Your First WSK Podium: What It Actually Takes

By Alessio Lorandi, 2013 CIK-FIA World Champion, KF-Junior. Updated on 17 October 2026.

Stepping on a podium at a WSK race is something very special. Not many drivers have been able to do it, and even less have stood on the top step and won the race.

With our team at BabyRace we’ve won 29 WSK championships over the years, and had countless drivers on the podium, more than 100 for sure. So I’m really confident in what I’m telling you here.

In this guide I explain what I suggest you do to increase your chances of stepping on the WSK podium for the first time, and ideally many more times after that. And I’ll reply to the questions I get asked all the time.

Why is a WSK podium so hard to get?

Because it’s probably the most competitive international karting championship you can race in.

The WSK series has been around since 2010 or so. That’s already 16 years of WSK history. The name stands for World Series of Karting, and drivers like Max Verstappen, Leclerc, Norris and Russell have all been WSK race winners. Now that they’re in F1 they still post pictures from their WSK days. That prestige brings competitiveness.

And then there’s the numbers. At WSK you get somewhere about 80 drivers per class on average, up to 100 or 110 at the peak in Juniors, Seniors or 60 Mini. More than 350 drivers in total at one event is quite common. The record is 401 verified drivers from 55 countries, at the WSK Super Master Series Round 3 at Lonato in 2025.

If you’re between 12 and 15 and racing internationally in Juniors or Seniors, WSK is one block of a full program: 11 rounds of WSK, 4 of the European Championship, 4 of Champions of the Future, then the World Championship. That’s 20 international races in a season. The Champions of the Future is a little bit more prestigious nowadays, but WSK still holds a special place, and there are F1 scouts at the rounds, McLaren, Mercedes and others.

What are your real chances of winning a WSK race?

Let me do the maths. If every driver had exactly the same chance, an 80 driver race gives each of you 1.25%. With 110 drivers, like a World Championship in Juniors, it’s 0.9%.

Holy cow. Yes, these are the numbers.

But it’s literally impossible that all drivers have equal chances. Experience, the kart package, the team and the driver himself all move the odds. And the reality is that the ones fighting for the win are always the same 2 or 3 drivers. Most professionals in the paddock can name them before the weekend begins, sometimes the winter before.

The goal is to raise your odds from 0.9% to 10% or 15%. I think even more than that is possible.

And as you’ll see in this guide, most of those levers are on the driver side, not the equipment side.

What matters more for a WSK podium, pace or racecraft?

You need both maxed out. Ideally you want to be perfect in terms of pace and amazing in terms of racecraft.

If you have no pace but amazing racecraft, yes, you will progress through the field in the races. But you’ll probably start P20 in all of the heats instead of P1.

And if you have amazing pace but no racecraft, even if you start P1 in every single heat, you’ll probably go backwards. Maybe on the first lap someone passes you, runs you wide, and you lose positions. Then you’re not able to recover from that, even mentally.

So you need to have everything. Once you have both, you can really fight for the podium and even for the win.

How important is equipment in WSK races?

Obviously it’s very important. You can be a 10 out of 10 driver, but with a 6 out of 10 package between chassis and engine you cannot compete for the win. With a 9 out of 10 package you can still fight for it. With a 5 or a 4, you cannot compete at all.

But here’s the thing. The top 25 to 30 drivers that make the final all have very similar equipment, a maximum of about one tenth between engines and chassis. Maybe the number one driver gets half a tenth extra from his tuner, because they want to win with him. You’ll never see half a second of engine. So if a driver is two tenths quicker than everybody else, the rest is just the driver.

How much lap time a better engine can really buy, and how to tell a fast driver from a well funded one, I explain in fast or just well funded.

How much testing do you need before a WSK round?

Testing plays a major role. With BabyRace, ahead of a five day WSK race we went and did four days of testing at Franciacorta. That’s how much I believe in it.

The more testing you do, the more knowledge you build, and you’re able to simply go faster and faster. The driver gets better lines, better braking points, better racecraft. In any sport, the more repetition the better. And on the equipment side you work out the chassis, the carburation, the engine.

If you have no testing days, you cannot compete for the win.

