![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Thanksgiving Karting
Nov. 29th, 2015 11:26 pmYesterday's not-an-update was just as well given that the Thanksgiving party ran into today and so I didn't get back in time for a post.
But as is now traditional, before Thanksgiving proper there was Thanksgiving Karting! We (myself,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pleaseremove, Jonners, Paddy, Matt and David) were up at Crawley, and for a change were booked on the downstairs track. There weren't enough of us to do a race, so we settled for two 15-minute time trial sessions.
One thing I've always found with karting is you can end up with very different karts in the two sessions. In the first session I had one that did not want to slide at all and struggled to turn tightly - until you turned the wheel almost to full lock, at which point the back completely lost it and drifted you into the barrier. The second kart on the other hand didn't have anything like the same cliff in grip and I could quite easily slide it around the zig-zag on the upper portion of the track: accelerate up the ramp drifting to the right-hand side, lift a bit at the top and turn tightly left into the corner, then once the back starts sliding boot the throttle and turn hard right to get around the second corner before powering down the ramp. Trying that with the first kart just resulted in it barely making the first corner and then flatly refusing to give enough steering for the second.
I still need more work on the rest of the track. On the lower section there's a sort-of double spiral - it tightens into the corner to the left, then unwinds to the right - and I couldn't work out how to make the turn into that complex work. Still, I improved by a good 0.7s between the two sessions, whilepleaseremove and Jonners only found 0.4s - so I'm catching up on them!
But as is now traditional, before Thanksgiving proper there was Thanksgiving Karting! We (myself,
pleaseremove, Jonners, Paddy, Matt and David) were up at Crawley, and for a change were booked on the downstairs track. There weren't enough of us to do a race, so we settled for two 15-minute time trial sessions.One thing I've always found with karting is you can end up with very different karts in the two sessions. In the first session I had one that did not want to slide at all and struggled to turn tightly - until you turned the wheel almost to full lock, at which point the back completely lost it and drifted you into the barrier. The second kart on the other hand didn't have anything like the same cliff in grip and I could quite easily slide it around the zig-zag on the upper portion of the track: accelerate up the ramp drifting to the right-hand side, lift a bit at the top and turn tightly left into the corner, then once the back starts sliding boot the throttle and turn hard right to get around the second corner before powering down the ramp. Trying that with the first kart just resulted in it barely making the first corner and then flatly refusing to give enough steering for the second.
I still need more work on the rest of the track. On the lower section there's a sort-of double spiral - it tightens into the corner to the left, then unwinds to the right - and I couldn't work out how to make the turn into that complex work. Still, I improved by a good 0.7s between the two sessions, while
pleaseremove and Jonners only found 0.4s - so I'm catching up on them!
