Congratulations, you have decided to become a kart driver. You've bought a kart and a helmet. You've persuaded the family to swap the comfortable family car for a 'race bus' and set up a karting workshop in the back. You have taken your driver's license and subscribed to Idrottsbladet and Bilsport Börsen to be able to keep track of when all the races are to be run.

Is there anything that can stop you from sweeping the board with your competitors and taking home all the prizes that can be won? Unfortunately, yes. There are plenty of kart drivers. But really good ones are more scarce. And yet I would say that everyone actually has the same opportunities, it's just that some drivers do not take advantage of the opportunities available. There is an overconfidence in driver talent and above all in the fact that there is "factory-made" stuff that allows even mediocre drivers to win.

Does this sound complicated? Not at all. But you can't buy yourself a place on the podium. All the things I described at the beginning are just some of the prerequisites for success, and the rest of the prerequisites are actually within you and to some extent in your mechanic. I have tried to summarize my experiences from more than fifty years in karting in a few rules. If you can put my experiences into practice, then you will succeed! There are many karting classes, but I am especially addressing those who drive in classes with many new drivers, such as Cadetti, Micro, Mini and Rotax.

I assume that you have joined a club and that this club has meetings and training evenings. You should go to all the meetings, training sessions and attend as many training nights as you can. And at every such opportunity, you should ASK, ASK, ASK. There is so much knowledge among your peers, but don't expect them to come up to you and shower you with their precious experience. But, if you ask, you will find that the vast majority are happy to share their experience. Then you should always combine the advice you get with your own good judgment. There are always people on and around the tracks who have their own ideas about how to drive a kart. If you think that a piece of advice seems strange, then you should think at least twice before following that particular advice.

There are drivers who boast about how many hundreds of laps they have done on training nights. Lap after lap. Sure, it can provide some safety and it can provide good lap times on THAT particular track. But just grinding around and around does not prepare you for driving on other tracks.

Instead, use your practice time on your home track to experiment as much as possible. What happens if you change the air pressure in the tires, the front and rear track width, the length of the exhaust hose, the carburetor setting. You and your mechanic should make careful notes on how different changes affect your lap times. Drive three or four laps, go to the pits and make ONE change and then go out again. The average time before and after the change will give you an idea of the impact of that particular change. Write down your observations. You know that rally drivers have their notes. I would argue that a kart driver's logbook, with all his observations during training, is at least as valuable as the rally notes. The idea is that when you arrive at a new track and find that you are not going fast enough, you should be able to systematically make a number of changes. If you prepare for your practice nights, you will quickly find a setting for your kart and engine that will keep you from being outrun.

There are drivers who think that karting is something you do on intuition. That's wrong, karting is done with the inside of your head!

You've seen on TV that the hero stays out all night, comes to the racetrack straight from a party and then runs the whole band ragged. That only happens in the movies. Anyone who wants to win in karting has to work on themselves, physically and mentally, as much as any other sportsman or woman. I hope your club has training programs for drivers. I don't mean just the free practice driving on the track, but a training program to help you become a physically and mentally stronger and better driver. If your club does NOT have such activities, then I would change clubs, or supplement with another sport where such training is given. Maybe a combination of karting and floorball or karting and hockey could be something for you. Something that allows you to keep going summer and winter.

Most young drivers think that whether you win or not depends on the engine. "If I only had a 'factory' engine like Nisse and Karin have, I would probably win!" A more experienced driver knows that success depends on:

• yourself 40%.
• your kart 40%
• your engine 20%.

Here I have summarized the most important things you need to know about setting up your kart, something you must be able to do on every track, in every type of weather.

If a kart slides more at the rear than at the front, it is said that the kart is oversteered. On the contrary, it becomes understeered. Experience tells us that it is best when a kart has a NEUTRAL setting. There are mainly five things that affect the handling:

1. Front and rear track width

Wide at the front and narrow at the rear causes oversteer. Once you learn to drive without big setups, you may find that narrow both front and rear can give the fastest times. Especially on twisty tracks and in dry conditions.

