How much does BALLAST WEIGHT affect your Karting lap times? (experiment)
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- čas přidán 18. 03. 2023
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Weight vs Karting Lap Times (experiment)
In today's video we compare how much ballast weight affects karting lap times. We experiment by adding 10 KG of ballast weight in each session.
Background music credits:
• Tôzen
Watch my other WEIGHT vs SPEED experiments here👇
czcams.com/play/PLn1C7iOeF2uiI4io7cKKi3w4WwJcZja2o.html
as a 100kg fatass I am literally the definition of karting with balast. I can stand my ground against averagely weight people 80kg, but if I duel with a kid that know what he's doing... then this video summarisies my experience. Good content!
I’m with you bro 😅
@@xameleon4842 same lool
I'm my own balast too, and I'm not exactly streamlined either. Bit like a toad sitting on a matchbox, as we say.
Yeah but at 103 kg when you bump into the lighter pilots, the balast weight is where it shines really in terms of impacts......😅 Oh sorry wrong channel I thought it was F1 2022 short racing with the wolves of licence D and C's......😂😂😂
I’m the average 87kg man and it’s nice to know them extra beers and the half pounder do make a difference 😂
I just started karting at 29. I'm 130kg and have to squeeze in real hard to barely fit in the seats. Thin people often can't understand how much weight plays a role in karting (still came within 3 tenths of a 70kg friend though [30s track]).
Karting is still heaps of fun, and actually gave me a reason to start losing weight (I was at 140kg less than a month ago).
dont give up!! losing weight is fun! you gain so much of yourself. i went from 190kg to 115kg and its amazing!!! i still want to lose more but now it becomes tougher. also age plays a role (40)
Enjoy your journey and keep hitting those apexes on track ;)
Weight affects racing in all categories. Be it formula, GP, GT rally, karting etc. Just 5 or 10 kg can mean a difference of speed in corner and affect the grip of tyres which could give you negative 0.100 seconds and let me tell you... 0.100 seconds in racing is a lot. If you are slower for 0.100 seconds it means you will be much more vulnerable to attacks and attacking will be that much more difficult as well since you lose advantage when you stop drafting etc...
So weight is the critical and crucial component in racing. That is why for example formula drivers are small and thin with only muscle building they actually do is the neck due to heavy helmet.
@@sermerlin1
I've heard that in some formulae, pressing the brakes can be an issue if you don't have the necessary strength in the legs.
@@michaellavery4899 yes but everyone already has enough. It's more of having muscle endurance not as much of strength.
As you are massively assisted by the inertia itself. The more you break the more g forces will assist you in braking.
That's why their legs don't look athletic like runners or bikers or even hikers.. the only really athletic muscle is the neck.
The rest is built towards endurance and stamina.
They are though due to that necessity also fit.
Thanks for putting this video together. Thankfully this is why weight categories in races exist.
0:32 Having more weight won't give you more grip. Yes, with more weight you'll have more maximum friction force against the ground, but at the same time you'll have to accelerate the extra mass around and the tires friction coefficient decay as the normal load rises. At the end, you have less grip.
2:59 The problem is not exactly that the weight is in the left hand side of the kart. The real problem is that it's offset from the center of gravity without ballast, which makes the moment of inertia rise a lot and thus it's harder for the kart to rotate around the vertical axis. This is more perceptive on slow and sharp corners, but it could actually make the kart faster around long corners to the left compared to long right hand corners.
It would be really interesting if you could also test with the ballast attached to the seat vs ballast on the support. It would give a nice comparison on lighter people with ballast vs heavier people without ballast.
Was looking for this comment
YES. Thank you for this comment. As an engineer I am so sick of this misconception.
The coefficient of friction decay is known as tyre sensitivity.
You are slightly wrong with your first point though. More weight gives you more firction yes, but where that advantage neutralizes itself is also bigger centrifugal force that exists when going through the corner. The biggest downside of more weight is mostly less acceleration, exiting through the corner or accelerating in straight. Breaking is about the same.
Interesting comparison. I did something very similar years ago and actually found that, with an adjustment to driving style, I could achieve a lap time within 6 tenths after adding 30kg. I think the big difference is that I added the weight between my legs rather than towards a rear corner. Karts rely heavily on caster to lift or at least reduce weight on a rear wheel to help turn in. This is because of the solid rear axle and no differential. If you increase the weight on one rear corner then it will give understeer in that direction because the rear axle has too much rubber on the ground. If you wanted to counteract this effect then you could lean forwards over the opposite front corner to help lift the inside rear wheel. This is a technique that used to be used a lot in the wet when I raced. Likewise, if you were in a traction limited left hand corner, the extra weight on the left rear would actually help. A driver that is this much heavier would not experience this same handling issue and therefore wouldn't loose as much laptime.
