Uncle Chilli, the Autodrome Champ!
Discussion
This morning we took the kids to the indoor track at the Autodrome. It was excellent fun, and everyone can't wait to go back. Tis a shame we couldn't do the outdoor track given the kids ages, but it was still a good laugh. I managed to edge out the BIL with a record breaking time of 37.9 seconds. Thinking it might just not be too late to sign up for F1, I set about finding Ron Dennis's number.....only to see the fastest time that month was 20.3 seconds. 20.3 seconds? How is that possible???!!! That's almost half my time, and quite frankly, I'm brilliant.
Anyone else done it?
Anyone else done it?
Harris_I said:
Rotax karts.
In the standard karts, the pros manage around 1:11 on the main kart track, (if they're in good condition). Don't know about the indoor track.
So I'm 3 off hmmmm, sounds not much but is light years I guess in motorsport. In the standard karts, the pros manage around 1:11 on the main kart track, (if they're in good condition). Don't know about the indoor track.
Would be intrigued to see where they pick it up, although my guess would be they are carrying a few less kg's than me as well as being better drivers!
1:14 is about as good as it gets during "arrive and drive" sessions, as the karts can have wheels pointing in different directions.
1:11 is the product of a 55kg whippet who spends every minute of his wasted young life driving round this track in a freshly fettled kart, cool ambient temperature, warm track with plenty of sticky new rubber laid down, no detritus or sand, and bouncing the kart off every kerb.
Incidentally, weight has less bearing than one might imagine on a flying lap: each 10kg is worth about 0.4 seconds.
1:11 is the product of a 55kg whippet who spends every minute of his wasted young life driving round this track in a freshly fettled kart, cool ambient temperature, warm track with plenty of sticky new rubber laid down, no detritus or sand, and bouncing the kart off every kerb.
Incidentally, weight has less bearing than one might imagine on a flying lap: each 10kg is worth about 0.4 seconds.
Harris_I said:
Incidentally, weight has less bearing than one might imagine on a flying lap: each 10kg is worth about 0.4 seconds.
I call BS...and can back it up with science...Maybe if you take a 55kg driver and add 10kg his time will change by 0.4 seconds, and maybe even another 10kg will not make much more of a difference. But the time difference per kilo is an exponential line....
You will reach a weight at which the kart will start to behave very different. When you go through a slower corner and the motor dropps off the power it will take much, much longer for a heavier weighted kart to spin back up again. Its this time spent before the real power kicks in that makes all the difference.
I have tried with a couple of karts, a light driver and a heavy one (me!), the lighter driver, from a standing start or slow speed makes it into the power much quicker (as its a ligher weight it has to get to a certain speed at a low power) than the heavier driver.
With the type of karts used at the autodrome this threshold is around 90-95 kg. At this point the weight is almost too much for the low power zone to overcome and it takes forever to accellerate into the powerband, almost not achieving it between corners.
I would love to see the AD conduct a proper study to prove this; take a 50kg driver and, instead of adding 10kg and saying that difference is applicable every 10kg, keep adding weight up to 100+kg and see what reall happens.
Whilst not a controlled scientific experiment using beakers and lab coats, the Porsche Club UAE did analyse laptimes according to our weights some years back. We took account of different driving styles (i.e. pairing people off with similar driving styles in the same car), but everyone followed the same line (obviously) and were broadly similarly skilled (we finished that year second overall in the endurance karting champs and we knew no-one in the team would need to be hid at third man, so to speak, which tended to rule out large differences in driving ability).
Also notice I said a flying lap, not a standing start. The difference is clearly much bigger on a standing start. The more slower corners there are, the greater the difference weight makes, but 0.4s for every 10 kilos was pretty much on the money, and the rule tended to apply when the weights varied from around 62kg up to around 85kg. I can't remember if we had anyone heavier than that.
One more thing to note is in certain corners, heavier drivers (particularly with a low centre of gravity like Karim) tended to find better traction in certain corners all other things being equal. So the relationship between weight and laptimes is pretty complex as you point out but I don't buy that exponential argument for the weights we are talking about. Sounds like a fatty's excuse to me
Also notice I said a flying lap, not a standing start. The difference is clearly much bigger on a standing start. The more slower corners there are, the greater the difference weight makes, but 0.4s for every 10 kilos was pretty much on the money, and the rule tended to apply when the weights varied from around 62kg up to around 85kg. I can't remember if we had anyone heavier than that.
One more thing to note is in certain corners, heavier drivers (particularly with a low centre of gravity like Karim) tended to find better traction in certain corners all other things being equal. So the relationship between weight and laptimes is pretty complex as you point out but I don't buy that exponential argument for the weights we are talking about. Sounds like a fatty's excuse to me
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