2. Seat positioning

You shift the center of gravity by moving the seat. You can try moving the seat both vertically and longitudinally. A low seat gives skidding tendencies, a high seat can make the kart want to tip over. If you move the seat far back, it will understeer, etc. A good starting point is to position the seat so that when you sit in the kart wearing full racing gear, 40% of the kart's total weight should be taken up by the front wheels and 60% by the rear wheels.

The basic rule is that without load, the card should have all its paws on the ground. If it has become skewed after a run-off, you must get help and straighten it again. The frame should not be too weak either. If you have bought a used frame, it may have become softer over time and you may have to brace it. Ask the person in the club who is best at chassis, he can help you with advice on bracing.

In recent years, the stiffness of the rear axle has also become something that has proved to play a major role in road performance, especially for the heavier classes. A stiff rear axle, often referred to as a hard rear axle, can provide better grip for the rear wheels, but this can be at the expense of steering. A softer axle, often in combination with soft tires, can provide great traction for the front carriage but a skidding rear carriage.

A kart tire should get warm when driving, otherwise it will not get the right grip. If you can measure the temperature, it should be 65 degrees when racing. There are recommendation tables for air pressure, but your driving style will affect the temperature, so you really have to experiment. Normally you have slightly higher pressure at the rear than at the front. In Cadetti, Micro and Mini, you can start testing with 1.0 kp/cm2 front and rear, and you should know that higher air pressure makes today's soft tires wear out faster than with a lower pressure. Try reducing the pressure 0.1 kp/cm2 at a time and check your lap times.

Rain tires are a story in themselves. When the rain is pouring down, you should have about 2 kp/cm2 in your rain tires. But when it is drying up, you should reduce the pressure in the tires gradually as the track becomes drier. Choosing the right tires and pressure is especially tricky when part of the track is dry while another part is still wet. Keep your rain tires, but lower the pressure to 1.7 - 1.8 kp/cm2 to still have grip on the wet part of the track.

In the past, there wasn't much on the front end that you could adjust on a kart, but that has changed. Today, there are karts that allow you to adjust toe-in, camber and caster. Let's take it from the top:

Toe-In means how much the front tires plow. And is a measure of how much shorter the distance is between the centers of the front tires when you measure at the front, compared to when you measure at the rear.

Theoretically, 0 mm toe-in should be best because it gives the least rolling resistance, but the map is normally somewhat unstable with this setting. I have found that toe-in of 1 to 2 mm makes the steering stable without too much rolling resistance.

Caster angle expresses how much the steering stem is tilted if you look at the map straight from the side. On modern maps you can adjust the caster angle. You should try a fairly large positive caster, something in the range of 5 to 15 degrees. Admittedly, it will be slightly heavier to turn, but the advantage is that you increase the pressure on the front tires when turning. In a rain race, this can be crucial to whether you can turn at all.

Finally, the camber angle measures how much the tire leans inwards or outwards if you look at the map straight on. On some maps you can set your camber angles, but I have a feeling that camber = 0 is the most common.

OK, when do you know that you have succeeded with all your settings? Well, when you find that the map steers where you want without surprises, then you have probably succeeded. Also check that the front wheel lifts a few centimeters off the ground in the inside turns. When you get a new kart, you may need to drive a hundred laps or more on your home track to try out different settings of the front carriage to find the handling that suits you.

For the Cadetti, Micro, Mini and Rotax classes, you cannot trim your engines. Here there is only one rule that applies. Learn to dismantle your engine, check all the parts and recognize what they should look like for everything to be OK. Your engine is usually a marvel of reliability, but no one has won a race with a bad spark plug or leaking crankshaft stuffing boxes. You'll learn more about this on a mechanics course at the club.