A sneaky trick I use is to put the heaviest ballasts on the front slots and the lightest on the back slots. That way you can move the CG slightly towards the center, what reduces that phenomenon of understeer for the side of the ballast.
as a 95kg heavy dude, I noticed that chicanes are much easier for me but I lose much more time in the slow exits after hairpins compared to other 70/75kg drivers. Talking now about 270cc carts with max speed of about 60kmh
Why is that? Greater ability to reduce the inside rear tyre load relative to outside rear tyre (in terms of percentage)? Thereby less understeer?
My local place is electric cart on a very tight slow track. my 95kg ass has no chance
Thank you very much for your guidance for heavy weight racing lines… literally I have done my fast lap better by 3 sec after driving on your given racing line… You are genius ❤❤❤
Great demonstration of how power to weight ratio affects lap times. At the end of the day it's a no brainer, it's why F1 puts so much effort in to weight reduction.
I'm so tired of people saying dumb stuff about more weight = more grip. There's a reason every racing series in the world, including karting, has had a minimum weight, not a maximum weight, since the 30s.
Ask them, they all missed the middleschool
Hey KTips, great vid as always
Going Birmingham track next week, would love to see your recommended race lines if you got time
Great video, the more slow turns a track has the more time the heavy driver loses, lighter kart always gets to its top speed faster
I know my heavier mates tend to lift instead of braking as they arent carrying enough entry speed to justify braking. Though on a track like Lusail, there's a lot of high speed long sectors so generally heavier drivers are quite exposed
Excellent video. One of the best to demonstrate ballast weight.
Thanks mate!
Good motivation to lose weight, great man
I've tried this very same test by myself. As a skinny boy of 65 kg many years ago, as fitted man at 75 kg, as slighty oveweight at 85 kg, and now... I can confirm the same results. Obviously all for the love of science... and food, and beer, and many other things 😁
just go & have fun and enjoy the ride...BUT THEN 💪 sometime push beyond to shave out those tenth of a thrilling seconds at some optimistic corners with late balanced brakes 😎
With full-grown cars, you estimate around 1-3 tenths per 10kg. Karts benefit a lot from carrying speed through corners, 10kg means a lot in terms of overall weight so it affects your high-speed even more, and as you mentioned weight can affect the setup pretty hard. So 3 tenths or slightly more should be the difference. Especially if you haven`t adapted your racing line.
Yes over 10+laps those 1-3 tenths can be a completely different pace
For tall people it's even worse because adding height raises the centre of gravity to all that weight and also adds additional aero drag!
depends on the track… amount of slow corners and elevation and stuff
I've tested it in a similar way in Prokarts, we found that you lose around a second per lap on a 60s track with 20kg extra ballast. The relationship between extra ballast and lap time lost is also fairly linear but seems to make slightly more difference the more you add. So if 20kg costs 1s, 40kg might cost 2.2s.
good video, I have excuse why I always lose in karting now haha
I find the idea of ballast weight in competitive karting unfair. It disadvantages the people who do have the right physical dispositions for the sport. It's like forcing all basketball players over 2m to play down on their knees to "level the field". I mean can't short skinny people have at least one thing in life where it's actually an advantage to be like that? 😅
Many years back when I was just voting age and had a full head of hair.
I moved into a new class and had to add weight to meet the minium weight.
It was critical to place the 12kg where it has the least negative effect.
For my setup we found through testing, this was under the front of my seat. Which was lucky my seat postion had just enough room for the lead block to fit.
We also found that as little as a 50mm change forward or back would effect performance in some way. The further the move the greater the change.
I think those who engineer and do fluid dynamics stuff may call that sweet spot, the centre of balance. Or something like that.
In your placement for your testing, instantly I said way to high (tall). flat along the floor should get you better results.
But spreading the larger amount of weight on the floor keeping it in the sweet spot looks a bit of a challenge on that set up.
10kg balast is different than 10kg body weight. 10kg body weight has a smaller effect on laptimes. I really enjoyed this episode.
