I have to put that all together next time, you know, in order to make the perfect lap.

Because the goal, guys, is that by the time we have the peak performance from the tires, let's say whatever lap, six, seven, eight, nine, whatever it comes, you want to make sure that you are driving at your best, of course, especially if you're in a qualifying session. The goal of a race is that you're driving at your best from lap one, turn one, you know. And ideally your tires come into temperature really, really quickly, so you don't have to, uh, struggle the first 10 laps and only get that performance on lap 10 until lap 15. So I mean, ultimately we should have the performance early on, but that's another question we would have to ask ourselves.

So how close was I from my theoretical, the goal is to have it as low as possible. I mean the closer the better, of course. Drivers that are five, six tenths off their theoretical, of course, they cannot blame the kart until they first get close to that theoretical. That's what I tell my drivers, like, before you even think about blaming the kart, go out there and fix your theoretical, because I mean, there's no excuses, you know. If you're in qualifying, you're one tenth off, and you're talking about the engine, but you have six tenths off from your ultimate lap already within yourself, well then you should go and fix that first. And if you don't want to lose the respect of your team, your mechanic, your coach, just first take that into consideration, try to match your theoretical first, and try to repeat multiple times in a very consistent session, and then you can have a, have a talk about the setup, and not the other way around.

So, number one: how close was I from my theoretical? That has to be your first question. If you have a very low delta from your theoretical, let's say one tenth, you did, you did probably a really good job, because, as I said, with multiple sectors, it makes it more difficult to stay close to the theoretical, because, you know, the more sectors you have, the more difficult it is to be close to your theoretical. Of course, if you have two splits, it's going to be super easy to match your theoretical. If you have four, a bit more difficult. If you have six, even more difficult. If you have eight, quite difficult, you know. But again, you need to understand with increased difficulty, it also pushes you to become a better driver. If it's too easy, you won't be pushed.

So I'm happy, and I think I found the sweet spot. I mean, I mean, I didn't want to put a split out of every corner, only when it's needed. And we basically create an algorithm that basically is able to detect anytime you have the steering pretty much straight, so that you are not in the middle of a sequence of a corner. So when you're straight with steering wheel, there's going to be a new section. And that's for me the best way to look at it, because you don't want to be influenced by the previous corner or the next corner with the way you're driving that specific section. You know what I mean? So I'm pretty sure that it's working really well. But if you feel like it has to be improved, just let me know, I'll be very curious to hear your opinion.

2. How consistent was I?

Second question is how consistent was I? So it's really important because you need to know whether you're consistent or not during that session, because doing a great lap just once and then being four or five tenths off your fastest lap is a nightmare. You, you may get a good result in quali, but you won't be able to win in the race. So you really want to get that consistency number to be as low as possible.

And that's valued and measured through the standard deviation number inside of PURPL. Basically it checks all your laps and creates a statistical deviation, basically, from your fastest lap to all the other laps, and is able to come up with how far you are from your fastest lap on average. I mean, I could have been more mean and more strict, and ask you to compare your deviation not from your fastest lap but also from your theoretical, so if your theoretical is two tenths faster than your, let's say, fastest lap, then you should compute the deviation, the, you know, the statistical difference, not from your fastest lap but from your theoretical, and in that case the value would be even higher. But, you know, for simplicity's sake, let's just, uh, compare our consistency against our fastest lap. And of course, the lower value, the better.

You know, if you have a 0.1 seconds deviation from your fastest lap, that's really good news. It means on average you're just one tenth off from your fastest lap. The great thing is that in PURPL we have created a rule that only the clean laps get calculated in this statistic number, and for example, if you're rolling, or if you're spinning, or, you know, just like slowing down more than a few percentage points from your fastest lap, so let's say you're beyond 2.5 percent from your fastest lap, then it's not going to be calculated as a clean lap, in order to make it fair, to just consider the clean laps and not all the other slow laps that wouldn't be fair to be compared in that statistical number.

So look for the standard deviation, it's shown almost everywhere, even before clicking the session, you can see that within the session step. And yeah, that has to be your mantra: how consistent was I? The goal is to close that down as, as close as possible to zero. If you have six tenths, so 0.6 of time deviation, it means you are six tenths on average of your fastest lap, which is nightmare, and you have to go and improve your consistency, just focus on driving consistent lap times.