I know testing costs money and time. In the real world you trade off the financial side and the time commitment. But try at least to get one or two days of testing before every WSK event. Otherwise it’s almost useless to go. I say it to my drivers: there’s no point racing at WSK level if you’re not testing. You’re going to get eaten.

Because if you’re lacking three or four tenths in qualifying, you’re basically P50 out of 60 drivers. Then the whole weekend is uphill, and even if you find some pace later, it’s too late.

What does a WSK race weekend look like?

A WSK week normally starts with two days of practice, Wednesday and Thursday. Wednesday is optional, and even Thursday is optional, but most teams and drivers do both. You get four sessions of about 10 minutes each per day.

On Thursday, in the last two sessions, you already have the transponder, so you can see the lap times the other drivers are doing.

Friday morning you have a warm-up, then right into qualifying, and a qualifying heat in the last session of the day. Saturday is warm-up again and more heats. Sunday is warm-up, the super heat, which is called the pre-final, and then the final. And if you want to know what you actually do in between those sessions, the water, the food and how you get in the zone, I go through it in what a WSK race day looks like.

Normally you cannot drive on the Monday or Tuesday of race week. So everything really starts from the testing you do the weekend before, at least Saturday and Sunday. And since you get a maximum of about 40 laps a day if you use every single minute, you need to maximise the track time and the learning. If you do five laps per session, it’s a waste of time. More on that in practice days.

Why does qualifying make or break a WSK weekend?

Because if you have a bad quali, you start at the back every time, and the whole weekend is uphill.

It’s one of the most common mistakes I see. You find bad track position, or you don’t warm up the tires properly, or you do one lap less than you should. And that’s it, you’re starting at the back.

So you really want to focus on nailing qualifying, also in terms of setup. Make sure that on new tires your kart is spot on.

Once you have a good quali and you start at the front, everything is so much easier. Even if your pace is not ideal, you can stay at the top. Whereas with an amazing pace in the heats but a bad quali, you have to make everything up, and that’s so much more difficult.

WSK also gives you the ideal lap in the results PDF, all your best sectors put together. How to use that number to judge real pace, I explain in how to check a driver against his own theoretical lap.

How do WSK heat points work?

You might think that more points are better. In WSK it’s actually the other way around:

• P1 in a heat scores 0 points
• P2 scores 5
• P3 scores 8
• P4 scores 9
• P5 scores 10
• P6 scores 11, and so on

That’s the opposite of Champions of the Future, where the higher you finish the more points you get. I know it’s a bit confusing. The goal is to arrive at the pre-final with as few points as possible.

And you’ll see that simply by finishing where you start, you progress, because many drivers crash and take lots of points. Start P2 and finish P2 every time, and you’ll probably start the pre-final P1.

Remember also that the final is the cumulative of the heats and the pre-final. Finish last in every heat and then win the pre-final, and you’ll probably not even make the final. The other way around, win every heat and DNF the pre-final with a mechanical problem, and you’ll probably still start top five. It’s a bit brutal, but it’s actually quite fair.

What mistakes stop drivers reaching a WSK podium?

The number one mistake is to mess up the heats by taking risks when you’re not supposed to. Like crashing for a silly overtake in the last corner that would get you from P4 to P3. You may gain one position, but if you crash you lose ten positions for the pre-final and the final.

I learned this the hard way. In KF3, at the WSK Master Series Round 1 at La Conca, I crashed in 2 heats out of 4, and in the other 2 I set the fastest lap. In the pre-final I lost too much time in the first laps and finished 7th, again with the fastest lap. In the final I crashed on lap 7 of 16, and still had the fastest lap of the race.

My mechanic told me I had to think more when I drive. It’s the old Fangio line: “To finish first, you must first finish.” So I started seeing overtakes as calculated bets. At the next round at Sarno I got pole overall, won the pre-final and finished P3 in the final. At the third and final round I won both pre-final and final. I lost the championship by just 10 points, because of the points I threw away at La Conca.

More on avoiding contact in how to stop crashing.

What separates podium drivers from the rest?

For sure the experience level plays a massive role. A driver who has done 50 WSK races compared to a driver who has done zero, it’s not a fair comparison. You’re not comparing apples to apples.

