Endurance Training for Racing Drivers Explained

I’ve actually just got back from a 15 kilometers one hour run.

It feels amazing.

And no, I’m not preparing for a marathon, but I am preparing for a karting race. Which one I don’t even know yet, but I’m trying to get myself in shape in case I’ll have to race at some point down the line.

Now this is exactly what this guide is about, endurance training. In fact, karting from the outside may not look as physically demanding, but drivers really experience significant physical strain during races, especially if they’re driving major categories like shifters, you know, and it’s in hot conditions, as I have been used to, and in those conditions when you have to do 25 laps races, you are going to really feel it.

And if you have great stamina and endurance training overall, you’re definitely going to prevail over most of the other drivers that may not have the same level of training that you’ve got. In fact, without proper endurance, drivers lose so much performance as fatigue sets in.

So in this guide, I will provide answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about endurance training related to karting, but also in general, to racing drivers, because I feel it’s very, very relatable for any kind of GTs, Formula cars and even other racing series.

Why is endurance so important in karting?

Well, think about it, when you’re driving a go kart, especially a professional kart. I mean, not talking about rental karts. Yes, in rental cars, you also are doing quite a lot of physical exercise, but it’s nowhere near what you have to experience with professional karts in very high grip scenarios with high power.

So in those cases, you will be driving at about 165 to 180 heart beats per minute, which, if you actually think about it, it’s almost as if you’re running at full capacity. And you know, you may ask about how, how is it possible that you’re getting such high bpm?

And the reality is that you are doing lots of work with your body. It’s not just physical work, but it’s also mental work. You know, your brain is processing so much information and the adrenaline itself, you know, just the pure adrenaline is pumping up your heart quite a lot.

So you have to, again, factor in many things:

• The G forces that are pushing your body from the opposite side of the kart
• The mental work that you have to do, you know, chasing the apexes, the breaking points, going at very fast speed, having to overtake and etc, etc
• The adrenaline, because just the pure adrenaline, it’s going to make you stay at a very high level of heart rate

Think about it, when you’re sitting on the grid before the start and you feel like your heart rate is starting to raise, then you know it’s, it’s no physical exercise. You’re sitting in your kart in the pit lane without having started the kart yet. So there’s no physical exercise. But your heart rate is still like, way above average. You know, you may wake up in the morning and have like a 60 or 55 BPM, but then when you’re sitting on the grid right before starting race, maybe you’re like 130 or like 140 and you haven’t even started. Why? Because you feel the tension. You feel that the stress, etc.

So there’s so many factors that actually affect your heart rate when you’re driving the kart, but that’s why it’s important to be physically fit in order to be able to still be able to drive very, very quickly and at your maximum level, even though your heart rate is racing and tries to go up.

But remember, of course, the fitter you are, and the lower your heart rate when driving. Of course, it’s not just the fitness, but it’s also the mental side of it. If you’re calm and you’re not cracking under pressure, you’re also going to naturally reduce your heart rate by like 10, 15, or even 20 beats per minute, which is huge.

But you know, you can be as mentally strong as you want, but if you’ve got zero fitness, you are gonna get even up to 200 heart beats per minute if you put a random person on a shifter kart that has never been on the gym, or never had any kind of training.

If you put them on a kart, and they’ve never driven a kart, and you put them on a shifter and you ask them to push the limit, they are gonna explode, you know, they’re gonna go above 200 BPMs. And so it’s, it’s really like that, you know, it’s probably gonna be the most difficult thing they’ve ever done in their life.

What muscles fatigue the most during races?

Well, the muscles that you actually use the most in karting are:

• Your neck muscles
• Your forearms
• Your core stability—all the muscles relate to your rib cage and abs

You’re not really using your legs that much. But then, of course, the muscle that you’re using the most, besides that, is your heart, which, at the end they is a muscle, even though it’s an organ.

But yes, you are using your heart because you’re keeping the heart rate really, really high, as I said, about 180 190 even beats per minute if you’re not very fit. And so in that case, having a lot of endurance, you know, having a lot of stamina will allow you to stay and resist longer during the races, because basically, you’re able to cope with those high beats per minute.

And literally, I just came back from one hour run at about 180 beats per minute average, and that pretty much simulates, I would say, three times a final race in KZ. And of course, it’s always better to train more than what your race is going to be, because you want to be like so much more fit than you know the actual physical exercise you will be doing on the kart.

You just you don’t want to be just fit. You want to be so much fitter than anybody else on the grid. Basically, that’s your goal, at least the fittest on the track, maybe not the fastest. Obviously, that’s also the goal.

But you know, you’ll see that the fitter you are, the faster you are, because you’ll have more mental capacity and more energy to deploy to your mental capacity, basically because you will not have to deploy to your other parts of your body. You know you will not have to deploy it to other parts they may fatigue early on.