In the past I was on a gokart weight of 70 kg ( 2015 ish ) Build a house and a family and went karting recently because i need to sport more. My weight was 92 kg and went in a small rental race the other day, after the race I asked the track owner if i could drive a session in the kart of the winner of that race. The winner was about 70kg maybe 75. Turned out in the same gokart i was 3 - 4 tenths slower than him, considering the weight difference i felt pretty good. Adapting to your weight can go a long way. But its really depressing when you see you're getting closer on the corners and you cant follow on the straights/ corner exit.
Loosing weight again because i cant stand being slower :D.
The first half of the track looks so much like wackersdorf, except those two turns that are a double apex is just a tighter hairpin
Excellent video. @25KG> a story of my life and donuts ... as if 'shrinking seats' and ripped suit bottoms weren't a hint.🙄
I was racing against a guy that was 20-30kg lighter than me and though I was technically better, he always had faster acceleration. This was so frustrating.
Good experiment! I think results will be different with the weight on the body instead of it being in a static position. Maybe try a scuba diving belt or plates in a backpack. 30kg might increase the G-Forces by a ton though haha, but I think 10kg should be possible & probably gives different results.
Great idea! I tried it with a weighted vest and you can check those videos out in the WEIGHT vs SPEED series playlist below:
czcams.com/play/PLn1C7iOeF2uiI4io7cKKi3w4WwJcZja2o.html
Definitely true, also if you're wondering for indoor karting the difference can be less than for outdoor especially on less grippy tracks. Heavier drivers sometimes can benefit a little on some corners because of this.
Heavier drivers will always be slower of course.
At one of the rental car tracks I go to, they have different weight classes. So you can look up the results online and compare yourself to other people in a similar weight class. For me at someone who weights 220lbs (100Kg) it is nice to see that I am pretty fast in the 200lbs+ category. However, compared to the super lightweight people I have zero chance.
Once I teached my wife which line she has to drive. She has no clue about driving a kart, but because she is fearless and weights only 100lbs (45Kg) somehow she managed to get 2-3 really good laps on that day which were faster than most people on the track 😄
What makes extra weight even worse is that you can overheat your tires due to extra scrubbing while having extra loading.
That will make the deficit bigger as the laptops go on.
Pretty much what happens at my local track with 1:15 laps,+- 3 tenths/5kg.We run SWS rules,180 lbs for the driver and our 130 lbs hotshoe lost 1.2 seconds at legal weight.
I’m 105 kg and I'm racing indoors lately. I’m shining when the track is slick and slippery. However, when the track warms up and starts to get grippe, nothing I can do.
An interesting video. Have you tried using different lines for the heavier weights?
Stay tuned for the video!
It’s funny cos all the big guys i have raced against have always tried to mock me saying they will be faster in corners because of their weight and win against me and all i can do is rely on my lightweight to give me better acceleration on straights (im about 58kg and 5’3). Every time a bigger guy mocked me before a race i have finished much further ahead of them. I have done a season of endurance racing with each race being 90 mins and managed to lap one of those guys mocking me, 3-4 laps over and finished 2nd or 3rd overall (can’t remember exactly) but it felt good. Leave the talking for on track
Does this weight difference increase or decrease with lower hp go-karts like 9hp rental karts?
depending on fitness levels every 10kg gap is about 0.5-1s difference on 4 stroke rental karts running honda or briggs stratton 12-13hp
Great vid! Do you recommend leaning left/right in the corners in indoor karting? Or is it pretty much useless?
lean to the outside
Hmm.. should try wearing the ballast on a vest so you can use it to your advantage like heavier drivers can.
Normal difference between laptimes of Lo206 Heavy(385 lbs) and Lo206 Masters(405 lbs) where I race in the US is about 1 second.
I'm heavier too and when I can advance the seat on the kart, i'll do it to move the weight forward to mitigate the understeer
In Pattaya at Easykart I did the same experiment by a lap time of around 43 seconds: +10kg -> 43.3 / +20kg -> 43.6 / +30kg -> 44.0
Here in South America at 3,000 meters over sea level with Briggs & Stratton engines 2kgs makes a difference of one tenth of a second.
I'm 90KG and 0.8s of my local tracks hire kart record. this video makes me feel pretty good :)
Then you have the skills and you can bump the lightweights out of your way lol
Every time a see a kid with no parents in the race i just deal with the fact that I will be humiliated in next 10 minutes)
I have 78kg and 2 friends which I usually run with, using 15 or 10kg of weight. Last time I had to stop the kart to ask to remove the extra load, that's because was impossible to turn left due understeering. I figure it out what you explained and now everythingis clear, thanks for the content and all tips.