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

Then question number three is going to be how many laps it took me to get to my fastest lap. That's really important, because let's suppose the race is 15 laps, okay? If the race is 15 laps and you only get to your fastest lap on lap 13, and until, let's say, lap 8, you're still half a second off from what your fastest lap is going to be on lap 13, as you can see, it's not ideal, because it means there's something that's not giving you performance earlier on into the race.

Now, 90 of the times it's going to be due to the fact that tires nowadays are built extremely ecologically, so that they last longer, and that's better for the environment, theoretically, so they're not as soft as it used to be 20 years ago or so. And therefore, those tires being, you know, more ecological, and having different chemicals, let's say, inside, they are harder overall, and they, they last longer. But what happens is that they are more difficult to generate temperature. And when there's not enough temperature, there's not enough grip.

So yeah, the reality is that if you can't generate temperature, if you can't generate grip, you're going to struggle the first laps. And that's why you're going to have the laps towards the end. Because the more you push, the more you generate temperature, the more you generate temperature, the more you generate grip. And it's like a vicious cycle, because the more grip, the more you push, and it's like that.

So yeah, if you get that up on the last lap all the time, consider raising tire pressures, or improving the first few laps by pushing yourself like crazy and driving tire temperatures up. Because at the end of the day, the tire temperature is relying, I would say, 20% on setups. So you can increase your front toe to have a bit of friction on the fronts. You can increase a bit the ride heights in order to have more vertical load on the tires, which in turn is going to generate more temperature. You can run a little bit stiffer setup overall. But the, the reality is just that, uh, you need to make sure that, uh, you push like crazy in the corners, because, yeah, as I said, the setup can be a little bit affecting it, obviously important, especially the central gravity, uh, in order to affect the, the stiffness, as well as the, um, you know, the vertical load on the tires, which is key. But I would say the most important part is the way you push the corners. Like, if you feel there's no grip in the first laps, you don't want to drive soft. You want to drive the opposite. You want to drive as hard as you possibly can. That's the only way to go if you want to become a successful racing driver.

So if you feel there's no grip in the first lap, you got to push more. Even if you raise up the tire pressures, it won't help you a lot. It may be a bandage just for the first couple of laps, but then you still will be struggling in the middle of the session. So just make sure you push yourself. And to be honest, they're not highly correlated, pressure and temperature. Yes, I mean, at some point they are correlated, but it's not that you can set up the tire pressures super high so that you drive soft, you know, you still need to drive like an animal, I would say, when the time is coming late into the session.

So how many laps it took to get to my fastest lap, that's really important. If it's too far down the end of the session, well, that means we gotta find a way to, you know, get the lap time earlier, with the driving, or with the setup, or with both.

4. Why did it take me all those laps?

Then question number four is why did it take me all those laps? So that's really important thing. Now, you won't be able to hear that answer from PURPL. We won't give you exactly the reason. I mean, at the end of the day, it comes down to your grip level, or probably your carburetion, or your water temperature, or just your driving.

So, of course, on PURPL, you can see whether in the first laps your temperature is too low, of your tires, of your engine temperature, or from your carburetion, EGT. You know, if everything is low, of course, it's going to be hard to have the most power from the engine, but also have the most grip from the tires. But if you are, you know, not driving hard into the corners, and you're not getting on the throttle early, and you're not pushing, you know, in that case you won't raise up their exhaust temperatures, and you won't raise up the tire temperatures, and you won't raise up the engine temperature. So everything is going to be raised up when you push harder into the corners. And you really need to do that in the winter times, and also in all the other seasons, whenever you have no grip due to the hardness of your tires. You just have to push and warm those tires up as much as you possibly can.

So you won't have the clear answer from PURPL. You won't know exactly why you're losing time in the first laps. But it may be interesting to check all those channels and be like, okay, actually, the water channel is telling me that it was too cold at the beginning. Or, oh, the EGT was telling me it was too cold, so too rich in a way. Oh, the grip level was too low at the beginning, therefore I think that I was not having the optimal grip at the beginning of the session, therefore maybe I wasn't pushing hard enough. So, as a detective does, try to use all the information available that PURPL gives you in a way, so that you can have an idea what's the real cause. But I would say nine out of ten times, the real reason why you won't be able to get a time earlier in the session is because there's not enough temperature in the tires. So everything has to be thought towards carrying more speed, generating that temperature, so you can get more grip earlier on. And of course everything else is going to come as a consequence, you know, the exhaust temperature is going to raise up earlier, your water temperature is going to raise up earlier, etc.

