5 Go Kart Tips for Driving (and Winning) in the Rain

Here’s the full list of my top 5 tips for winning in the rain:

• Avoid rubber under braking

• Reduce wheelspin on exits

• Transfer your body weight

• Use Apex Kerbs

• Overtake in a smart way

I’m so glad to share them with you.

There’s no real secrets here so let’s get started with my top five tips for driving in the wet.

Avoid rubber under braking

So, the first and probably the most important tip of all is to avoid the rubber under braking. You want to make sure that when you brake, especially for the heavy breakings, you are not braking on the rubber.

So, what you will do is that you’re going to stay more in the middle of the track compared to what you’re doing on the dry in the normal racing line.

That’s because if you brake on the rubber, it’s going to be very slippery and you’re not going to be able to slow down efficiently. And it’s going to be very easy to even spin or lose the grip at all and just lose so much time.

So, what you want to do is you are going to break towards the middle of the track so that you’re going to avoid the rubber. And then towards the end of the braking, you start to move backwards on to the racing line. And you’re going to take a wider line in the middle of the corner.

So, you’re going to again avoid the rubber on entry and then on the exit, you’re going to try to avoid it as well. But the main thing here and the first step is to avoid the rubber on the braking at all costs.

Of course, at some point you will have to cross it. It’s obvious, you cannot fly.

But you have to make sure that for the most of the braking, you’re avoiding the rubber, especially at the beginning while you’re attacking the brakes. Because yes, you’re not attacking the brakes as heavily as you do on the slicks. So, in the normal conditions.

But you still have to brake pretty hard. And if you want to be fast and slow, you can quickly. So, what you want to do is that you have to stay away from the rubber.

Reduce wheelspin on exits

So, tip number two is to reduce the wheel spin on the exits. This is really important for you.

You cannot put a smaller sprocket just to reduce the wheel spin. Because if you do that, you’re just going to reduce the performance massively.

So, what you want to do instead is to kind of avoid the rubber also on the exit and be very smooth with the power.

Of course, at some point, you will still have to cross the rubber as we said for the braking, you cannot fly over the rubber. So, make sure that when you cross the rubber, you’re going to be very smooth with the throttle application.

With the throttle application being smooth, you’re going to be able to reduce the wheel spin and therefore have a lot of more exit speed.

So again, make sure that the wheel speed is low, because if you have low will spin then the exits is going to be better.

You don’t want to have too high RPMs because with high RPMs, you are going to be struggling.

Transfer your body weight

Now, that was my second tip. The third tip I have for you is to transfer your bodyweight into the corner. So, what you want to do. When you are turning the kart after the break, you want to make sure that you are leaning kind of outside of the seat.

So, we are trying to really load the kart completely on your seat so that you’re going to transfer the body weight therefore give yourself more grip. This is fundamental because if you do that, you’re going to give yourself a lot more front grip and turn a kart faster.

You will see that the lap time will improve a lot and your exit V speed is also going to improve a lot because you will be able to rotate faster, be early to full throttle so that you are going to have better exit speed and better lap time overall.

Use Apex Kerbs

Fourth tip is to use the apex kerbs. So, you have noticed that you have to use the apex curbs in the wet and you really have to be precise with that.

Not all the corners may be required you to using the apex curbs. But what I see from my experience around 70 to 80 to 90% actually will require you to use Apex curbs.

So, what you want to do is to break and then point towards the apex curbs, especially when you are using a shifter kart. When you’re using a Shifter kart, you have to use every single Apex curb.

When you are using an x30, OKJ or OK or even a 60 mini, with those karts, you don’t really need actually to use the Apex curbs.

What would shift the karts, you will need to use 100% of the apex keb. So, again, that’s important for you to distinguish based on what you’re driving.

And that really make sure that if you’re using a shifter kart, use old Apex curbs, otherwise, just use a few of them.

Overtake in a smart way

Then the fifth tip I have for you is that you have to overtake in a smart way. Because in the wet, it’s not easy to overtake.

Oftentimes you will have opportunities to overtake when people are going to go wide so that you can kind of launch yourself inside.

But then it’s going to be difficult on the exits because they will be more straighten up, whereas you still have to turn. So, you just want to be very clever with that.

What you can do sometimes is that you overtake them on the inside, but then you kind of have to stop so that they have to stop as well, they cannot cross you back.

And so that they cannot make the switch back therefore you’re going to end up as the winner.

So, these were my top five tips for how to drive in the wet. And I really hope that could help you and please feel free to send me a message or send me an email.

I will be very happy to respond to you. If you want to do a one on one call so that you can show me your videos, show me your data so that I can help your driving in the wet, please feel free.

I’ll be happy to do that. And yeah, having said that, you will find out that driving the wet is so much fun if you start to do the things properly.

I started to hate it at first, like you cannot imagine, I was really scared of the wet at first. But when I learned how to drive better, it suddenly shifted everything and soon got to win races.

Having said that, I hope that you can do it too.