I would like to see a video if it is better to be 100 kg or 80+20 of ballast. These numbers are for example.
I believe your understeer with the heavy weight is partly due to a lack of weight transfer to the outside wheels instead that 30kg is bring the balance back towards the inside wheels. This potentially explains why you had more issue turning left than right as when you turn right you had your normal weight plus the 30kg which is already closer to the outside of the kart.
I don’t believe leaning in would work as you would just be contributing to keeping the weight on the inside wheels.
3:20 you should be that in this video not an other. It’s an essential point where your with ballast
I race with 125cc karts. For races I have to add up to 10 kg of ballast, but I barely lose any laptime. Around a short and technical track as my local track, I lap without ballast around 28.7, and with ballast around 28.75-28.8. So I loose a tenth every 10 kgs. How? I think it’s because I can place the weight the way I want on the kart (since is mine), so I pay attention to not fuck up the balance of the kart. I always try to keep the weight balance 57% on the rear and 50/50 between left and right. Obviously the setup plays an important role too.
That’s to say, not always more weight = slower lap times. Anyway, really nice video
I’d think that throwing your weight out of the left turns would allow your inside tires to lift off a bit so you don’t get bogged down so much
do you only drive rental karts
1:56 which way are you leaning your body weight for the no ballast kart? You said "out of the corners" but i'm not certain if you meant when coming/exiting out of the corners or lean to the outside of the corners? Many thanks.
I'm leaning to the outside, away from the corner, so that the inside rear tyre lifts.
@@kartingtips thank you! That makes sense.
Nice experiment, it would be better to put the extra weight in some place that not changes the balance...
I only do karting once a year, but i´m a fast driver and almost ervery lap on first or second place with my 130Kg Bodyweight (Friends only). But there are some guys with 55-65Kg which driving hill climb races 10-20 times a year. And they´re still a second behind me. The only situation i really get to see my disadvantage is at the start. Qualifying to the first place, starting in front of everyone but at the first corner i´m already at the last place because i don´t accelerate much. Our track has a lot of 180° curves. I really wish i could see my time with 60-65Kg less.
Thanks for the good video! What are the kart specs?
These are 4 stroke Birel rental kart engines
i did some go kart when i was 105Kg, and now doing 67, i can feel a massive difference.
I do carting a lot and I'm usually 2 sec slower than a best lap on this track. Also I'm around 98kg weight so now I know why=)
1:19 wow that is one BIG difference in terms of gap
If the kart understeered heavily on left hand turns due to the ballast weight being on the left, wouldn't leaning left exacerbate the problem rather than help it? Since the cause of the understeer is too much grip from the inside rear tyre and leaning into the corner would further increase the load on the inside rear tyre, thereby increasing its grip further and in turn increasing the understeer (because there is no rear differential for karts)? What am I not understanding here? I really hope someone can correct me please. I really just want to know what is the correct answer and reasoning behind it please.
KTips...any chance I could get a reply to this please? I'm still wondering about this and it's keeping me up at night.
It has kept me up nights too! So we tried a few experiments. You're right, leaning in makes the problem worse. To counter the ballast weight you need to lean further out than normal, but this won't be enough on it's own. You will have to combine the leaning with more aggressive steering at the turn in point of the corner as Coach Rami told me.
@@kartingtips thank you so much for getting back to me with an answer! Very much appreciated! Love your channel! So, more aggressive steering input at the turn in point to increase the jacking force from the front inside tyre to get the inside rear off the ground and some power to help rotation? Many thanks!
In an SR3 Radical, a passenger loses me 1.5 seconds per lap on a 1 minute lap time track length.
can you compare people who are lighter (120pounds) to people who are heavier (180+ pounds)?
Ottimo esperimento. Ovviamente questa è la perdita che si ha con zavorra , sbilanciando tantissimo il go kart . Se la differenza fosse di peso del pilota e non con le zavorre , al massimo da 65kg a 95 kg cambia 1 secondo
I want to tell you in Italian: ti amo.
i have a question. i’m racing in a Dutch rental karting championship which is on 80kg. my weight with everything on is 83,5. do you think i lose time to people that drive with exactly 80kg?