When you arrive at a new course, you will benefit from all your experimentation on your home course. On a new course, you MUST be able to set up:

• the drive train
• the carburetor

Turning correctly, i.e. choosing the right reverse gear, is a difficult art. But since you have practiced methodically. Just take out your little black book and look at how different gears affect your lap times and the behavior of the kart at different places on the track. There are no standard values that I can recommend, your driving style and many other factors affect what is best for you. But, a tendency has been to drive on smaller and smaller rear drives. This gives you good speed on the straights, but you lose power in the bends. So this is advice that you should take only when you feel confident in your cornering technique.

If there is a single factor that matters more than others in karting, it may be just how you take care of your carburetor and how good you are at tuning it. There is usually a good description of how to take care of your carburetor in the instruction manual that came with your engine when it was new. Read all about setting and servicing the carburetor, whether it is a diaphragm carburetor or a float carburetor, it is both interesting and useful reading for both drivers and mechanics.

You should also take a mechanic course and learn how to take a carburetor apart, clean it, put it back together and check it for leaks. This is the best investment in time you can make. Almost all carburetors are good, there are very few that can't be made good, but no carburetor is better than the care it receives. In this course, you can learn how to check the tightness of your carburetor and how to set the best opening and closing pressures. You will also learn how important it is to replace parts that wear out easily, such as the throttle shaft, in time - otherwise it can let in 'stolen air'.

The basic setting on the R95 is 2.25 turns open on the low speed needle (L) and 0.7 turns on the high speed needle (H). If you are stingy on the high speed needle, = screw it in more, your engine turns out better on the straights, but loses power at lower speeds. You cannot compensate for this with the low speed needle and therefore you have to choose a compromise for setting the high speed needle. The very best setting is when the engine shifts into four (flares) right at the end of the straight. But hey, don't just check full lap times when experimenting with different carburetor settings. Watch a fast section and a slow section, and you will see how different carburetor settings affect the different sections.

There are drivers who put on a show when they drive. Up on two wheels in some corners, half the map outside the track markings in other corners. Wide set-ups and quick track changes. Can be quite fun to watch.

But, my advice to you who are new is to try just the opposite. Try to find a smooth driving style. Find a way where you and the kart are in agreement and you don't have to resort to all the tricks to stay on track. I am giving you this advice because when you have mastered driving smoothly on the track, when you can drive lap after lap in the same way in almost the same track, then you have got the best starting point to be able to experiment with your driving style - you always have the smooth style to go back to as a reference. Another reason is that a calm driving style is also less tiring and you will need all your power for a twenty lap final race, I promise you. There are very successful drivers who have never had to bushwhack to win. I can only recall Ronnie Peterson who always drove as if he was sitting in the best armchair at home in Örebro and reading a good newspaper. It didn't look like he was going that fast, but boy did he go fast.

Good luck? Do you have to be lucky too?

Yes, all sportsmen and women need a certain amount of luck. But you also have to be lucky enough to choose the right combination of all the factors that determine who will win. I have touched on quite a few, but there are certainly more. The choice of oil in the gasoline, the choice of chassis, engine and tires. Fortunately, there are many factors that must work together to make it perfect. That you can't say that here, for this track and for these weather conditions, there is only one winning combination.

In the end, it is the skill of the person behind the wheel and the person pulling the spark plug that determines who is at the top of the podium.

And that's what makes karting so much fun. You can never be sure who will win. But, conversely, if you don't take advantage of the opportunities to get good conditions, you will probably never stand on the podium.

So - good luck!

Leif Radne - over 55 years on the tracks

Leif Radne founded Radne Motor AB at home in his parents' garage in Mälarhöjden outside Stockholm in 1966. Leif has innovated karting all over the world with his enormous experience and knowledge in karting. Leif Radne is a well-known name throughout the karting world.

Radne Motor is now run by Leif's children Marie and Stefan who run the company with the same passion for the sport as Leif has.