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

The next one is a really cool one, and I use it a lot, well, I use all of them, but this one is my favorite, probably. So, how much is the aggregate loss from all my laps against my theoretical? That is the question. How much is the aggregate loss from all my laps against my theoretical? You have to think, okay, so let's say that I am, you know, having a 54.0 fastest lap, but my theoretical is 53.7. But then I do a 54.1, 54.2, 54.3, 54.1, 54.2, you know what you will have to do is, okay, it's almost like the standard deviation but built differently. And remember, the standard deviation calculates your consistency against your fastest lap; here it's compared against your theoretical time.

So it's basically going to say, so if your kart had the potential of doing a 53.7, but your fast lap is a 54.0, but then you did the 54.1, 54.2, 54.3, etc, you need to calculate the difference how much you lost between all your laps that you did and the potential theoretical that you should have done. So you need to make the, let's say, easy math of, okay, you do 54.0 minus 53.7, and that's 0.3, just three tenths, that's how much loss from your theoretical with your best lap. Then you do 54.1 minus 53.7, you have 0.4. Then you do 54.2 minus 53.7, and you have 0.5, that's five tenths. And what you do is basically you're going to add all those gaps up from all the laps, all the clean laps, okay.

What I normally like to do is exclude the out lap, of course, and the in lap, of course, but also I would like to exclude the first two laps, because, come on, you will never have the optimal temperature in the first two laps, especially in a race, you're probably fighting people, defending people in front of you, overtaking, etc, so let's be honest, I mean, you can't really compare that, it would be irrational thing to do. So have a look at how much your gap is. PURPL gives you the number, and it's really cool, and I just encourage you to just use it and have that in your checklist.

6. What was my peak braking G?

Next, what's my peak brake G? So I want to know, across the lap, what is my peak brake G? Now, while you probably won't having the brake sensor, I mean, nobody really uses brake sensors, just like at Babyrace, we have like just one or two drivers that just want to run sensors, because it's a bit heavy, and it's, you know, it's a bit of like a pain in the ass to set everything up and maintain everything. So, I mean, I feel like, and you can't really place the weight where you want to, because you have those weights around the kart, all those cables, so I mean, it's great to have that, but I can derive that same brake pressure from the longitudinal G, and I create the custom channel that basically creates a channel that shows me as if I was braking, and it's really accurate, really, really good, and it, it just shows me whether I'm braking hard or not, and how hard exactly. So you can see exactly the peak brake G.

So in a 60 Mini, you will try to aim at a 1G. If you do a really good job, you get a 1G. If there's not enough grip, you get a 0.8G longitudinal, of course, that's, uh, with a minus if you are not using the custom channel in terms of longitudinal; if you're using a custom channel that basically turns that value into positive, you have a positive G, but of course that's related to the braking, not acceleration. In a KZ, for example, because you have front brakes, you, you get easily up to 1.8G, and that's really cool, you can brake really hard, you are breaking as efficient almost as a racing car, that, of course, they have carbon brakes and they can pull way more G's than that, but I mean, that's the most you can get in karting with front brakes. You can really brake late and it's really fun, and I love that.

So you have to check session to session how much is my peak brake G. I'm sure you're gonna have something really cool that you really notice. And what I like to do, I mean, in PURPL I've set up three corners, detected the three heaviest braking zones, so you can have a look at the, the three corners, and you, you can set it up and just have a look at those three values. I think that's gonna be really cool. So yeah, just keep track of those, as the best racing drivers in the world refer to and I do as well, you need to be a, a hard braker, a late braker. So you want to really make sure that you have those values nice and high. Of course, if you have heavy braking zones, because if you are driving in a pretty much flat-out track, and like you're driving in an oval track like in Indianapolis, but I mean, it's not your case because you're a karting driver. But you know, what I'm saying is that if you don't have any braking spots, the real braking spot, then you wouldn't really want to focus on this too much. This is more for those heavy braking zones where you're driving with a high speed and you have a tight corner like a hairpin, and you need to stop efficiently, so you can brake later.