Generally speaking the heavier you are the slower you will be. However it also depends on the track. Is it outdoor or indoor where you race at? Are there many straights or is it very tight and technical with lots of corners?
im was about 105kg and i was about as fast as my 75kg friends on karting. As im the biggest petrolhead in the group, and im supposedly the "best driver" they trolled me that i should be way faster. 3 months later and after a diet im at 89kg. Last week we went for a 20 lap race in the same kartings and i won by 28 seconds on a 35 second lap hahaha. weight makes a lot of difference
Sadly i can't detach my "ballast" that easy :P I'm always racing with almost 100kg (driver only) weight
More weight is never more grip. Yes, more grip, a bigger tire grip force, but acting on an even bigger mass, almost always resulting in less grip because of tires preferring to be lightly loaded.
there will be 0.3 sec difference for every 10Kg on a short (like 30sec) lap
As a 120kg Guy racing against some friends 75-85kgs average i can confirm if there is a hairpin before the straight you might as well be on a Sunday drive😂, do all the work to catch up rest of the lap just to get killed on acceleration😂 still fun though but on average about a second slower a lap.
As a 105kg guy I definitely feel like my 60kg son has an advantage, he can just accelerate away from me when we go karting
You did over 40 laps on the same tyres? Then you have to consider degretation.
Maybe it would be more accurate to start with 95kg and end with 65kg.
Haha yes! I finally have something empirical to link to people when my fatass loses by a second or two :D
how much horsepower is the go kart?
I’ve had and have 4 track records under my name and the only drivers who could match my record lap time or sometimes even beat it are 12 year old kids who roughly weigh 30/35kg maximally. So, yes weight makes a huge difference. I’m 72kg, so the perfect balance between grip and power. But, on the other hand a skinny 12 year old kid who knows a bit of driving could beat me by 0.05 seconds (I’ve never had an adult breaking my record)
Ditto. I just lost my long standing lap record to a 45kg kid (I'm 69kg) by 0.039. It sucks because I know pound for pound he is not as fast as me at all, but where the track has a couple tight sections that lead onto fast straights, he just gains the time through pure straight line speed and there's nothing I can do about it. No one who's near my weight is close to me :/
@@MilesNJRacing yes, it really can be frustrating sometimes. They should distinguish the track records of children (statistically less wiegjt) with those of adults (statistically more weight).
So I really need to lose 15kg before I go karting next.
Story of my life...
Right, but some Karts are Balanced for 85kg drivers, and at 65 and 75 kg you lean forward whit 85 and 95 u dont
When F1 cars with 900hp are chasing grams, it will make huge difference on these cars with only a couple of hp :/ As a 100kg+ guy it's a shame 😅
Yes you are right, if you add weight and don't change your technique, of course, you gonna be just slower.
But for me that's non sense, you have to adapte your driving style with your body weight, a 50kg guy can't drive the same techniques has a 80kg guy...
Baby Peach vs Bowser
i have 84 kg and best lap time of 32 sec, best track time is 29 sec by 54 kg driver(indoor track)
You never lean on the inside except is a wet race!!!
О да))) я с весом 99 в экипе сливаю по жести довешенным до 85
aaaeeeehhmmmm, you should lean OUT in the corners in a gokart... because your axle in the back is without DIFF, you would need to free up the inside wheel to be able to turn...
That’s right! 😃
When you are 97kg you don't need balast, you need weight reductions😅😅😅
i have 56kg, so my weight does absolutelly no difference as corners or grip =/
I need Donkey Kong's kart
Dieting. I use dieting.
Another fun experiment would be to put ballast in a backpack and carry the extra weight in your person. That way you could do a bit of weight transfer as needed. That may require wearing a backback in reverse in front of you to fit into the seat.
I am 110kg so I need to lose weight before going karting with my mates lol.
Effects of ballast.
Cheers mate!
its bad test cause you had all the weights on one side
At 85 kg I know I'd be 5 seconds quicker at 65 kg. :)
I weigh 95kg... my local track the fastest time ever is 37.8.
My fastest time 40.2. The dude with 37.8 wieghs 64kg... if i lose weight im doing 30 seconds easy😂
Not sure if this is a fair test your adding ballest weight not dynamic weight ie weight attached to your body that you can move around in the kart to increase or mitigate the performance problems of having the added weight.
Everyone in the comments now thinks at 100kg they would be quicker then their 80kg mate if it wasn’t for their weight.
Weight added to your body i think would have the resulting time loss a lot smaller if even negligible.
Although I appreciate the comparison, you simply can't draw any conclusions without telemetry.
My recommends way off telling me to lose weight.
I was racing often with friend month ago, I have 142 kg and my two friend were one: 65kg and one 78kg, and they are faster than me by 1 sec. I think is good hahahahhahaha, they doesn't have my skills but I'm 2 times bigger than one of them :"(