James Leong wrote:One of the important contributing factor to accidents is that some drivers are not able to adjust to changing conditions of the track. This could be due to lack of driving experience or lack of caution. In Malaysia most races are run in dry weather so many drivers have very little or no experience of driving a race in rain. They have to adjust to this condition and be able to read the situation if the track is slippery or not and also when to back off. I normally do not want drivers who have not attain the age limit to move to the next class. This is to allow them to gain more experience in a lower class albeit they can move up due to other reasons than of age.
I have noticed that drivers go for practice spending hours driving round the circuit without any aim or objective. They should have a purpose for the practice like doing setup of the chassis or gaining experience in rain driving. All this help to give the driver more confidence in himself and his machine.
James Leong
What James says (and Mikko in the next post as well) is correct - drivers need to practice in different conditions and then adjust their driving style (or speed) to suit the track. It very noticable that on a practice day, if it rains everyone just hides in the paddock until the sun comes out - apart from Mikko, me and a couple of others. We normally have at least 1 wet race (final) each year and often championships are decided by very small numbers of points. I wonder how many championships have been decided in the last few years by results from a wet race?
A wet or damp track, even with slicks, isn't impossible. I was forced (by a mistake) to use slicks for the fully wet Heat 1 of the masters on Saturday and still finished 8th, without a single spin or off-track moment. How?, because I braked earlier, turned in a bit slower and accelerated carefully. Doing this, I was only 3-4 secs off the pace! What you can't do in the wet is slam on the brakes, hurl the kart into the corner and then stomp on the accelerator - like we (sort of) do in the dry.
If you really want to try something tricky, try the DD2 on slicks on a damp track