Through experience you build patterns, pattern recognition. You’re quicker overall, and you make better decisions in racecraft. Podium drivers know their tracks like it’s their living room, and they know the kart very well. So they go on track with full confidence in the kart, in the track and in themselves.

But it’s not just that. Take drivers who have done the same amount of laps, say hypothetically 100,000 laps each. They will not be on the same pace. The ones a little bit quicker are normally the ones with more determination and desire to win. That desire is what allowed them to improve their skills and make a gap on the others.

One thing is not enough. It’s the actions that come from wanting to win that make you win.

There’s a big difference between wanting to win and doing absolutely everything you can to win. You can get lucky and gain positions, but you cannot get lucky and finish on a WSK podium. You need to become a driver capable of achieving it. I wrote more on this in obsessed about winning.

What mindset helps you perform at WSK level?

A growth mindset is crucial. You need to know you’re never perfect and you can always improve. Yes, you can improve the kart, the engine, the chassis. But the thing you can improve the most is yourself.

You can be proud if you do P1 in quali by two tenths. But the moment you stop believing you can do better, you start feeling cocky, you stop improving, and your competitors gain on you. Be the kind of driver like Ayrton Senna or Michael Schumacher, who believed they were never perfect.

And forget about the result. Focus on how good you’re driving and figure out how to go faster. That’s it. If the performance is maximum, from the kart and from you, the P1 comes as a consequence. If you only focus on the P1, you won’t get it.

Please, do not set expectations. Once you tell yourself or the people around you “I’m going to win” and then you don’t, you’re almost lying to yourself.

Become obsessed, and put in almost 10 times more work than anybody else around you. It takes time. So be impatiently patient: patient with the result, but putting in the work right away.

How did I get my own first WSK podium?

Not with the best kart, I promise you.

In my early years, before I moved up to Juniors, we raced on our own engines. I believe we were at least 2 or 3 tenths down engine wise, even more on tracks with long straights like Sarno. I used to beg my dad in tears to get the same engines the others were winning on. So I couldn’t compete for the podium, except one time, at a WSK at Val Vibrata, where I got my first WSK podium in P3.

It felt unfair, but it forged me. It made me try anything to find lap time where others were not.

My first WSK Euro Series win came in 2012, in KF3 at Val d’Argenton in France, after a poor start. I put in purple lap after purple lap, was about half a second behind with 2 laps to go, two tenths at the start of the last lap, and went down the inside of turn 1.

The year after, in 2013, I won the Winter Cup, the WSK Super Master Series and the Italian Championship, finished 2nd in the WSK Euro Series to my rival Lando Norris, and won the World Championship. The whole story is in my 18-7 rivalry with Lando Norris.

If you’re going for your first WSK podium and want a plan for the whole season, from testing to the final, that’s what we build in my six month training program. More race weekend guides are in racecraft.

Frequently asked questions

What does WSK stand for in karting?

WSK stands for World Series of Karting. It has run since around 2010 and is one of the most competitive international karting championships, with Max Verstappen, Leclerc, Norris and Russell among its past race winners.

How many drivers race at a WSK event?

About 80 drivers per class on average, up to 100 or 110 at the peak, and often more than 350 across all classes. The record is 401 verified drivers from 55 countries, at WSK Super Master Series Round 3 at Lonato in 2025.

How do points work in WSK qualifying heats?

Low is good. A heat win scores 0 points, P2 scores 5, P3 8, P4 9, P5 10 and P6 11. Heat points set the pre-final grid, and the final grid is the cumulative of the heats and the pre-final.

How many test days do you need before a WSK round?

At least one or two days before every event, on top of the Wednesday and Thursday practice. Without testing, three or four tenths off in qualifying puts you around P50 out of 60.

Does equipment decide who gets a WSK podium?

Only up to a point. A 6 out of 10 package cannot win, but the top 25 to 30 drivers in a final are within about a tenth on equipment. A driver two tenths quicker than everybody else is mostly the driver.

If you want me to look at your driving before your next WSK round, corner by corner, send me your onboard for an onboard review.