This article will give you some hard information about what to do at the track to get  'dialled' in.  This is a really tough thing to do because of the many variables involved.  There's no way we can give you exact information.  What we are going to do is give you a sort of a form to fill in with the circumstances you are encountering with your particular setup.  You'll have to take it from there.

The Feel

The key to getting dialled quickly is tactile feedback (feel) from the power package (engine/clutch/pipe/gear) to the driver. We're calling it a "power package" because the factors involved are all inter-related. We can't teach this "feel" to you in an article. It comes from lots of experience and testing and is almost impossible to develop until you are comfortable enough with your driving to spare the attention it takes.  When you are first learning to race almost all of your attention is on keeping the kart on the track. As the driving becomes second nature diverting some of your mental capacity to input from the kart and power package will become much easier.

The Racing Diary

Learning to develop "the feel" is very important but equally important is keeping good written records of what you learn. Don't for a moment believe that you are going to be able to remember everything about every track you will ever race on. What you need is a racing diary where you record not only the setup you used but also what setup you think you should have used after it is all over.

Top Line Karting Products in Texas makes an excellent race record book for this purpose and we highly recommend it. Buying one of these books is however the easy part. The hard part is using it religiously. Speaking of religious matters let me play Moses for a moment and deliver a few "commandments" that I feel really should be carved in stone.

The Five Commandments

1. IF THE ENGINE IS SICK, YOU CAN MAKE IT FASTER BUT YOU CAN'T EVER MAKE IT FAST

If you are having problems getting anywhere near your normal lap times on a familiar track, stop playing with the setup and look toward the engine. I can't begin to tell you how many times I've fallen prey to the problem. More times than I care to remember I've added teeth to my normal setup, adjusted the clutch to slip more and lengthened the pipe in an effort to regain lost lap time. the stupid part of this exercise is that I simply failed to realise that the engine was sick. When all of these adjustments become necessary it should tell you that you simply don't have as much horsepower as normal. After wrenching my brains out just to find I still wasn't as fast as usual it finally soaked through my thick skull that if the engine is sick, forget it. The point here is that unless the engine is off you shouldn't see any major deviation from your normal setup when you are running the same power package that you have run at this same track before with success.

If you think you are having this problem and you have the luxury of a spare engine, stop wasting your time and put the spare one on the kart. If you don't have a spare engine start looking for an engine problem. Sadly, the answer usually lies in the engine simply having too much time on it since its last rebuild and you can't do much about that at the track.

2. LISTEN TO THE ENGINE

Learn to recognise the exhaust note of a really healthy power package. When the engine is running properly and you have the setup pretty close the engine exhaust note will have a sharp edge "cracking" sound to it that hurts your ears. If the engine is sick or the setup is wrong the exhaust note will have a flat, dead note to it that really sounds blah.  If the engine is sick (see commandment one) the signs discussed earlier should be present. This sound incidentally, is most obvious when you are accelerating out of a corner or when you are running flat out on the straight.

If however you are running for the first time at a given track or are running a new engine or pipe it may just be the setup. Practice listening for the "good" sound by paying particular attention to the race leaders in races other than your own. Also teach your racing buddy to listen for this sound when you are on the track because it's really hard for you to hear when you are driving.

3. LEARN TO SENSE WHAT THE POWER PACKAGE IS TRYING TO TELL YOU AS YOU DRIVE.

Work to develop a sense of what the engine feels like when it's really right and you are going fast. This feeling could be described as "hard" rather than "soft". When the engine is right the driver can sense that the thing really wants to run. When the engine is sick or the setup is wrong the feeling of power just isn't there and the engine feels lazy. The lazy feel is directly related to the blah sound we were discussing in commandment 3. Conversely the hard feel is strongly related to the cracking exhaust note also discussed in commandment 3.

The hard feeling is directly related to whether the engine is having to labour or not. When the engine is in good condition and is going fast it is working hard or labouring. if the engine isn't working hard it will telegraph a lazy feel back to you that can tell you your setup is wrong. For example if you have the kart geared way too low the engine doesn't have to work very hard to pull you around. As mentioned in the article Gauging Your Gearing when the engine isn't working hard it runs too cool.  This will be indicated to you by having to adjust the carb jets (especially the high speed) much leaner than you would normally run.  What the engine is trying to tell you is that it doesn't want or need the normal amount of fuel. When you have to adjust the carb much leaner than the normal setting the engine is trying to tell you it isn't working hard enough.

If the engine isn't working hard it isn't generating heat which shows on the temp gauge and you might mistakenly lean it down.  Wrong - make it work harder by taking teeth off the rear axle.  This makes the engine labour harder and the engine temp will read closer to the norm.

On the other side of the coin if the engine is generating more heat than normal and doesn't want to turn any RPM you may have too tall a gear (not enough teeth) on the axle. The cylinder head temp and the carb settings can give you some indication of whether the gear is wrong or right.

4. STOP MESSING WITH THE PIPE LENGTH

One of the most misunderstood things about at-track tuning is pipe length. Contrary to popular belief a given pipe on a given engine makes the most HP very close to a specific length. Adjusting the pipe length either direction in amounts of more than 5mm is almost always wrong. Once you arrive at the length a particular pipe likes to work at with a particular engine leave it alone. I've heard time and again "I don't have enough bottom end I'm going to lengthen the pipe". Wrong - If you want more bottom end put more teeth on the axle.  Granted, lengthening the pipe will give you some more bottom end but only at the cost of lost maximum HP.

As a rule of thumb when selecting the right gear the engine should reach its peak RPM 2/3 of the way down the longest straight on the track.

If you want to run a pipe that you have never run before you will have to feel your way to the right length. Nonetheless when you find the length that seems to work best don't mess with it except for minor (5mm maximum) adjustments to suit weather conditions.

5. STOP ASKING EVERYBODY ELSE FOR INFORMATION

Most of us have a tendency to run around the pits asking everyone who will talk to us what gear, pipe length or carb setting to use. Although many people are really willing to help, unless they have an engine just like yours that was built by the same engine builder and they run exactly the same pipe, clutch, kart etc they can't help much. Although kartsport people are amongst the most willing to help that I've ever seen, some of them (justifiably) aren't anxious to share their hard-earned knowledge.

In any event if you have a friend who goes fast and is willing to help you don't insult him (or confuse yourself further) by asking seven other guys what they think you should do. I've never lied to anyone who has asked me for information about my setup but I also know that most of them went back to their pits and only did half the things I recommended.  I've been on both ends of this habit so I know.

Generally speaking you won't get too much useful information from another racer - especially if he runs in the same class as you. Your particular "power package" is pretty much unique and you will have to learn most of what it takes to go fast on your own.

Conclusions

None of the things we have discussed here are going to teach you "the feel", but if you study them and then apply them at the track you should be able to learn how to get dialled in quicker and easier than ever before.