For most runners, Saturday night short track racing is a sport of trial and error. Most brokers lack big budgets and free time during the week to try out new ideas. So knowledge generally comes from two sources: advice from more experienced runners, and trying new things for yourself on race night. If you’re lucky, you can confirm whether or not a new setting works during the limited practice you get before qualifying. But then you can’t be sure until you test that setup in the heat of the competition.

Much like testing, many drivers learn to drive a race car just by getting out there and doing it. Driving a racing car is a technique that only you, the driver, have to develop on your own. If you have a good night, take what you learned from that event and try to duplicate it in the next week. But mistakes can be very costly. A mistake on the track can mean bent sheets of metal, broken parts, inflamed tempers, hurt feelings, and spending hours in the shop with a chance of not making it to the track next week. That’s why it’s so much easier to prevent bad driving habits before they start. After all, learning from your mistakes on the track might sound like a good theory, but it’s not the best idea when those mistakes can cost you cash.

To avoid mistakes on the track, pay close attention to what is happening in front of and behind you at all times. Don’t take chances. Races are never won on the first lap. To earn the respect of more experienced drivers, you must show respect. Always drive other drivers the way you want to be driven. Remember, racing is an expensive sport.

You should always drive your line and only your line

The biggest thing I try not to do is follow the guy in front of me. In other words, when you chase the car in front of you and do what it’s doing, you’re going to make the same mistakes it did. This may sound like a pretty simple thing not to do, but it’s easier to fall into this habit than you think. When following a car, you always look for a way around it, and it’s easy to start driving in the same line as it. In order to dodge it, you have to change your driving line to confuse it and dodge it. So try a different line, change your vertex, or do something to make him make the mistake, then take advantage of it.

In that same vein, I think a lot of racers stick to old habits for too long, and that’s because what drove most of us as race car drivers is driving really, really hard. Most racers want to push their cars to the limit and put in too much engine than the car and tires can handle. People have the equipment in each series to run very hard for some stretches. But the next thing you know, the tires start to fail but the engine is still there, and suddenly everything changes with the way the car drives. In that situation, you are simply overloading the car. You need to set the car to last for the entire race and not overload the car at the start. You need to figure out how you like to drive the car with a full tank of fuel, with a partial load of fuel, and with the fuel cell almost empty. How do you need to adjust your driving style when the tires are worn compared to when they are new? Being able to do this is the difference between winning and losing.

Don’t overdrive your car

It is important not to develop the habit of driving the race car too much. Overdrive means when you are pushing the car beyond its potential. As a general rule, it’s not a good idea to hit the brakes and the accelerator at the same time. That rarely works well.

When you’re hitting the brakes and accelerating at the same time, the brakes quickly overheat. It’s also hard to get a car to turn and turn if you’re hitting the brakes. It is always better to brake before entering corners and let the car roll. That allows the suspension to be adjusted so the car can turn. It may feel slower, but it will turn better, be easier to drive, and generally go faster.

Never abuse your tires

One of the biggest problems I see with inexperienced drivers is that they tend to go hard on the gas coming out of corners. This is what separates the men from the boys. With the power available from these engines, it’s easy to over-rev the engine and spin the tires. This is especially easy to do on short tracks or flat tracks with tight turns. When you do that, you end up doing what we call “frying” the rear tires. This creates excessive heat in the tire and also burns what we call the “good product” of the tire. Your best laps are when the lead is still in the tyre.

The tires last a while, but once you start spinning them, the maximum traction wears off pretty quickly. Tires are the first thing to be abused on a race car. If you can keep the momentum of the race car in the corner and hit the throttle more smoothly, you will increase your speed. It takes a lot of feel to be able to give all the throttle the car can handle without spinning the tires, but once you can do that, you’ll be quicker for more laps.

It gets really tricky when your car starts to come loose. At this point you have less grip available and the car wants to turn. When you’re loose, it’s really hard not to spin your tires. Step on the accelerator a little earlier and use the power of the engine to control the spin of the wheels. The idea is to prevent the engine from blowing up the tires by accelerating even more than before.

have an observer

Having a good spotter working with you is very important, especially on restarts. When everyone is lined up in one or two rows, it can be hard to see what’s going on in three or five cars ahead of you. That’s when you need a good spotter to let you know if the lead car is taking the green flag cleanly or checking at the last minute to stack up the field before it takes off. If your spotter is alert, he can tell you if the right lane is on the outside or if you need to avoid trouble forming in front of you.

Finally, I think one of the most important things to remember is that you have to compete with people in the way that you want to be run. Show respect for other people and your team. If you don’t, then those kinds of things will come back to you later. It can be hard to see what’s going on with three or five cars lined up in front of you. That’s when you need a good spotter to know what’s going on in front of and behind you. It’s also your extra set of eyes so you don’t have to multitask and lose focus on what’s ahead. If your spotter is alert, it will tell you about your surroundings and keep you out of trouble.