So yes, the fitter you are, the more energy left over you’ve got to deploy to your mental capacity, which means you can focus more and get better results overall. That’s really like data.

How do fatigue affect lap times?

Well, fatigue affect lap times directly. Because, think about it, if you are out of breath and you are almost about to collapse, you will not have mental clarity to you know, take on a corner a little bit quicker, or, you know, try to make that overtake.

And, you know, try to just carry a little bit more speed on the entry, or a little bit more speed in mid corner. You know, if you are about to collapse because you simply have no energy left over, then you’re just going to hold on to whatever you’re able to get, you know, you’re definitely going to survive behind a wheel, and it’s going to be like the kart driving you, rather than you driving the kart.

You know, I’ve felt this embarrassing way just very few times in my career, especially when I was a bit more bulky in a way that I was not fat. I mean, I was super, super bulked in a way that was very mostly, I did a lot of gym for, like, a few, for a few years, and I wasn’t racing anymore. It was, you know, from the period of 2021, to 2025 I mean, I was not able to drive because I had to focus so much on baby race driver Academy. And so I just couldn’t drive.

And that made me feel quite strange when I got back in the car after four or five years of driving. Basically, I can’t even remember, but it just felt quite embarrassing, because, okay, the skills were there. I mean, I would still go fast, but I simply just couldn’t stay for more than like, six, seven laps on pace, because I just started to feel like, back pain, neck pain, forearm, space, stuff like that.

I was, like, quite embarrassed, because I was like, No way. I mean, I’ve never felt like that. Because back in the days, I just used to drive on on a daily basis, almost, you know, almost every day. And so, you know, after you stop and you resume, it’s like, quite Yeah, quite shocking that you realize that you you’re not supposed to be fit for the gym.

You’re not supposed to be fit, even just in terms of endurance. You need to be fit for the kart.

So it’s yeah, of course, being endurance fit, of course, and having a lot of stamina helps. But, for example, you know, being gym fit doesn’t help, to be honest, because it makes you too bulky most of the times for most of the drivers, if you do, you know, body weight exercises, then no problem. But if you try to add a lot of weights and try to get very big, well that’s not going to help you at all when driving the kart.

Anyways, besides that, you you really feel that when you’re not driving the kart for a long time, as fit you can think to be you’re not gonna be fit to drive, because you need to drive, drive, drive in order to be fit to drive.

How often should drivers train endurance during the week?

Well, I’d say they they should train endurance every single day. I mean, every single day. I do it on a daily basis. That’s pretty much everything that I’m doing right now. To be honest, I’m not doing any kind of gym like, I stopped the gym membership like, like, a year ago or so, and I had to prepare the for the world championship the.

The FIA kz one world championship last year, and I basically didn’t go to the gym at all. I just went cycling and running, cycling and running, cycling and running. Then I did some swimming, then I did some tennis and paddle like, but just that rinse and repeat cycling and running, I lost all the weight that I needed to lose, in terms of, like, I didn’t lose fat because I only had like 6% fat. It was quite low. But I had to lose muscle, so I kind of stopped, yeah, training in the gym. I stopped doing weight exercises.

So I went from like 78 kilos. Well, I was actually 82 two years ago, but all muscles, you know, I was not fat. But anyways, I went from 82 all the way down to 67, 68 right before the World Championship, because I had to lose all the weight. Because, you know, the weight limit is, is very, very low. It’s only 170 kilos. And I wanted to be fast, so I wanted to, you know, not be overweight.

And so I was able to just get it and actually have four kilos on my kart, actually. So I had a bit of a extra, extra ladder that I could place strategically under the seat so I could pick up some lower center of gravity, which never really hurts.

But yeah, I suggest you to train on a daily basis. You know, even if you’re a young kid, that you’re like 9, 10, 11, 12, years old. You know, back in the days I was I was not going to gym, but I was playing soccer. I was playing soccer on a daily basis, pretty much. And that was good for my hand eye coordination, for my reaction times, as well as for my overall stamina, because I would be just like running and chasing a ball pretty much one and a half hours a day, every single day.

What endurance sports help kart drivers?

I’d say, by far the number one sport and easiest one to do, basically for anyone, is simply running. You can just do running on, you know, on circles, just running on the track, or you can even do reps. For example, you can find a hill, like uphill, and try to go up and down. So like sprinting up fast, uphill, then going slowly down, sprinting up.

But you know, that’s one of those exercises I like to do, because I want to do internal training. I think that’s one of the best types of exercises I like to do. So now I’m doing it like two or three times on a weekly basis.

Then I do in the summertime, and also in the spring, I do two or three times a week. I do cycling. So I alternate cycling and running. It’s, it’s really nice here in Lake Gary. I’m I live 25 minutes away from Lonato, which is