7. How repeatable are my braking points?

Next on the list is how repeatable are my braking points? Now, we have a section in PURPL which basically easily shows you, in a visualized way, corner per corner, actually just looking at the three, again, most braking zones. So it's gonna show you how consistent you were. And I'm telling you, it's really precise, I've double-checked that all the time in my data. It's extremely accurate, I mean, it cannot make mistakes. It's just reading the data from the MyChron. So it's, it's 100 accurate, and, uh, it just shows you how far you are from being perfectly consistent on the brakes.

Of course, what you should notice in a natural way is that in the first laps you are braking a bit earlier, you kind of have to, right, because, uh, you, I mean, um, don't have the exact same grip that you have later on in the session. And later, of course, you get more grip and you can brake a bit later, a bit harder, and so you can stop later, of course. And you should see that, if you see the other way around, that in the first laps you brake later and in the earlier laps you brake, and in the end you brake earlier, I mean, it's not really making sense, unless you have a big drop in grip later on in the session, but it's rare that happens.

But again, you can't really see from this metric whether you actually managed to make the corner or not, because like this just shows you your braking point. It doesn't show you whether you got a good exit or even made the apex. So, I mean, you can't just rely on this, but this shows you at least the consistency you had on the brakes. And I think it's really valuable, because the goal is that you should be as close as possible to replicating your braking points, especially when you have enough experience in that track. At the beginning it may be a bit difficult for you, of course, when you're learning a new track, but then it should get quite easy and effortless. So get as close as possible to that braking point repeatability.

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

Next, you want to know what are the corners you're losing the most, and how much you're losing per corner. So instead of looking at the corners, really, I actually have the theory that you should look at sections, because if you look at individual corners, and you have like a chicane, what do you do? Do you look at the first part of the chicane, or the second part of the chicane, or you look at both? I mean, you have to look at both, because if you treat a chicane as two separate corners, it's just a mistake, because if you over-push in the entry of the first part of the chicane, you get a really good entry but a really bad exit. So you have to consider sections, not corners.

And that's what we did here at PURPL: we have given you the ability to see the sections and not the, the single corners. We have created a really, really strong algorithm that detects the sections in the best way, so it's realistic and it's not hallucinating, creating unreasonable sections in the middle of the corners. It's really strong, and I'm really proud to say that.

So you should be searching for the sections that you've lost the most, whether it's section one, section three, section five. And you should obviously understand how much you're losing in each of those sections. So first, as I like to say, is address the three sections you lose the most, and try to understand why you lose the most. I mean, there's a really cool screenshot that kind of sums that up for you in PURPL. And you should use that to have an idea of, okay, I'm probably braking too early, oh, yeah, it's actually confirmed from PURPL. Oh, I'm probably, you know, getting on the throttle too late, oh yes, the speed is very low on the exit, and it's confirmed by PURPL. So the goal is to understand which are the sections you lose the most, makes sense, and how much you lose exactly, whether one tenth, two tenths, a tenth, three tenths, etc.

9. How repeatable is my line?

So, and finally, the last question in the checklist is how repeatable is my line? It's really important because, you know, as a racing driver, there's no really excuse, because you can say, oh, and in terms of braking repeatability, I can't really be inch-perfect with my braking points, because at the beginning I don't have so much grip, so I have to brake a bit earlier, etc, etc. You may have excuses there, and I understand you, so I kind of, like, I can't say anything about that.

But when it comes to line repeatability, well, that's something you can't say anything about, because if you are missing the lines by two meters, three meters, 1.5 meters from your fastest lap, well, it doesn't make sense, because you can't argue that, oh, you didn't have the grip. No, because even if you don't have the grip, you should have the line repeatability to be as close as possible to your fastest lap.

So you should see a sub-one-meter deviation from your line. And that's really cool, and you'll see that this is going to blow your mind. I love this feature, it literally shows you during your session where you have been deviating the most from, in terms of line. So it's going to give you a clear number, just literally like plus or minus 1.5 meter. The goal is to bring that down as much as you possibly can, close to zero, and this is going to massively help you getting better, and literally looking at your performance inwardly, rather than looking outward at other drivers.

Run it every session

So I hope this was useful. I mean, these, these nine post-session questions are extremely key to me and to my drivers at Babyrace. They use them a lot, I use them a lot. And I feel that for sure we could add them more in the future. Let me know if you feel there's some that we have to necessarily add right now. But as for now, these are the ones.

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